Report Writing

• Research report is considered a major component of the research study.

• The research task remains incomplete till the report has been presented
and/or written.
• The purpose of research is not well served unless the findings are made
known to others.
• Research results must invariably enter the general store of knowledge.
• Writing of report is the last step in a research study and requires a set of
skills
The usual steps involved in writing report are
(a) logical analysis of the subject-matter
• There are two ways in which to develop a subject (a) logically and (b)
chronologically
• The logical development is made on the basis of mental connections and
associations between the one thing and another by means of analysis. Logical
treatment often consists in developing the material from the simple possible
to the most complex structures.
• Chronological development is based on a connection or sequence in time or
occurrence. The directions for doing or making something, usually follow the
chronological order.
. (b) Preparation of the final outline
• Preparation of the final outline: It is the next step in writing the research
report “Outlines are the framework upon which long written works are
constructed. They are an aid to the logical organisation of the material and a
reminder of the points to be stressed in the report.
(c) Preparation of the rough draft
• This follows the logical analysis of the subject and the preparation of the
final outline. The researcher writes down the procedure adopted by him in
collecting the material for his study along with various limitations faced by
him, the technique of analysis adopted by him, the broad findings and
generalizations and the various suggestions he wants to offer regarding the
problem concerned.
(d) Rewriting and polishing of the rough draft
• This step happens to be most difficult part of all formal writing. Usually this step
requires more time than the writing of the rough draft. The careful revision makes
the difference between a mediocre and a good piece of writing. While rewriting and
polishing, one should check the report for weaknesses in logical development or
presentation, the mechanics of writing—grammar, spelling and usage.
(e) Preparation of the final bibliography
• It should contain all those works which the researcher has consulted. The
bibliography should be arranged alphabetically. It must follow the accepted style.
E.g. APA Reference Style.
(f) Writing the final draft
• The final draft should be written in a concise and objective style and in simple
language, avoiding vague expressions such as “it seems”, “there may be”, and the
like ones. While writing the final draft, the researcher must avoid abstract
terminology and technical jargon. Illustrations and examples based on common
experiences must be incorporated in the final draft
Avenues for publishing
• Journal Article
• Book
• Contribution to book
• Contribution to Newspaper/Newsletter
• Dissertation/Theses
• Reports
• Commentaries
• Blog
• etc
 Journal Article
• Choose a topic
• Article Format - Check the author’s guide of the journal to publish the paper for the
article format. (Some journals provide the style file).
• Table and Figure format is in the article’s template in the author’s guide.
• Abstract – has word limit depending on the journals
• Write out the outline
• Write the introduction, body sections, conclusions
• List your resources (references) - a list of resources that you used for the research at
the end of the paper. Depending on the citation style, your resources page may have
a different title. For instance, APA uses a "References page", whereas Chicago style
uses a "Bibliography.
• How to cite your sources depend on the format you use, but will usually contain the
author's name, the title of their research paper and the date it was published.
• List your sources in alphabetical order by last name.
INTRODUCTION
• The introduction serves the purpose of leading the reader from a general subject
area to a particular field of research.
• It establishes the context of the research being conducted by summarizing current
understanding and background information about the topic,
• stating the purpose of the work in the form of the hypothesis, question, or research
problem,
• briefly explaining your rationale, methodological approach,
• highlighting the potential outcomes your study can reveal, and describing the
remaining structure of the paper.
• The introduction must answer these four questions:
1. What was I studying?
2. Why was this topic important to investigate?
3. What did we know about this topic before I did this study?
4. How will this study advance our knowledge?
Literature Review
• A literature review surveys scholarly articles, books and other sources
relevant to a particular issue, area of research, or theory, and
• by so doing, providing a description, summary, and critical evaluation of
these works.
• Literature reviews are designed to provide an overview of sources you have
explored while researching a particular topic and
• to demonstrate to your readers how your research fits into the larger field of
study.
• A literature review may consist of simple a summary of key sources,
• a summary is a recap of the important information of the source
Citing resources
• There are very specific rules for citing resources both throughout the paper and at
the end on the works cited page. Most research papers follow the
• American Psychological Association (APA) or the Modern Language Association
(MLA) format.
In-text citations
• In-text citations are citations that occur throughout the research paper to indicate
where you've used information from a source.
• Narrative citation. Narrative citation is when the date of the research appears in
parentheses behind the name or names of the authors that completed the
research. For example: Hawkins (2018) stated that fair does not always mean
equal.
• Parenthetical citation: Parenthetical citation is listed at the end of the sentence in
which research is mentioned. This consists of the names of the authors and the
date of the research in parentheses. For example: Fair does not always mean equal
(Hawkins, 2018).
 Reference list
• Many different media can serve as sources, including journal articles, books,
websites, online videos, newspapers, articles on the internet and more. There are
different formats for each type of reference.
APA
• Journal article: Author, A., & Author, B. (year). Title of article. Journal Title,
Volume(Issue), page range. DOI.
• Book: Author, A., & Author, B. (year). Title of book. Publisher Name.
• Website: Author. (year). Title of page. Retrieved Date, from (insert website URL).
MLA
• Journal article: Author(s). "Title of Article." Title of Journal, Volume, Issue, Year,
pages.
• Book: Last Name, First Name. Title of Book. City of Publication, Publisher, Publication
Date.
• Website: Author. Name of Site. Version number, Name of organization, date of
resource creation, URL. Date of access
Methodology
• A research methodology describes the techniques and procedures used to
identify and analyze information regarding a specific research topic.
• It is a process by which the study is designed so that the objectives can be
achieved using the selected research instruments.
• It includes all the important aspects of research, including research design, data
collection methods, data analysis methods, and the overall framework within
which the research is conducted.
• It is necessary for the researcher to know not only the research
methods/techniques but also the methodology.
• A researcher needs to know that it is important to pick the right methodology
for any specific topic.
• Research methodology not only talk of the research methods but also consider
the logic behind the methods used in the context of the research study and
explain why using/not using a particular method or technique.
Encyclopedias
• Encyclopedias are collections of essays that provide concise, factual and accurate
background information on a topic - the Who, What, When, Where, Why.
• Entries in an encyclopedia are short and not appropriate as a cited source for a
research paper, but they provide a quick overview of a topic and will jumpstart your
research.
• Encyclopedia entries often include citations to additional books, articles or websites
for further reading on the topic. There are two types of encyclopedias; general
encyclopedias and specialized subject encyclopedias.
General encyclopedias,
• like Encyclopedia Britannica, WorldBook or Encyclopedia Americana "cover the
waterfront" offering entries on almost all subjects.
Wikipedia
• It is a very large online encyclopedia, providing information on a multitude of
subjects. Since Wikipedia can be written or edited by anyone, the entries may not
be complete and are not always accurate.
• Published encyclopedias, either in print or online, are written by experts and
reviewed by experts to insure that the information is accurate, complete, and
useful. Wikipedia is not published in the traditional sense because it does not
go through a formal editorial process.
Subject encyclopedias
• focus on a single topic or discipline, The articles in those sources are more
detailed and frequently more scholarly in tone than those found in general
encyclopedias.
• Subject-specific encyclopedias usually cover an academic discipline such as
music, art, history, science, or education. They often have helpful bibliographies
appended to the individual articles, and these lists of additional references can,
in turn, direct you to other sources of information on your topic.
• Examples, The Philosophy of Science; An Encyclopedia; Encyclopedia of Latin
American Popular Music; Encyclopedia of Feminist Literature; The Princeton
Encyclopedia of American Political History; Encyclopedia of Early Cinema;……
Academic databases for computer science discipline
• Databases provide access to high-quality peer-reviewed journal articles,
conference proceedings, book chapters, dissertations and other sources.
• When carrying out your research for a piece of work, you will need to search
more than one database to find all of the journal articles relevant to your
topic, as each database covers different journals.

• ACM Online Guide to Computing Literature includes more than 750,000

references to the computing literature published since 1985.
• ACM Digital Library contains the fulltext of all ACM journals and conference
procedings published since 1985.
• CiteSeer. A free-to-use digital library and search engine that focuses primarily
on the literature in computer and information science. It uses citation data to
assess relevance.
• Lecture Notes in Computer Science The series Lecture Notes in Computer
Science (LNCS), including its subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence
(LNAI) and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics (LNBI)
• IEEE Xplore This database contains the text of IEEE journals, transactions,
letters, and magazines from 1988 with select content back to 1952. IEEE
conference proceedings from 1988 with select content back to 1953. IEEE
standards from 1988. IEE journals, letters, and magazines from 1988. IEE
conference proceedings from 1988
Scopus
• Scopus is a multi-disciplinary abstract and citation database which
includesjournal articles and patents.
• Scopus also tracks cited references, allowingusers to search for subsequently
published papers that cite an originalresearch paper.
• IET Inspec Produced by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
and the Institution of Electrical Engineers,
• INSPEC is the major database covering for the worldwide literature in
computer science, electrical engineering, electronics and physics from 1896.
[Link]
• [Link] is an open access database of preprints and e-prints of
scientificpapers, maintained by Cornell University Library, covering the subject
areas ofphysics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology,
quantitativefinance, and statistics.
• Mathematicians and scientists regularly upload their papers to [Link] for
worldwide access before they are published in peer-reviewed journals.
Content is updated monthly.
Web of Science (all databases)
• Web of Science is a a comprehensive interdisciplinary, bibliographic
databasewith article references from journals, books, and proceedings from
sciencesand technology, arts and humanities, and social sciences, brought
togetherunder a unified search interface.
Google Scholar
• Searches for scholarly materials such as peer-reviewed papers, theses, books,
preprints, abstracts and technical reports from broad areas of research. It
includes a variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint
repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the
web.
dblp computer science bibliography
• Hosted at the University of Trier, Germany, dbpl has become an indispensable
resource in the field of computer science. Its index covers journal articles,
conference and workshop proceedings, as well as monographs.
 Reference management software
• Reference management systems are used for storing, organizing and sharing
reference collections. A particular advantage is the simple formatting of
citations and bibliographies in scientific papers.
• A Reference Manager helps you keep track of articles and books as you find
them, tag and annotate them, and easily create citations and bibliographies
in Microsoft Word.
• Using any Reference Manager will be more efficient for most scholars than
not using one at all.
• Each manager has its own plug-in for Microsoft Word and some also have
browser plugins for easy capture of web links.
• Each manager also has built-in connections to Google Scholar and common
library reference databases.
• Each manager has options for group-based collaborative research.
 The most used reference management software
• Mendeley. A reference management system that helps you organize PDFs and
create bibliographies.
• Endnote. The oldest one, works well for all disciplines and for large collections
of articles
• Zotero. An open-source reference manager that is notable for its ease of use,
its ability to grab screenshots, and its capabilities for archiving website
content for local storage.
• F1000Workspace. A web-based application that provides a workspace for
researchers to collect, write, share and discuss scientific literature.
Mendeley
• A free citation management tool
• Desktop Software, Web and Mobile (to access and annotate your references
on the go)
• organize references and format bibliographies
• Social networking for ease of sharing and discovery
• Import references from databases and search engines
• quickly save and organize citations (download PDFs, read offline, mark-up,
share with a group)
• cite while you write (insert citations, generate bibliographies, easily change
citation style)
Plagiarism
• Presenting work or ideas from another source as your own, with or without
consent of the original author, by incorporating it into your work without full
acknowledgement. Plagiarism is a type of intellectual theft.
• All published and unpublished author, by incorporating it into your work
without full acknowledgement. material, whether in manuscript, printed or
electronic form, is covered under this definition,
• Plagiarism can also include re-using your own work without citation.
• The necessity to acknowledge others’ work or ideas applies not only to text,
but also to other media, such as computer code, illustrations, graphs etc.
• It applies equally to published text and data drawn from books and journals,
and to unpublished text and data, whether from lectures, theses or other
students’ essays.
• You must also attribute text, data, or other resources downloaded from
websites.
• Plagiarism can be a deliberate cheating, accidentally copying from a source
without acknowledgement. It can take many forms including,
- turning in someone else's work as your own
- copying words or ideas from someone else without giving credit
- failing to put a quotation in quotation marks
- giving incorrect information about the source of a quotation
- changing words but copying the sentence structure of a source without giving
credit, even if it was your own previous work (self plagiarism).
- copying so many words or ideas from a source that it makes up the majority
of your work, whether you give credit or not
Forms of plagiarism
• Verbatim (word for word) quotation without clear acknowledgement Quotations
must always be identified as such by the use of either quotation marks or
indentation, and with full referencing of the sources cited.
• Cutting and pasting from the Internet without clear acknowledgement Information
derived from the Internet must be adequately referenced and included in the
bibliography.
• Paraphrasing
• Paraphrasing the work of others by altering a few words and changing theirorder, or
by closely following the structure of their argument, is plagiarism ifyou do not give
due acknowledgement to the author whose work you are using.
• Collusion
• This can involve unauthorised collaboration between students, failure to attribute
assistance received, or failure to follow precisely regulations on group work projects.
Inaccurate citation
• It is important to cite correctly, according to the conventions of your discipline. As
well as listing your sources .
Failure to acknowledge assistance
• You must clearly acknowledge all assistance which has contributed to the
production of your work, such as advice from fellow students, laboratory
technicians, and other external sources.
Use of material written by professional agencies or other persons
• You should neither make use of professional agencies in the production of your
work nor submit material which has been written for you even with the consent of
the person who has written it.
Auto-plagiarism
• You must not submit work for assessment that you have already submitted (partially
or in full), either for your current course or for another qualification of this, or any
other, university, unless this is specifically provided for in the special regulations for
your course.
How to Avoid Plagiarism
• Keeping track of your sources
• One of the most common ways that students commit plagiarism is by simply
forgetting where an idea came from and unintentionally presenting it as their
own. You can easily avoid this pitfall by keeping your notes organized and
compiling a list of citations as you go.
• Avoiding plagiarism when quoting
• Quoting means copying a piece of text word for word. The copied text must be
introduced in your own words, enclosed in quotation marks, and correctly
attributed to the original author.
• Avoiding plagiarism when paraphrasing
• Paraphrasing means using your own words to explain something from a source.
• Paraphrasing does not mean just switching out a few words from a copy-pasted
text. To paraphrase properly, you should rewrite the author’s point in your own
words to show that you have fully understood it.
• Citing your sources correctly
• Every time you quote or paraphrase, you must include an in-text or footnote
citation clearly identifying the original author. Each citation must correspond
to a full reference in the reference list or bibliography at the end of your
paper.
• Using a plagiarism checker
• Most universities use plagiarism checkers to detect potential plagiarism.
Plagiarism checkers scan your document, compare it to a database of
webpages and publications, and highlight passages that appear similar to
other texts.
• Using AI tools responsibly
• Generative AI tools like ChatGPT can be helpful at different stages of the
writing and research process. However, these tools can also be used to
plagiarize in various ways (whether intentionally or unintentionally).
• When using these tools, it’s important to avoid the following:
• AI-assisted plagiarism: Passing off AI-generated text as your own work (e.g.,
research papers, homework assignments)
• Plagiarism: Using the tool to paraphrase content from another source and
passing it off as original work
• Self-plagiarism: Using the tool to rewrite a paper you previously submitted
• It’s important to use AI tools responsibly and to be aware that AI-generated
outputs may be detected by your university’s AI detector.