Research Methodologies from Curiosity to

Conclusion

Salman Abdul Moiz

Professor
School of Computer & Information Sciences
UNIVERSITY OF HYDERABAD
salman@uohyd.ac.in
 Research: Curiosity to Conclusion- Copilot
• - Research begins with **curiosity**—a desire to explore the
unknown.
• - Methodology is the **structured path** from question to
conclusion.
• - Curiosity sparks inquiry: “Why does this happen?” or “How can
this be improved?”
• - Define a **research problem**: a specific issue or gap in
knowledge.
• - Formulate a **clear, focused research question**
• - Investigate existing studies to understand the current
landscape.
• - Identify gaps, contradictions, or opportunities.
• - Helps refine your question and choose the right methodology.
Research Process & Planning
Source: Co-pilot
Research Motivation
 Research
 Search for Knowledge
 Scientific and systematic search for pertinent information on specific topic.
 It is an art of scientific investigation.
 Systemized effort to gain new knowledge
- Redman & Mory
 Research comprises
- defining and re-defining problems
- formulating hypothesis or suggested solutions
- collecting, organizing and evaluating data
- making deductions and reaching conclusions &
- carefully testing conclusions to determine
whether they fit the formulation of hypothesis
- Clifford Woody
 Aim: Find the solutions to unsolved issues
 Research Skills
• Technical communication
• Thinking
Oral
Knowing Written
Comprehension Publishing / Patenting
Problem solving
Critical thinking
Creative thinking • Experimentation

• Modeling

• Problem finding
Literature search • Time / stress management

• Professional ethics
 Source: State Library of Victoria
https://ergo.slv.vic.gov.au/learn-skills/research-skills /
 Types of Research
 Applied Research
 Fundamental Research
 Descriptive Research
 Analytical Research
 Quantitative Research
 Qualitative Research
 Conceptual Research
 Empirical Research
 Applied Research (Action)
- Aims at finding a solution for an immediate problem faced by a society or an
industrial/business organization.

 Fundamental Research (Pure research)

- Concerned with generalizations and with the formulation of a theory
- Research concerning some natural phenomenon or relating to pure
mathematics.
- Research studies concerning human behavior carried out with a view to make
generalization of human behavior.
- End results doesn’t result in immediate benefits

 Descriptive Research
- Includes fact finding techniques and surveys of different entities.
- Researchers doesn’t have control over the variables & can report the changes
to data over a period of time
 Analytical Research
- Researcher uses already available
information and analyse it to make crucial
decisions

 Quantitative Research
- It is based on measurement of entities that can be expressed as a quantity
which is a measured value

 Qualitative Research
- It refers to description of entity based on some quality or
characteristics
 Conceptual Research
- It is theoretical in nature and mostly based on abstract ideas

 Empirical Research
- It is based on experience and observation
- It is data oriented research which helps in achieving the
solutions to research problems through experiments.
Courtesy: “Teaching & Research Skills” – David Minton
Research Process
 Challenges in Research

• Time Overrun

- Lack of Planning
- Communication Gap between team or between the team members
and Project Lead (between Research Scholar & Supervisor)
http://www.lib.umn.edu/help/calculator
https://www.lib.umn.edu/services/ac/dissertation-calculator
2. Incorrect Problem Identification
Lack of extensive Literature Survey

3.Lack of Domain Knowledge

4.Lack of Knowledge of Allied

subjects

5.Pre-requisite subjects not

properly identified

Challenge(s) in identifying a Research Problem

 Research Methodology

 A systematic approach to find the solutions to the unsolved

problems

 It describes the steps necessary for the researcher to know

not only the research techniques but also the approach to
carry out research.

 Social Science Research Methodology doesn’t directly apply

to computer science/IT research.
 Research Methodology
-Systematic approach to solve the unsolved problems
• Literature survey (broad Area)
- elsevier,google, ieexplore.ieee.org, csur, etc, LLMs??
• Literature survey in specific area

• Formulating a Research Problem

• Finding solutions (step by step)

• Simulation of the solutions

• Repeating the previous steps until the

Hypothesis is proved

• Specify the formal proof for each of the hypothesis

•Compare the results of the problem with the contributions in the same domain
Problem Statement

 What is the research problem you aim to solve?

 What is the central research question? (i.e. What do you want to find
out?)
 What will we know after completion of your work that we did not know
before? (i.e. What is novel?)
 Why does it matter? (i.e. Why should someone care about this research?)
 How can you satisfy the research community about your solution
Methodology
 How do you (or plan to) conduct the research? Is it experimental or
theoretical?
 How will you know that you have succeeded? (What is your plan to
demonstrate the validity of your claims?)
 Explain briefly why your approach is appropriate in the context of your
work. What alternatives would there be and why are you not using them?

Related Work
 Briefly summarise the 4 most important publications for your research.
 How has this related work influenced your work?
 What is better (or different) in your work?
 Research Process: Step wise
 Step-I: Formulating a Research Problem
 Step-II: Conceptualising a research design
 Step-III: Constructing an instrument for data collection
 Step-IV: Selecting a Sample
 Step-V: Collecting Data
 Step-VI: Processing and visualizing data
 Step-VII: Writing a research report
Formulating Research Problem

 Required characteristics
 Interest
 Magnitude
 Measurement of concepts
 Level of expertise
 Relevance
 Availability of data
 Ethical issues
 Identify broad field or subject area of interest to you
 Dissect the broad areas into sub areas
 Select what is of most interest to you
 Raise research questions
 Dissect the broad areas into sub areas
 Select what is of most interest to you
 Formulate objectives
 Assess objectives
 Double check
 Step 2 Step 4
Step 1 Step 3
Dissect
Raise Questions
Identify 1. Health services provide to Select
community 1.How do health admins,
Health Community planners, service providers
2. Effectiveness of service
3. Cost of services responsiveness and consumers define
4. Health insurance schemes available to in delivery of community responsiveness
people health services 2. How can community
5. Training of health professionals responsiveness be achieved
6. Adhering to ethics in health practices 3. What indicators can be
7.Community responsiveness in used to evaluate the
delivery of health services effectiveness of community
responsiveness strategies?

Step 6 Step 6 Step 5

Double check Formulate Objectives

Assess objectives
1. Really interested in 1. To find out understanding of concept community
1. Work Involved responsiveness among admins, planners, SP & Consumers
study
2. Time available 2. To identify strategies to implement the concept of
2. Agree with the
3. Financial resources community responsiveness in health care
objectives
4. Technical expertise 3. To develop set of indicators to evaluate effectiveness of
3.Adequate resources
strategies
Literature Survey using AI Tools
 AI tools for Literture Survey
 Scispace
 https://typeset.io/

 Research Rabbit
 https://www.researchrabbit.ai/

 Zotero
 https://www.zotero.org/

 Litmaps
 https://www.litmaps.com/

 Connected papers
 https://www.connectedpapers.com/
Technical Paper Writing
 Technical Paper Writing

Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until

drops of blood form on your forehead. --- Gene Fowler
 Are you ready to Publish?
 Consider publishing when you feel that you have information that
contributes to the advances in scientific field.
 This can include one of the following:

 One is presenting new, original methods and results

 Rationalising, refining or reinterpreting the published results

 Reviewing or summarising a particular subject or field

 A good manuscript is clear, useful and presented in a logical manner such

that the readers can grasp its contribution easily.
 Technical Paper
 Technical paper: Writing of organized analysis of a subject to record and
disseminate information or knowledge or to present a point of view on a
selected topic.

 Objectives
 It is usually written for external audience

 Briefly and clearly explained

 Routine details need to be avoided

 Computer Program may not be included.

 Taxonomy of Technical Papers

 Survey Paper

 Term Paper
 Conference Papers

 Research Paper
 Journal Papers

 White Paper
 Conference Paper
 A Conference paper is appropriate to disseminate work in progress
research findings.

 Its typically 6-10 pages. However it could also include short papers of 2 or
4 pages.

 Typically contains 15 references and about 3-4 figures/tables.

 A good way to start the research career.

 Journal Paper
 A Journal paper or full paper is appropriate to disseminate completed
research findings.

 Its typically 10-20 pages. However it may not have any specific limit on
number of pages

 Typically contains 25 references and about 5-6 figures/tables.

 A good way to build a research career.

 Review Paper: Provides a good way to consolidate a scientific research

career, typically consist of 10+pages, 5+figures, 50+references
 Writing Papers is a Skill
 Model – I

Idea Do research Write paper

 Model-II

Idea Do research Write paper

Idea Write paper Do research

 You need to have a Novel idea before you can write a paper

 Write a Paper and give a talk about any idea no matter how
insignificant it may seem to you.

 The talk opens a dialogue with others: reality check, critique and
collaboration
 The Idea

 Figure out what your idea is

 Make certain that the reader is in no doubt what the idea is. Be
100% explicit:

 “The main idea of this paper is....”

 “In this section we present the main contributions of the paper.”

 Many papers contain good ideas, but do not distil what they are.
 Narrative Flow
 Here is a problem I wish I
knew how
to solve
 It’s an interesting problem that!

 It’s an unsolved problem

I see how
that
 Here is my idea works.
Ingenious!
 My idea works (details, data)

 Here’s how my idea compares to other people’s

approaches
◼ Many papers are badly written and hard to understand.

◼ This is a pity, because their good ideas may go unappreciated.

◼ Following simple guidelines can dramatically improve the quality of

your papers.

◼ The feedback you get from others will in turn improve your
research
 Structure
 Title
 Author, Affiliation, Email Id //Blind Review//
 Abstract
 Introduction
 Related Work
 Problem
 Idea
 Details
 Conclusion & Future Work
 References
 Acknowledgements
 Title

 Title draws readers to your work.

 Its one of the factors for increasing the impact factor.

 Is expected to include keywords of the contribution

 Make title interesting and attractive

 Shouldn’t be long (may be typically around 12-13 words or 100

characters, subtitle 50 characters).

 Should be typically in Title case.

 Abstract

 Better write it at the end.

 Used by program committee members to decide which papers to

read

 Four sentences [Kent Beck]

- State the problem (Research Question)
- Say why it’s an interesting problem (Rationale of study)
- Say what your solution achieves (Hypothesis/methods)
- Say what follows from your solution (Key findings)

Keywords (6-10)
 Introduction
 Describe the Problem
 Introduce the problem. //Give examples if needed//
 Background and Context
 Articulate the need of the study/work

//Research Questions//
 State Your contributions
 The list of contributions drives the entire paper: the paper substantiates the
claims you have made
 Reader thinks “gosh, if they can really deliver this, that’s be exciting; I’d better
read on”

 Outline of the paper

 Specify the organization of remaining part of the paper
 Related Work

Related
work
Your reader
Your idea

We adopt the notion of transaction from Brown [1], as modified for

distributed systems by White [2], using the four-phase interpolation
algorithm of Green [3]. Our work differs from White in our advanced
revocation protocol, which deals with the case of priority inversion as
described by Yellow [4].
 Related work

 Literature Survey/Related work has to include 5C’s

 Cite
 Compare
 Contrast
 Critique
 Connect

 Cite relevant and latest literature

 Presenting the Idea

3. The idea
Consider a bifurcated semi-lattice E, over a hyper-modulated signature P.
Suppose ai is an element of E. Then we know for every such ai there is an
epi-modulus j, such that aj < ai.

▪ Sounds impressive...but
▪ Sends readers to sleep
▪ In a paper you MUST provide the details, but FIRST convey the idea
 The details: evidence

 Your introduction makes claims.

 The body of the paper provides evidence to support each

claim.

 Check each claim in the introduction, identify the evidence, and

forward-reference it from the claim.

 Evidence can be: analysis and comparison, theorems,

measurements, case studies more importantly formal proofs
 Results and Discussion
 Simulate your Ideas

 Collect Data

 Plot Results

 Describe the direct observation first

 Identify the features/characteristics responsible in achieving the results

 Show how the results changes when the features/characteristics are

changed.

 Note down the trends during scaling

 Answers to Research Questions

 Compare with the earlier approaches

 Figures and Tables

 The captions should be short and comprehensive.

 Axes in the graphs should be labeled properly.

 Specify the units on each axes.

 If there are multiple curves in graphs, they need to be differentiated

appropriately with proper colors or shadings
 Conclusion

 Summary of the findings.

 Summarize your claims

 What are key parameters

 How results are related to these parameters

 How good is your solution/model/approach

 How does your work contribute the objectives stated in Introduction

section.
 Impact Factor
 A measure reflecting the average number of citations to articles
published.

 If a Journal has an impact factor of 3 in 2013, then its papers published

in 2011 and 2012 received 3 citations each on average in 2013. The
2013 impact factor of a journal would be calculated as follows:

A = the number of times articles published in 2011 and 2012 were cited
by indexed journals during 2013.
B = the total number of "citable items" published by that journal in 2011
and 2012. ("Citable items" are usually articles, reviews, proceedings, or
notes; not editorials or Letters-to-the-Editor.)

2013 impact factor = A/B.

Thee 2013 Impact factor for the journal A=

Number of times articles or other items published in A during 2011 &

2012 were cited in indexed journals* during 2009
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Number of “citable” articles** published in A in 2011 & 2012

That is:
Cites in 2013 to items published in 2011 + 2012 = 9533 + 12554 = 22087
Number of items published in A in 2011 + 2012 = 343 + 366 = 709

Impact Factor = Cites to recent items/ Number of recent items published

=22087/709 = 31.152
 Indexing
 Indexation of a journal/conference proceedings is considered a
reflection of its quality. Indexed journals are considered to be of
higher scientific quality as compared to non-indexed journals
 Scopus
 DBLP
 WOS (Web of Science)
 SCI (Science Citation Index)
 SCIE (SCI-Expanded)
 ESCI (Emerging Source Citation Index)
 ICI (Indian Citation Index)
 H-index: The h-index serves as an alternative to more traditional
journal impact factor metrics in the evaluation of the impact of the
work of a particular researcher. Because only the most highly cited
articles contribute to the h-index, its determination is a simpler
process.

 The h-index of a publication is the largest number h such that at least

h articles in that publication were cited at least h times each.

 I10-index: Number of publications with atleast 10 citations

Google Scholar
Scopus
 Web of Science

https://www.webofscience.com/wos/author/record/S-2473-2018
 ORCID

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9294-0275
 Vidwan

https://vidwan.inflibnet.ac.in/profile/71035
 dblp

https://dblp.org/pid/98/6017.html
 Choosing the Target Journal
 Use the Journals “Guide for Authors”

 Use Journal Finder(s)

 https://journalsuggester.springer.com/
 https://journalfinder.elsevier.com/

 Check Journal rankings

 https://www.scimagojr.com/
 Journal rank, H-Index, Total documents, citations, etc.

 Special Issues (with Impact Factors)

 http://www.guide2research.com/special-issues/
 Top 600 Journals, Top Conferences,
 Ethics in Research

Ethics or moral philosophy

is the branch of philosophy
that involves systematizing,
defending, and
recommending concepts of
right and wrong conduct.
-wiki
 UGC- Promotion of Academic Integrity &
Prevention of Plagiarism in Higher Educational
Institutions, Regulations 2018

23rd July 2018

 Levels of Plagiarism

 Level 0: Similarities upto 10% - Minor similarities, no penalty.

 Level 1: Similarities above 10% to 40%.
 Level 2: Similarities above 40% to 60%.
 Level 3: Similarities above 60%
 Penalties of Plagiarism for thesis/dissertations

 Institutional Academic Integrity Panel (IAIP) shall impose penalty

considering the severity of the Plagiarism.

 Level 0: Similarities upto 10% - Minor Similarities, no penalty.

 Level 1: Similarities above 10% to 40% - Such student shall be asked to
submit a revised script within a stipulated time period not exceeding 6
months.
 Level 2: Similarities above 40% to 60% - Such student shall be debarred
from submitting a revised script for a period of one year.
 Level 3: Similarities above 60% -Such student registration for that
programme shall be cancelled.
 Penalties of Plagiarism for academic/
research publications
 Level 0: Similarities up to 10% - Minor similarities, no penalty.
 Level 1: Similarities above 10% to 40%.
 Shall be asked to withdraw manuscript.
 Level 2: Similarities above 40% to 60% .
 Shall be asked to withdraw manuscript.
 Shall be denied a right to one annual increment.
 Shall not be allowed to be a supervisor to any new Master’s, M.Phil., Ph.D.
Student/scholar for a period of two years.
 Level 3: Similarities above 60%
 Shall be asked to withdraw manuscript.
 Shall be denied a right to two successive annual increments.
 Shall not be allowed to be a supervisor to any new Master’s, M.Phil., Ph.D.
Student/scholar for a period of three years
SELF-PLAGIARISM

UGC order dated

20th April 2020
 Reproduction, in part or whole, of one's own previously published work
without adequate citation and proper acknowledgment and claiming the
most recent work as new and original for any academic advantage
amounts to 'text-recycling' (also known as self plagiarism) and is NOT
acceptable.
 Text-recycling/self-plagiarism includes:
 republishing the same paper already published elsewhere without due and full citation
 publishing smaller/excerpted work from a longer and previous without due and full
citations in order to show a larger number of publications;
 reusing data already used in a published work, or communicated for
publication, in another work without due and full citation;
 breaking up a longer/larger study into smaller sections and publishing them as
altogether new work without due and full citation;
 paraphrasing one's own previously published work without due and full citation of the
original.
 Self-citations do not add any number/s to the individual's citation index
or h-index in global

 Vice Chancellors, Selection Committees, Screening Committees, IQACs and

all/any experts involved in academic performance/evaluation and assessment
are hereby strongly advised that their decisions in the case of promotions,
selections, credit allotment, award of research degrees must be based on an
evaluation of the applicant's published work to ensure that the work being
submitted for promotion/selection is not self-plagiarized.
 આભાર ‫شکریہ‬ধন্যবাদ ਤੁ ਹਾਡਾ ਧੰਨਵਾਦ நன் றிధన్య వాదాలు
ಧನ್ಯ ವಾದനന്ദി धन्यवाद આભાર ‫شکریہ‬ধন্যবাদ ਤੁ ਹਾਡਾ ਧੰਨਵਾਦ
நன் றி ధన్య వాదాలు ಧನ್ಯ ವಾದ നന്ദിઆભાર ‫شکریہ‬ধন্যবাদ ਤੁ ਹਾਡਾ
धन्यवाद
ਧੰਨਵਾਦ நன் றிధన్య వాదాలు धन्यवाद ಧನ್ಯ ವಾದനന്ദിઆભાર ‫شکریہ‬
ধন্যবাদ ਤੁ ਹਾਡਾ ਧੰਨਵਾਦ நன் றிధన్య వాదాలు ಧನ್ಯ ವಾದനന്ദി
Thank you
આભાર ‫شکریہ‬धन्यवाद ধন্যবাদ ਤੁ ਹਾਡਾ ਧੰਨਵਾਦ धन्यवाद
நன் றிధన్య వాదాలు धन्यवाद ಧನ್ಯ ವಾದനന്ദി આભાર ‫شکریہ‬ধন্যবাদ
ਤੁ ਹਾਡਾ ਧੰਨਵਾਦ நன் றிధన్య వాదాలు ಧನ್ಯ ವಾದനന്ദി धन्यवाद
ಧನ್ಯ ವಾದനന്ദി આભાર ‫شکریہ‬ধন্যবাদ ਤੁ ਹਾਡਾ ਧੰਨਵਾਦ
நன் றிధన్య వాదాలు ಧನ್ಯ ವಾದനന്ദി આભાર ধন্যবাদ ਤੁ ਹਾਡਾ
ਧੰਨਵਾਦ நன் றிధన్య వాదాలు ধন্যবাদ ਤੁ ਹਾਡਾ ਧੰਨਵਾਦ
நன் றிధన్య వాదాలు