Resources for written reports and oral presentations

[Class home]

Crediting others

• Proper citations are a hallmark of any solidly written report, and are often useful in other forms of publications. How to cite (2024) refers to several style guides; pick a suitable style and use it consistently. Also see How not to Plagiarize (2009).
• If your report or presentation uses an active format such as PDF or HTML, URLs in citations should be clickable.
• For citations, submit a working link to a freely-readable copy if available, and also submit a working link to a URL based on digital object identifiers (DOIs) if available.

Here is an example citation using Vancouver system format:

1. Lambiase S, Catolino G, Paloma F, Ferruci F. Motivations, Challenges, Best Practices, and Benefits for Bots and Conversational Agents in Software Engineering: A Multivocal Literature Review. ACM Comput Surv. 2025;57(4):93. doi:10.1145/3704806.

Breaking this citation down:

• The citation's title hyperlinks to a freely-readable resource <https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3704806>.
• "ACM Comput Surv" is a standard abbreviation for ACM Computing Surveys. See Web of Science Journal Title Abbreviations for a list of reasonably-standard journal-title abbreviations.
• "2025;57(4):93" contains the year, volume, issue, and page numbers or (in this case) article number.
• The DOI hyperlinks to <https://doi.org/10.1145/3704806>; this permanently nails down the final, stable version even if it's not freely readable.
• The URLs use HTTPS, which is more secure than HTTP.

Not every source is published in a scholarly paper, and citations to less-formal sources need not contain so much detail. However, the idea is the same: let the reader know how to easily get the material if its URL works, or even if its URL becomes broken in the future (as too many do).

Written reports

• Simon Peyton Jones's How to write a great research paper (2016) contains a brief and pleasant section about how to write a good research paper.
• Derek Dreyer's How to write papers so people can read them (2016) gives more-constructive advice that provides an interesting contrast with Peyton Jones.
• Roy Levin and David D. Redell's How (and How Not) to Write a Good Systems Paper (1983) points out common problems in technical papers, and gives suggestions for how to fix them.
• The UNC Writing Center's Scientific Reports (2024) describes how to write and organize a scientific research report.
• David A. McMurrey's Online Technical Writing (2024) contains many examples and much discussion of technical writing. For example, it has a chapter on recommendation and feasibility reports that contains several sample reports.
• George Gopen and Judith Swan's The Science of Scientific Writing (1990) briefly summarizes some of the science behind writing clear writing for scientific audiences.
• The USENIX Templates for Conference Papers provides LaTeX and DOC templates and style files for computer science research papers. The USENIX templates use a two-column format with 10-point font for most of the text, on an 8½"×11" page. LaTeX typically generates higher-quality output for technical papers. An example of the output format is available.
• S. Whalen's Research Paper Rubric is the sort of thing we use when evaluating your report.

Oral presentations

• Simon Peyton Jones's How to give a great research talk (2016) almost makes it look easy and covers the essentials. He's brave enough to point you to a video of himself, giving the talk.
• Michael Ernst's How to give a technical presentation (how to give a scientific talk) (2022) contains workable and up-to-date advice for giving computer science talks.
• Mark D. Hill's Oral Presentation Advice (1997) briefly describes how to give a good talk. It contains a summary of David Patterson's classic How to Give a Bad Talk (1983).
• Judith P. Rhodes et al.'s Scientifically Speaking: Tips for Preparing Scientific Talks and Using Visual Aids (2005) contains advice and observations on preparing and delivering a scientific talk. Its advice on poster presentations is also valuable, though you can skip it if you are not making a poster.
• The Science and Engineering Library (SEL) has a learning center with equipment with which you can rehearse your presentation. Reserve a time slot by visiting the circulation desk in Boelter 8270.
• Caroline McCullen's Student Presentation Rubric (1997) is the sort of thing we use when evaluating your presentation.