Resources for written reports and oral presentations

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Crediting others

• Proper citations are a hallmark of any solidly written report, and are often useful in other forms of publications. How to cite (2025) 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. Shanmugasundaram D, Arivukkarasu P, Chen H, Cai H. Deep learning representations of programs: a systematic literature review. ACM Comput Surv. 2026;58(5):127. doi:10.1145/3769008.

Breaking this citation down:

• The citation's title hyperlinks to a freely-readable resource <https://doi.org/10.1145/3769008>.
• ACM Comput Surv is a standard abbreviation for ACM Computing Surveys. See Science and Engineering Journal Abbreviations for a list of reasonably-standard journal-title abbreviations.
• "2026;58(5):127" contains the year, volume, issue, and page numbers or (in this case) article number.
• The DOI hyperlinks to <https://doi.org/10.1145/3769008>; this permanently nails down the final, stable version even if it's not freely readable. Although in the above example the main and DOI hyperlinks are the same because ACM Computing Surveys is freely readable, this won't be the case for proprietary sources.

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) in Boelter Hall 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.