Finding and reading literature

  • [Read this Simple guide to the research process: a tutorial.]
  • Start with books and survey/overview papers: they are generally easier to digest. Then try some more specific journal papers. Use conference papers mainly for finding out about recent results.
  • Search in Google "Scholar, TU Delft Library Mult-database search, Citeseer (ResearchIndex)ScopusACMIEEE, and our own University library's catalogue.
  • Keep track of conferences and journals on your topic and check (once in a while) whether some interesting articles have been published in those.
  • As soon as you find an interesting article, also check the author's homepage(s) for more recent results, and of course follow the references made in this paper.
  • Find people in our faculty or another faculty at TU Delft, or otherwise nearby who have more expertise in this field than you have and ask (email?) them to recommend some literature or conferences.
  • Search on-line using a computer on the campus of your university; many journals are available only to subscribers, and this is often checked using the IP address your browser sends along.
  • Add a paper to your BibTex database as soon as you find it (before you even save/print it).
  • Make some notes immediately after you read it.
  • How to read a scientific paper -- by Mihai Pop

Writing instructions

It may also be helpful to take the reviewer's perspective and browse through this tutorial on how to review.

More help with LaTeX

Reviewing

My colleague Ulle Endriss from the UvA has written some great and detailed instructions on how to do a proper review (e.g. for an AI/CS conference).