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CS8803-MDS

Paper Review

Before each class, you must submit a short review of the required readings. Reviews will be accepted until 11:59pm the night before class. No late submission will be accepted. You need to submit at least 10 reviews during the semester. The reviews will be shared with the paper presentors to help structure the discussion.

The review should be structured around the following 3 key areas:

  • Scope/Relevance: What problem is the paper trying to solve? Why is the problem important?

  • Contributions/Strengths: What are the key technical ideas? What sets it apart from prior work?

  • Limitations/Weaknesses: What are the main areas of improvements and open questions?

Presentation

The class will take the form of a “role playing” paper reading seminar, based on suggestions from Alec Jacobson and Colin Raffel. You will sign up to play one of the following roles: paper author, peer reviewer, archaeologist, academic researcher and industry practitioner.

The paper author can either do a solo 15 min presentation, or a joint 20 min presentation with another presentor. All other roles should do a 5 min presentation, starting with a one-slide summary of the paper.

Paper author

You are the author of the paper who is presenting your work at an academic conference. In your talk, you should probably address the following:

  • Why should people care about your work?
  • What are the key technical challenges and insights?
  • How did you evaluate your hypotheses?
  • What are the main takeaways from the project?

Peer reviewer

The paper has not been published yet and is currently submitted to a top conference where you’ve been assigned as a peer reviewer. Complete a full review of the paper based on the following prompts of the official review form from the top venues in the research area (e.g., VLDB and SIGMOD):

  • Overall evaluation: {Accept, Weak Accept, Weak Reject, Reject}
  • Summary of contribution
  • Describe in detail all strong points, labeled S1, S2, S3, etc.
  • Describe in detail all opportunities for improvement, labeled O1, O2, O3, etc.

Archaeologist

This paper was found buried under ground in the desert. You’re an archeologist who must determine where this paper sits in the context of previous and subsequent work. Find and report on one older paper cited within the current paper that substantially influenced the current paper and one newer paper that cites this current paper.

Industry Practitioner

You work at a company or organization developing an application or product of your choice (that has not already been suggested in a prior session). Bring a convincing pitch for why you should be paid to implement the method in the paper, and discuss at least one positive and negative impact of this application.

Academic Researcher

You’re a researcher who is working on a new project in this area. Propose an imaginary follow-up project not just based on the current paper but only possible due to the existence and success of the current paper.