Tips and Tricks for the Final Stages of Writing a Good Robotics Conference Paper

Writing good conference papers in fields like robotics takes planning ahead of time, but there’s also lots you can do close to the final submission deadline.

In this new video, I provide a range of specific tips focused primarily on the final paper writing stages when you have a complete or near-complete draft paper, and are refining and tweaking it for submission.

I cover concepts ranging from the value of clear signposting for the reader, to appropriate use of specific types of technical words, to compelling presentation of results, to minimizing cognitive load on a reviewer and more…

Please 🙏 if you think your colleagues, fellow students, family or friends may find this useful!

Complete list of 🕒 timestamps

🕒 (0:00) Introduction
🕒 (0:40) A Useful Reviewer Stereotype
🕒 (0:57) Don’t Try to Satisfy Unreasonable Reviewers
🕒 (1:17) Overview of the Video
🕒 (1:55) Control the Narrative Around Your Contributions
🕒 (2:42) Make Specific Claims About Benefits
🕒 (3:33) Explain Why Improvements Are Relevant
🕒 (3:58) Make Sure Motivating Examples Are Relevant
🕒 (5:25) Make Results as Directly Comparable As Possible
🕒 (6:29) Give Competing Techniques an Advantage
🕒 (7:08) Apples to Apples Comparisons Where Possible
🕒 (8:19) Minimize Unnecesary Distractions
🕒 (9:05) Clear Signposting is Key
🕒 (10:07) Clear Structure and Flow
🕒 (10:36) Minimize Unnecessary Cognitive Load
🕒 (11:28) Careful Usage of Words with Strong Meanings
🕒 (12:03) Sparing Usage of Descriptive Words
🕒 (12:29) Specific Performance Claims
🕒 (12:43) Don’t Let Grammar and Typos Get in the Way
🕒 (13:27) Avoid Rambling Discussion About Results
🕒 (14:18) Future Work Shouldn’t Be Trivial
🕒 (15:02) Single Message Paragraphs
🕒 (15:31) Sentence by Sentence Sanity Check
🕒 (15:50) A Paper That is Too Easy to Understand is Great!