Computer Science 530 - Research Paper Proposal -- Fall 2006
Due: Friday 20 October 2006
The purpose of the research paper is for you to become an expert on a
particular research area in computer security. The research paper
should be written so that it conveys information to the reader. When
grading the paper I will ask myself whether other students in the
class might learn about the topic you choose by reading your paper.
The paper should contain original analysis of the the papers you
choose to cover, and ideally suggest directions for future research on
the topic.
Select a topic from those listed in the course syllabus, or ask
the instructors if you would like to write on another topic that you
feel is relevant to computer security. Prepare a reading list of the
papers that you plan to look at. The purpose of this list is to make
sure you have some place to start. Most of the papers in your reading
list should be beyond those that are included in the course materials.
You may use the library as a resource when looking for material on
your topic. You should not constrain your search to only information
easily found on the web. In fact, most of the papers in your reading
list should be from journals and conferences (though you will likely
find copies of many of these online). You will be free to use
additional papers if you come across them during your research.
Be sure to follow reference from relevant papers to other sources, and
look up the original papers covering a topic, don't rely on summaries
provided by someone else. You may also want to use the site
citeseer.ist.psu.edu to find citations TO some of the papers you start
from. This will likely turn up more recent papers on the same topic.
To submit your proposal:
Prepare a couple of paragraphs describing the topic, the particular
issues you plan to cover, and the questions you plan to answer. Turn
in this description and your reading list. This description and
reading list should be submitted by email to CSci530@usc.edu with a
subject of "Research Paper Proposal". Your email message must be
digitally signed using software that you learned to use in the second
lab exercise. The instructors will respond with feedback using signed
email messages. If you have preliminary queries regarding your topic,
please submit them by email to csci530@usc.edu as plain text, with no
attachements.
additional guidelines
Guideline of the topic
To receive a good grade on the paper you will have to say a lot more
than what can be learned from the course readings and from the
lectures. If all you do is go over what was covered in class in more
detail, you will not get a particularly good grade on the paper.
In general, it is NOT appropriate to focus on just a single system.
Your paper should not be on a single approach to a problem but should
instead cover several approaches and highlight the strengths and
weaknesses of each approach. Even if you are presenting your own
idea, you should compare your idea with other existing approaches that
are related to yours.
References
Source of the reference
Most of the papers you reference must be from the following sources:
- a journal (a trade magazine/publication is not a journal) or
- a proceeding for a research oriented conference.
(a gartner group seminar is NOT a research conference).
White papers, Internet drafts, RFC's, and web pages are okay to
supplement the above listed sources but these and other non-refereed
publications can NOT constitute the majority of your references.
Full citations are required
Take a close look at the way the references are cited on each of the
papers you read during the course (i.e., reading list),
then follow the format. Each citation must specify
which conference proceeding or journal the paper appeared. You need
full citations, even for the proposal.
The number of the references
You should have enough references to cover the material you will need
to write about. You will be allowed to add references after
submitting your proposal if you find additional information later -
and we would be surprised if this did not happen. In general, if your
reference list has only three or four papers, you might need to find
more related papers that are focused on the particular topic you will
be writing about.
Scope of the references
Your references must be focused. You should NOT pick all the papers
you can find with some keyword search from the web. You must read
those papers and think what each paper says and how the ideas fit
together or contrast each other. You need to review these sources
BEFORE you list them in your proposal.
Being focused does not mean that you can pick papers from a single
group or institution. For example, as is the case of a survey paper,
you must have references from different sources and your presentation
must be a critical assessment of one system or approach comparing
aspects of that approach with what has been done elsewhere.
How to find papers
Just using whatever comes back from search engines on the web is not a
good way to get useful information. Look at the citations from the
papers you already have, and perhaps go to citeseer (www.citeseer.com)
and look for papers that cite these ones too.
IMPORTANT
Review the recently published
Guide
to Avoiding Plagiarism available from the
Student Conduct Office,
for guidelines on appropriate and inappropriate use of material from
other sources. Do not assume that you know what is appropriate and
what is not. Last year I had to report multipl e
cases of plagiarism, and I assigned F's in the class. Some
of these students claimed that they didn't bother reading the guide
even though there was a link from the assignment because they thought
they knew what was OK and what was not. We will assume that you do
know, and that any violations are intentional. Thus it is in your
interest to read the guide.