How to Write a Good Research Paper in the Machine Learning Area

What makes an excellent research paper on machine learning?

An excellent machine learning paper is based on good research that is transparent and reproducible. It should be replicable in nature so that the study's findings can be tested by other researchers.

Such papers demand research with a completely new architecture, algorithm, or fundamentals. Include the goals of your research and categorize your paper in terms of some familiar class like a computational model of human learning, a formal analysis, application of any established methods, a description of any new learning algorithm, and others.

Further, ensure that you bring together various evidence, views, and facts about the topic that you are targeting in machine learning. You can derive your information from different interviews, articles, and books to verify the facts included in your research paper.

The four major characteristics that the writer of a machine learning research paper should consider are its length, format, style, and sources.

Additionally, including an abstract to your research paper will bring your machine learning paper into a nutshell from its introduction to the conclusion.

What are the important parts of a research paper?

An excellent research paper is drafted in a formal structure that includes several sections maintaining the flow of the content. It is important to ensure that the readers can quickly find the information they are looking for in your research paper.

Here’s a complete list of everything a research paper should include.

• Abstract
• Introduction
• Methodology
• Results
• Discussion and conclusion

These are some of the standard sections that is available is almost every research paper. However, there can be additional sections based on the topic you choose to write on, such as a dedicated space for the related research papers on machine learning to the author’s work.

Types of machine learning papers you can write

The initial step toward writing an excellent machine learning research paper is to select your targeted category. The below-given image will clear your thoughts on the same.

1. Survey paper without implementation

This paper category includes an excessive survey for any machine learning domain. For example, if someone wants to write a research paper on healthcare and machine learning, there will be tons of research already being carried out. To summarize that work in a single paper by finding some interesting facts can be enough to start with survey paper writing.

The following are excellent websites to check for the latest research papers.

a. Google Scholar
b. DBLP - computer science bibliography
c. WorldWideScience
d. Science.Gov
e. Virtual Learning Resources Center
f. BASE

You can download a research paper on machine learning from the sites mentioned above, and then you can take any particular application or algorithm and check for advancement in it. Finally, prepare the summarized table of all the research held in your selected area with proper citation, its merits, and demerits.

2. Survey Paper With Implementation

If you wish to write a survey paper with implementation, you should select a topic and get the dataset for that domain. Following are the websites to get a free dataset.

a. Kaggle
b. Google Dataset Search
c. Open Data Portal
d. AWS Open Data
e. Academic Torrents

For example, using various machine learning algorithms, you can select the topic as employee attrition prediction. Next, you can datasets available for public use, apply supervised or unsupervised machine learning algorithms, and check the accuracy. Finally, show the comparative table of all five or six algorithms you are using for that dataset and conclude the best algorithm for your chosen problems.

3. Paper with just proof of concept

This category of paper requires in-depth knowledge of the selected area. Here, you must understand any available machine learning or deep learning algorithm and optimize it by modifying it or analyzing it mathematically. This paper showcases the brief, logical, and technical proof of the proposed new architecture or algorithm.

4. Developing new machine learning algorithms

Machine learning is still an emerging field. However, there are many application areas of machine learning algorithms like agriculture, health, social media, computer vision, image processing, NLP, sentimental analysis, recommender system, prediction, business analytics, and almost all the fields can directly or indirectly use machine learning in one or another way.

Any machine learning algorithm developed for one application may not work with the same efficiency on another application. Most of the algorithms are application-specific. So, there is always a scope to design a new algorithm for the application. For example, if you wish to apply machine learning for mangrove classification from satellite images, you need to modify any available algorithm that is good for camera-captured images and not satellite images. So it gives scope to create or modify the available algorithm.

5. Developing new architecture

IoT, or the Internet of Things, is an emerging field in the artificial intelligence area. As described in the previous point, machine learning can be applied in almost all areas. So, whenever you wish to include ML in IoT, it gives rise to new IoT+ML architecture. Such type of paper includes newly developed architecture for any technology. Green IoT, Privacy-Preserving ML, IoTML, Healthcare, ML, and more, are areas where there is huge research scope for new or modified architecture.

6. Comparison of various machine learning algorithms

This category of paper sounds more like a survey paper. The paper title for such category includes, “House price prediction: Survey of various machine learning algorithms.” Thus, such a paper includes one problem domain, and all the possible implementations which have already been done are documented using proper citations.

The main novelty of this type of paper lies in the summarized table, which includes algorithms, methods, merits, and demerits of using that algorithm for a given problem domain.

7. Analysis of any manually collected data

This kind of paper is generally preferred in MBA programs. Here researchers send Google forms or any physical questionaries’ to the end-users. The data is collected as per the user experience. Such collected data is then applied to any machine learning model for classification or prediction. Sometimes it can also be used to perform regression analysis. It can also be used for any data collected for business analytics. For example, searching buyers’ buying patterns or churn prediction.

8. Applying ML algorithms for prediction or classification

It is a purely implementation-based category. The first step here will be to define the problem statement, then select the properly suitable dataset for it, and divide the data into training and testing sets. Then assign the target variable in the case of supervised learning. Fit the appropriate machine learning model. Evaluate the result.

To sum up, the points mentioned above, research paper writing is not a skill that can be acquired in a few minutes, but it is a skill you acquire with more and more practice. To write a good research paper, one should be very clear with the objectives. Then, perform the implementation parts and demonstrate the results fruitfully.

How to write a successful research paper in machine learning?

1. Write as if your reader knows nothing

An average reader is not aware of the importance of your topic. You need to formulate clear thoughts and back up your information with credible sources. Spend enough time on your research and make the reader aware of your topic in the introduction section of your work.

Additionally, you need to bear at least four kinds of readers in mind while writing your research paper on machine learning.

a. Professionals of your research field: The people in the same research field as yours will know all the relevant terms and related work of your research. They will be a few in number and are less likely to be your peers.

b. Professionals in closely related research areas: Such people would not be aware of your research or the specific problems you are addressing in your research. But they do have a general understanding of the wider research area you are targeting. So it is important to include an aspect from their perspective to keep them connected till the conclusion of your research paper.

c. Supervisor: Your supervisor would already know what and why you are doing in your research paper. We recommend that you don’t write a research paper with your supervisor as a reader in your mind.

d. Professionals from remote areas: The biggest portion of your readers are the people from remotely related research areas. This group would include some of the reviewers or the people who aren’t aware of the importance of your research or methods. We recommend you not explain the same to them and continue writing a research paper considering a basic understanding of the topic in your readers' minds.

2. Write when your results are ready

It is important to have the results on the table before you start writing your machine learning research paper. However, you can write the introduction part as early as possible even before having your results analyzed. This exception will help you get a clear picture of your deep learning papers and identify the relevant work.

Many authors of the machine learning research paper may question the ticking clock towards the deadline. But it is important to know the complete story from the introduction to the conclusion before writing it down. We recommend you get the results of your research first, run an analysis of them, and then move on to writing all about it in your research paper.

3. Review your paper like a critic

There are some things that, as a research paper writer, you should be accustomed to. We have listed them below for you.

a. Be aware of the limitations of your research. Make a list of all of them

b. Search for any weaknesses in the paper. If they can be fixed, resolve them or else describe the limits of what you did instead of giving an excuse.

c. Proofread your research paper to its bits and pieces.

Additionally, there are some questions that your machine learning papers reviewer might ask you, so prepare their answers in advance.

Did you get lucky with your choice of datasets?
Why were the given parameters chosen for your experimental setup?
Will your research findings also work on other datasets?

4. Avoid too much mathiness

Your research paper can have some formulas to describe your findings or concepts. But they should be put ‌precisely so that the reader or the reviewer doesn’t take much time to understand them.

In many cases, when people overuse the formulae or provide spurious explanations to justify their finding, it reduces the impact of your research paper and you will lose a lot of readers as well, even if your paper gets published.

5. Abstract to be written at last

The abstract is one of the important aspects of a research paper is a vital part that is read by the majority of your readers. We advise you to write it at last so that you can include the key essences and takeaways of your research paper.

How to submit your machine learning research papers?

Once you complete your research paper, it is to be submitted under some policies set by the organizers of various journals. These policies are set up to ensure an established ecosystem that would encourage the machine learning practitioners who are writing research papers to volunteer for reproducing the claimed results.

In the new program introduced, there are three components that you should keep in mind.

• Code submission policy
• ML reproducibility checklist for claimed results
• Community-wide reproducibility challenge

They demanded these parameters from all machine learning papers in order to promote best practices and code repository assessments. It helps in eliminating the need to build your future work from scratch.

How are machine learning papers assessed?

Every year, the conferences and the journals receive thousands of research papers. There is an ML code completeness checklist that verifies the code repository in your research paper for artefacts and scripts provided in it.

In addition to the above, the further analysis of the paper by the reviewers ‌sets the final decision on whether your paper will be published or not.

Do’s and don't of writing research paper

Every researcher wished to have their paper published in top journals. But, it isn’t that easy. There is a whole list of things that you should keep in mind while writing your research paper. We have elaborated on it below.

Do’s

• Present your work precisely. Avoid writing stories. Justify your research with methodologies and innovative ideas that fellow researchers can follow.
• Maintain a certain flow of content in your research paper.
• Provide solid supportive arguments and pieces of evidence that justify your findings.
• Include scientific terminologies in your research paper.
• Refer to sources from diverse backgrounds for up-to-date and trustworthy information.
• Ensure that you proofread the paper several times to eliminate any possible errors.

Don’t

• Avoid any kind of plagiarism in your research paper.
• Don’t just replicate Wikipedia. Instead, find trustworthy sources for your citation and create your own original piece of content.
• Don’t include incomplete information. Be honest with your readers and include all the aspects related to your work that would answer the queries in the reader's mind.
• Support each of your findings and don’t reveal any absurd reasons for doing the research.
• Avoid going beyond the recommended word limit to pose an impression of your seriousness about following the guidelines.
• Don’t include fillers in your research paper and stick to points that are sufficient.

Conclusion

With all said above, you will now know how to write research paper in machine learning. It will no longer be a challenge for you and will make things easier for you. We recommend you stick to the standards, as doing something new will increase the risk involved in getting your paper published. Just stick to the above-mentioned tips and tricks and you are good to go.

We hope you get your research paper published!