PB2A
We
found the conventions of the papers generated from the SCIgen website. However,
as we all know, the papers are actually unqualified academic computer science
papers. This leads to the question—what are the true features of the science
papers? I found a true peer-reviewed academic computer science publication, Quantum
Cybernetics and Complex Quantum Systems Science: A Quantum Connectionist Exploration,
on the library website of the ucsb to explore its true conventions. Although
the papers from the SCIgen website have several similarities with the true
paper—they all have a big title, an abstract of the paper, clear structure,
many statistics and graphs, and references, they have more pivotal differences.
The first difference that showed up is the length of the paper. The true academic papers usually have more than 10 pages. However, the papers from SCIgen program have only about at most 2-3 pages. The reason for the difference of their lengths is the second feature of the true paper—detailed information. The contents of the papers from SCIgen program seem to be detailed, containing many graphs and statistics. However, if we have a more close look at them, the database information is just conclusion. There are no deductions or calculus. The SCIgen program just gives a surface-level conclusion about the graphs and statistic. In contrast, the true Computer Science paper has more detailed and complicated deductions and calculus. The intricate calculus would occupy a big part of the length of the paper and make the paper more academic and convincing. r
Thirdly, the true academic papers always contain a complicated number called DOI. This number is a unique alphanumeric string assigned by a registration agency (the International DOI Foundation) to identify content and provide a persistent link to its location on the Internet. Any fake paper would not have this number.
The fourth difference is the structure. The titles of each paragraph in the SCIgen papers would be Introduction, Methodology, Implementation, Results, and References. Compared to the hollow titles of each paragraph, the structure of the true paper would be more specific—Introduction, Quantum Cybernetics and Quantum Computation, Quantum Computation and Quantum Artificial Intelligence, Quantum Artificial Neural Networks as Autonomous Quantum Computing Systems, Complex Quantum Systems and Quantum Connectionism, and References. The titles of the true academic paper of each paragraph directly and explicitly tell people the kernel of each paragraph. Contrary to the specific structure, the titles of the SCIgen papers can be used for any articles, containing no useful information.
Additionally, the true computer science paper gives more detailed information about the authors at the end of the first page—phone number, email, address, financial disclosures, date of received and accepted and so on. The detailed information about authors would never appear on the papers from SCIgen program because the authors are all fake.
What is more, the tone of the true academic papers differs from that of the papers from SCIgen. The papers from SCIgen program often use the word “we”, like “We now discuss our performance analysis”, “Our implementation of our methodology is large-scale”, and so on. This word appears on the true academic papers at a very low frequency because academic papers emphasize the true science analysis. There is no need to use the word “we”, “I”, or “You”. For example, at the very beginning of the true academic paper, “The current work is aimed at the expansion of connectionist-based quantum cybernetics”. The authors would not say “our current work”. However, the papers from SCIgen papers would be more inclined to use “our current work”. The facts in the papers are all scientific truth. These personal words would reduce the reliability of the academic paper.
This rhetorical feature—no use of personal words—strikes me most because an academic paper must eliminate any personal bias. In other words, the academic papers should be completed without emotions. This absolute focus on the truth strikes me most.
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Your perspective is interesting here. You approached the genre of the SCIgen paper as an example, and not the real thing. I didn’t notice the DOI number, it does seem to be only on this specific SCIgen generator. I also found that academic papers have more descriptive titles in order to specify the main points of the paragraphs. The detailed information about the authors is unique; I didn’t come across many papers that did this when I was searching for a paper. I like that you pointed out the use of first person, this is not commonly used in science papers, but I feel that it may be useful if the topic was an experiment the authors conducted. I like your take on this comparison , although I feel like you could have elaborated a bit more on the CS genre, instead of treating it like a fake paper.
ReplyDeleteYour PB is well written! I really like how you wrote an introduction; many of the PBs I read just jump into it or just have a thesis statement at the beginning. I agree with the comment above, made by Neph, about your stand point. I think thats a great way to have approached this topic. You went into a lot of detail about the differences that were there between the two papers and I think you could have added a bit more with the similarities. In your conventions, you mentioned how in scientific papers there is no use of first person pronouns. I think that was a great one to point out; I completely forgot to add that one into my PB. Overall, I think you did a good job! Also nice use of dashes at the end of your PB.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that true CS papers are detailed and convincing. The titles in true papers are more specific and I also find this convention in my selected publication. It is attentive to see the information about the authors on the first page and I missed this part when analyzing this genre. I haven’t noticed the DOI you mentioned and not sure about the length of the paper, because papers generated by SCIgen are just in one website page and maybe they also have more than 10 pages if printed. You also pointed out that in academic papers, authors seldom use first person like “I”, “we”. It is true in most cases but I actually notice the author write “I first recognized...”, “I discovered...” in the part of introduction in my selected piece. Overall, I think your PB is clearly analyze the conventions of scholarly academic publications.
ReplyDeleteYour PB was a very well written. I enjoyed that you went into such depths and details into explaining the difference between the fake computer science articles to an actual scholarly paper. Your inclusion of the first-person was very insightful. I initially did not see that small detail, but that small detail is crucial because like you said; first person writing make a paper appear less formal. I felt that you could have included more about the similarities instead of a shallow list of the similar conventions. If you went into some detail about why the conventions were comparable like you did for the difference, then I believe your PB would have been even better than it is now. Also, even though this is slightly minor, I felt that your paper could have used a quick read at the end because then you would have realized the small grammar and spelling errors you made. Also you jumped from first to third and this made me wonder what happened to second. But in the end, your PB was great and very insightful.
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