Posted by Dr Serena Coetzee on 1 Sep 2009, 11:35 (last modified on 1 Sep 2009, 11:39)

Since last year, members of the CS department have been organising a voluntary seminar for postgraduate students on the topic: "How to review a research paper". Last year this seminar was presented by Dr Stefan Gruner. This year it was presented by our postdoc from the Netherlands, Dr Loek Cleophas, with additional support from our current guest-professor from the Netherlands, Tim Grant, and Stefan Gruner from the CS department.

The seminar is addressed at those postgraduate students who consider an academic career as a researcher and lecturer after their higher graduation. The seminar gives a brief historical overview of the history of the scientific form of publication, which we are now calling "Paper", starting in the early-modern times of Gassendi and Boyle, then goes on to motivate the need for peer review (including a discussion of the limits of peer review), and finally introduces the postgraduate students to the five main criteria according to which scientific papers are usually reviewed. This theoretical introduction is then followed by a practical review exercise [see photo].

Participants of this voluntary seminar describe the event as very useful. Not only does it put them in a better position to review papers written by others; it also helps them to better understand the criteria against which their own research papers, when submitted to a workshop or conference, are evaluated. At the end of the seminar, the students expressed their thanks to Loek Cleophas, as well as to Tim Grant and Stefan Gruner, for an interesting and worthwhile evening. Most of the students came from our own CS department, but we also had one guest-student from our sister-department of Electronics and Computer Engineering.

The next event of this kind will be offered again in the academic year 2010. For further information please contact Stefan Gruner (sg@cs.up.ac.za)