Guidelines

for
REPORT & PAPER WRITING
by
Dr. Kumkum Garg
Professor of Computing (ex-IIT Roorkee) &
Dean Faculty of Engineering
Manipal University Jaipur
 Main components of a Report

• Abstract/Synopsis
required for Ph.D. , M.Tech. dissertation and B.Tech
Project reports only,
not required for M.Tech. Seminar / Project reports
• Contents/index page
• Main text - chapters or sections
• References/Bibliography
• Appendix
 Abstract for PG/UG Dissertations

• Should be of one page only

• Should always have 3 paragraphs:
– A short introduction to main topic of report
• should be one small paragraph
– Description of the main work done in the project/thesis
• give overview of the specific work done only
– Details of language/system/tools used
• 2 or 3 lines only

Example
 Ph.D. Thesis
Title: Must not be more than 10-15 words
Synopsis:
• Must be 6-8 pages in length
• Give a one page introduction to the topic/area of research
• Mention the research gaps identified
• Give chapter-wise summary of work done, findings and
results
• Last paragraph should have conclusions and suggestions
for further work, in short
 Contents page

• This shows the various chapters /sections of the report, eg.,

– Introduction, containing an introduction to the topic,
statement of the problem, motivation and organization
of other chapters/sections
– Review of the literature pertaining to the problem
– Design details
– Implementation details
– Conclusion giving discussion of results with graphs,
etc. and suggestions for further work

Example
 Contents (contd.)

• Each chapter/section should have indented subsections and

sub-subsections, eg., 3.2, 3.2.2, etc.
• Long algorithms or mathematics should normally be put in
the Appendix
• Program listing should also be in the Appendix.

Example
 Main Text of report
• Text should normally be in
– font size 12
– both left and right justified
– 1.5 lines spacing
– paragraphs / sentences should be short
– not more than 8-10 lines / 2-3 lines
– type a comma or full-stop flush with the word
Example: its structure, evolution. In contrast
Not its structure , evolution .In contrast
– have one space after comma, two after each full-stop
– start of a paragraph should not be indented, rather, give
one line space between two paragraphs.
 Figures

• All figures should be numbered and must have titles

• Figure numbers should be specific for each chapter /
section, eg., Figure 1.1, 1.2, 2.1, etc.
• Figures should be referenced in the text as follows:
…. as shown in Figure 4.1
or
Refer Figure 4.1

Example
 References

• should be in IEEE/standard format, i.e.,

– author(s) name, title of paper/book, publisher, year of
publication
• Book titles must be in capitals
• Reference numbers should be marked liberally inside the
text of the report – eg., … as given in [3]
• References should either be in chronological order or in the
order in which they appear in the text.

Example
 Miscellaneous

• Always prepare a draft report first

• Print it out
• READ IT YOURSELF FIRST and correct any
typographical or grammatical errors
• Then give it to your guide for reading / modification /
correction, before binding.
• A project or seminar Report should ordinarily be around
15 pages and a Dissertation around 50 pages (excluding
source listing).
 Mid-term reports

Small, 4-5 pages only, containing the following:

• Title
• Objective/problem statement
• Short introduction
• Overview of design – block/module diagram
• Work done till date
• Work remaining
• Schedule of work /deadlines
• References
 Research paper writing
• Title should be short: 10-15 words
• Abstract should contain introduction to
topic, work presented and result obtained
• Keywords should be given
• Should contain introduction, section on
related work, some sections on work being
reported, results obtained and conclusion,
with some suggestions for further work
• References should be in proper format
 Abstract Example

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 Contents Example

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 Mobile Agents (MAs) are regarded as the future of distributed computing. They promise to offer a
unified and scalable framework for applications in widely distributed, heterogeneous, open networks,
such as Electronic Commerce, Parallel Computing, Information Retrieval, etc. Among the essential
features of mobile agents, communication is a fundamental ability that enables them to cooperate with
each other by sharing and exchanging information and partial results, and collectively making
decisions. Although process communication has been a cliché in distributed systems research, the
presence of mobility raises a number of new challenges in designing message delivery protocols for
effective and efficient communications between MAs. Today task completion activities are becoming
more and more agile, adaptable and cost-effective. Multi-agent-based system technology has found
wide applications in an organization’s information collection. The presented research work applies
multi-mobile-agent technology in developing a collaborative, theoretical model for task completion. By
adopting the Aglets mobile agent platform, a generic collaboration model has been developed for
managing the collaboration among agents for task completion. The proposed theoretical model aims to
integrate mobile agents in different locations so as to fully utilize the partial information available with
other active agents, thus enabling the global target of task completion of the organization. In designing
a collaboration model, the communication protocol plays an important role. Two fundamental issues
must be addressed: (1) tracking the location of the target mobile agent and (2) delivering the message
reliably to the agent. Many protocols have been proposed in recent years to solve these issues.
However, all of them have different assumptions and design goals, and their own ways of solving them.
Due to lack of good understanding of the requirements of mobile agent message delivery protocols,
with respect to different classes of applications, there have been no uniform or structured methods for
characterizing protocols. It is also difficult to evaluate the effectiveness and performance of these
protocols. Moreover, protocols can be efficiently selected on application basis only, rather than on
standard parameters values. Performance metrics for efficient evaluation of protocols has been
proposed for the same in this research work. Back
Mobile Agents (MAs) are regarded as the future of distributed computing. They promise to offer a unified
and scalable framework for applications in widely distributed, heterogeneous, open networks, such as
Electronic Commerce, Parallel Computing, Information Retrieval, etc. Among the essential features of
mobile agents, communication is a fundamental ability that enables them to cooperate with each other by
sharing and exchanging information and partial results, and collectively making decisions. Although process
communication has been a cliché in distributed systems research, the presence of mobility raises a number of
new challenges in designing message delivery protocols for effective and efficient communications between
MAs.
Today task completion activities are becoming more and more agile, adaptable and cost-effective. Multi-
agent-based system technology has found wide applications in an organization’s information collection. The
presented research work applies multi-mobile-agent technology in developing a collaborative, theoretical
model for task completion. By adopting the Aglets mobile agent platform, a generic collaboration model has
been developed for managing the collaboration among agents for task completion. The proposed theoretical
model aims to integrate mobile agents in different locations so as to fully utilize the partial information
available with other active agents, thus enabling the global target of task completion of the organization.

In designing a collaboration model, the communication protocol plays an important role. Two fundamental
issues must be addressed: (1) tracking the location of the target mobile agent and (2) delivering the message
reliably to the agent. Many protocols have been proposed in recent years to solve these issues. However, all
of them have different assumptions and design goals, and their own ways of solving them. Due to lack of
good understanding of the requirements of mobile agent message delivery protocols, with respect to different
classes of applications, there have been no uniform or structured methods for characterizing protocols. It is
also difficult to evaluate the effectiveness and performance of these protocols. Moreover, protocols can be
efficiently selected on application basis only, rather than on standard parameters values. Performance metrics
for efficient evaluation of protocols has been proposed for the same in this research work.
In this thesis, an in-depth research for designing a generic collaboration model for efficient collaboration
among mobile agents is presented. The contributions of this thesis include: back
 Figure Example

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 References example

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