Page 342 - English for Writing Research Papers

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19.1 What's the buzz?

The Conclusions section below was taken from a paper in the field of the Digital
Humanities. The paper proposes a way to organize digitized manuscripts and corre-
spondence so that they can be easily accessed by researchers. Note: I have changed
some details from the original manuscript in order to make it anonymous.

Read the Conclusions and think of questions that the reviewers of the paper might
ask themselves as they are reading. One example question is in italics (i.e. how? ).

In this paper we have illustrated the Confucius Linked Dataset, which enriches How? the
cultural heritage already present on the Web. Our dataset contains previously unpublished
information about the world around Confucius, so it will surely constitute an interesting
starting point of investigation both for researchers and inquiring people.

By the time they write the Conclusions most inexperienced authors are just desper-
ate to finish the paper and send it to the editor. The result is that Conclusions are

often written too quickly and with no clear thought about what they should contain.
A typical referee would ask the following questions in italics.

In this paper we have illustrated the Confucius Linked Dataset, which enriches How? the
cultural heritage already present on the Web. Our dataset contains previously unpublished
information So why does it merit publication now? about the world around Confucius, so it
will surely How can you be so certain? constitute an interesting starting point of investiga-
tion Why? both for researchers and inquiring people Who exactly are ‘inquiring people’?
What are the implications of this work? Can the methodology be applied in other areas of
the digital humanities?
In addition, the Conclusions look too short – less than 50 words. The version below
would be more appropriate (125 words). Think about why it is a better version and
how it is structured.

We have illustrated a new approach to digitization, based on multilayered annotation and visu-
alization of a selection of letters written by Confucius. Our methodology radically improves on
the current data model (a graph composed of XML nodes), by presenting the knowledge base
as a Linked Open Data node accessible via SPARQL. Since the corpus is written entirely in
Chinese, future work will aim at enhancing the accuracy of the Chinese lemmatizer. Given that
the system architecture is based on: (i) platform independence (ii) component-based design,
and (iii) open source software, the technologies and resources developed can be easily tailored
to processing any kind of textual resource. In fact, we are currently designing an analogous
system for the online presentation of the letters of Chen Tuan.

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One of my PhD students once remarked to me: I find the conclusions quite diffi cult to
write, even in my own language. If I wrote everything in the paper, what should I add
at the end? Her question sums up the dilemma that authors have with the Conclusions.