Information Systems Group
Hasso-Plattner-Institut
Hasso-Plattner-Institut
Prof. Dr. Felix Naumann
 

schließen

Our group includes PostDocs, PhD students, and student assistants, and is headed by Prof. Felix Naumann. If you are interested in joining our team, please contact Felix Naumann.

schließen

For bachelor students we offer German lectures on database systems in addition to paper- or project-oriented seminars. Within a one-year bachelor project, students finalize their studies in cooperation with external partners. For master students we offer courses on information integration, data profiling, and information retrieval enhanced by specialized seminars, master projects and we advise master theses.

schließen

Most of our research is conducted in the context of larger research projects, in collaboration across students, across groups, and across universities. We strive to make available most of our datasets and source code.

schließen

Please do not hesitate to reach out directly to us, if you cannot find a paper, slides, or other research artifacts.

schließen
  1. HOME
  2.  > People
  3.  > Felix Naumann

Tips on writing

Below is a collection of notes and tips on writing English research papers. Some of the hints are taken from "Bugs in Writing" by Lyn Dupre, which I highly recommend. The lists are unordered. I only list things that can be searched for in a last pass through the paper or thesis before submitting. Also, the issues listed here are sometimes particular to authors of German mother-tongue.

Commas

  • such as: Always preceded by a comma.
  • i.e.: Always preceded and followed by a comma.
  • e.g.: Always preceded and followed by a comma.
  • because: Always preceded by a comma.
  • which: Is preceded by a comma (as opposed to "that").
  • Enumerations: In contrast to German, place a comma before the final "and" or "or": ...databases, information systems, and search engines.

Poor/Difficult Words

  • will: Can be removed without substitution in almost all instances, except when explicitly talking about the future.
  • like: Probably you mean "such as". Remember commas before "such as"
  • which/that: "That" identifies an object; "which" adds a remark to an object. Removing the "that"-clause destroys the sentence, removing the "which"-clause leaves the sentence intact.
  • whole: Usually "entire" is better.
  • very: Avoid it.
  • bad: You probably mean "poor".
  • seems to be: Avoid it.
  • in order to: Usually can be replaced simply with "to".
  • this: Should always be followed by the referenced noun. "This works well." vs. "This technique works well."
  • a/an: according to pronunciation: <ul><li>"an" is not used before any vowel: "A used book", but "an unintelligible book".</li><li>"an" is used not only before a vowel: "An XML book".</li></ul>
  • only: Place it right before the thing you want to modify. Usually not a verb. "We only consider trees." vs. "We consider only trees."
  • send vs. sent, build vs built, etc.: We have built a prototype.
  • get: is quite colloquial. Try "obtain", "yield", "receive", etc.
  • apply: "apply to", not "apply on" (this is a typical mistake for Germans)

Formatting

  • Try to place groups of citations in the same order as they appear in the bibliography: [8,25,3] is not as nice as [3,8,25]. Use \usepackage{cite} to automatically fix this.
  • Capitalize the words Figure, Section, Table, etc. if the are followed by a reference to a concrete Figure, Table...
  • Avoid calling the first section "Introduction". Give it a telling name.
  • You can abbreviate Fig., Sec., Tab. only if the words do not begin the sentence.

BibTeX

  • Consistency: Make sure that same conferences or same journals are referenced in the same way. A useful tool are bibtex macros, such as: @string{jgg1 = "Journal of Gnats and Gnus, Series~1"}
  • Year: Make sure that the publication year appears only once, not twice or evven three times, as I often observe.
  • Page numbers: If you include page numbers, you need to do this for all references, not just the ones where you happened to have them. For journals, page numbers are more important.
  • I usually do not care if some conference was the "23rd" in a row. 

LaTeX

  • Use \@ after capitalized abbreviations at the end of sentences: We now describe our PDMS\@. The tool lacheck.exe finds those instances in LaTeX documents.<ul><li>Another tip: \usepackage{xspace} and \newcommand{\ourModel}{NameOfOurModel\xspace}</li></ul>
  • Use tilde (~) instead of a space before citations and references: This evidence was presented by Ullmann~\cite{Ullmann90}.
  • Use the utility lacheck.exe on your .tex file to find get some hints.
  • Use correct quotation marks: ``quoted''.
  • In .bib file be sure to put curly brackets around capitalized abbreviations, such as {SQL}, {XML}, and {Garlic}.

External pointers

Further items are welcome:
Felix Naumann

Chair

Prof. Dr. Felix Naumann

Information Systems

E-Mail: felix.naumann(at)hpi.de

 

Assistant: Diana Stephan

Office: Campus II, House F, F-2.01
Tel.: +49 (0)331 5509-280
Fax: +49 (0)331 5509-287
E-Mail: office-naumann(at)hpi.de

 

To visit us, please see these directions.

News

03.04.2024 | Congratulations to the EDBT Best Paper Award!

> Go to article

05.03.2024 | Another Paper marked as reproducible by pVLDB Reproducibility Committee

> Go to article

21.01.2024 | Paper accepted at W-NUT 2024

We are excited to announce that our paper "The Effects of Data Quality on Named Entity Recognition" was accepted at the … > Go to article

19.12.2023 | Congratulations Dr. Gerardo Vitagliano!

> Go to article

13.12.2023 | Two papers accepted at EDBT Conference 2024

> Go to article

Project highlights

Metanome: Big Data Profiling

Data Preparation

Janus: Change exploration

KITQAR: AI and Data Quality

People and open positions