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FIT5210/FIT5128/FIT4444/FIT4448 ASSIGNMENT 3: THESIS
A. Overview and Deadline
The aim of this assignment is to prepare a research paper explaining and justifying the
research that you have done. You will be marked on both the quality of research itself and
how you have presented it. This assignment is worth 80% of the available marks for
the entire project.1 Half the marks available in this assignment (50%) are directly
for the research you actually do and your account of the methodology. The due
date for this assignment is:
- For students on FIT5210 – Friday 3pm, Week 15.
- For students on FIT5128/ FIT4444/FIT4448 – Friday 3pm, Week 12.
Late assignments will have five marks deducted (out of 100 available) for each calendar
day2 that they are late, unless an extension of time is approved under the applicable
University procedures. If your assignment is seven or more days late, you will
automatically receive a mark of zero.
Warning: The current position is now that the University will decide extension
applications, rather than the Chief Examiner.3 The criteria are likely to be stricter than
in previous semesters, especially if an extension is requested due to a delay in research.
This means you should plan on the basis that you expect delays. You should also take
steps to minimise the risk of delay, such as by completing ethics applications early, and
securing resources (such as High-Performance Computing) in advance of you needing to
use them. Furthermore, you should write your thesis in parallel with conducting the
research.
B. The Thesis Assignment
You must write a research paper of no more than 8000 words excluding references. Only
the first 8000 words (excluding references) that you submit will be marked – examiners
will be instructed to ignore any additional material beyond this and mark your
research paper accordingly. The full thesis must be in the structure set out in Section C
of this document. In addition to the research paper, you will submit the following, which
will not be directly assessed or marked but are available for reference by your
examiners.

1 For students undertaking a minor thesis, this is three modules in succession –
FIT5126/FIT5127/FIT5128. For students on an honours program, this is normally four connected
modules – FIT4441/4442/4443/4444 (or FIT4448 instead of FIT4443 and FIT4444 for an Honours
student undertaking an 18-credit point thesis). For those on the graduate certificate or completing
a single-semester project, FIT5210 is the only module you take, but that is a triple module.
2 An assignment that is submitted after 3pm (Melbourne Time for Australian based Students,
Kuala Lumpur time for students registered at Monash University Malaysia and so on) is deemed
to have been submitted on the following calendar day. For example, an FIT5126 assignment
submitted at 4pm on Sunday on Week 6 would be deemed to be three days late and have 15 marks
deducted, whilst one submitted at 2pm that same day would be treated as being two days late and
have 10 marks deducted. These deductions are made by the administration, not by individual
markers.
3 The exception to this is that the Chief Examiner has the power to give extensions of up to two
calendar days, on an application to him.
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- Part 1: A copy of your literature review you submitted in earlier in the course
(‘Assignment 2)
- Part 3 (optional): Appendices providing supporting documentation of your
research (e.g. code lists, datasets ethics forms, interview transcripts).

This report will be marked by two examiners4 in line with the rubric appended to this
document in Annex A. This rubric is really important, and you should check you address
all the points contained within it when you submit your report. Please note that excellent
reports (>90% marks) will in substance and quality of argument resemble a high-
quality conference paper (or a journal article5): the venues that we recognise in the
Faculty as being ‘high quality’ can be found in Annex C of this document.
C. Structure of Full thesis
Your report is required to have the following structure: (Note: only Part 2 is being
submitted for direct assessment). Length Penalties (per Part B) apply to Part 2.
Preliminary Sections:
A. Title Page. This is a single page containing (i) a title for your thesis, (ii) your student
ID number, (iii) your name, (iv) the course you are studying
(FIT5210/FIT5128/FIT4444/FIT4448) and (v) your supervisors name. You must
also include a word count for Part 2 (excluding references).
B. Table of Contents.
(You may also include acknowledgments in the preliminary sections.)
Part 1: General Literature Review
A copy of your literature review you submitted in earlier in the course (‘Assignment 2).
This section is not (re)marked: instead it is made available purely for reference for your
markers.
Part 2: The Research Paper
You should prepare a research paper in a format consistent with the structure and style
of a Faculty Quality List paper (see Annex C). This paper must be no more than 8000
words in length, excluding references. Any words over and above this limit will not be
marked. There are three additional requirements:
1. You must not copy and paste material from Part 1 into Part 2: instead you should
write a fresh and focussed argument.6
2. You must clearly distinguish between the work that you personally did on the
project and the work which is that of others.7

4 If the assessors are unable to agree on marks that are less than 10 marks different to each other,
then the assignments may be marked by a third marker. Otherwise, the mark is automatically the
average of that awarded by both markers.
5 A research paper in the form of a ‘journal article’ must still be in conformity with the length
limitations set out in these assignment instructions.
6 Please note that Monash University policy prohibits self-plagiarism. As you have already been
marked on your literature review, resubmitting it for assessment would be in breach of Monash
University policy. The same would apply for attempts to copy and paste text from any other
assignment into Part 2 of the thesis.
7 Not giving clear credit for the work of others would be a breach of Monash University’s plagiarism
policy. As it clear in the public guide (https://www.monash.edu/students/admin/policies/academic-
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3. You must provide a reference list covering all citations in the substantive text:
this should be at the end of Part 2 and given the heading ‘References’.
Part 3: Appendices
You may provide supporting evidence for the work that you have completed, comprising
purely of original supporting documents generated throughout the course of your project.
By way of examples, this might include:
- Code listings of computer code that you wrote yourself.
- Example interview transcripts.
- Illustrations of prototypes.
- Datasets.
- Ethics applications.
The sole purpose of these appendices is to give you the opportunity to provide direct
evidence to examiners that you have completed the work you have said you have done in
the Research Paper. These appendices are not marked and cannot be used to extend
the substantive research paper length over the 8000-word (excluding
references) limit. A more detailed set of examples of potential inclusions is provided in
Annex B of this document.
D. Support with this assignment
The idea of this course is that you work closely with your supervisor (or supervisory team).
You should be doing your research in partnership with them and meeting with regularly
to progress the project. However, the supervisory team will not ‘do’ your research for you,
or write your report, but they might assist, such as by suggesting ideas, critiquing your
work and study designs, or making available facilities or existing tools. It is also permitted
(and encouraged) to discuss your work with other people (e.g. in solving programming
problems), however any such support must be clearly identified in your final thesis.
Your (lead) supervisor is also your first point of contact if you are unclear about the
assignment: if there is any confusion or difficulties that you are unable to resolve with
them, then you (or they) can contact the Minor Thesis/Honours Co-ordinator at
reuben.kirkham+projects@monash.edu
The drafting of the research report must be your own. Whilst we expect your lead
supervisor to provide comments and advice throughout the development and drafting of
your research paper, they must not edit or draft substantial chunks of text for you to
include in your assessed submission.
We will provide additional seminars to support the writing of the research paper.
Finally, please read the rubric (Annex A) in detail.

integrity#tabs__2046348), “Plagiarism is taking and using another person’s [work or] ideas, or way
of expressing them, and passing them off as your own by failing to give appropriate
acknowledgement. This includes material sourced from the internet, staff, other students, and
published and unpublished works.”
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E. Application for Assessment Adjustments
If you have a relevant disability or health condition, you may be entitled to ‘assessment
adjustments’ under Part 6 of the University Assessment Regime procedure.8 The process
of applying for these is to first approach the Disability Support Service, and then when
they have provided recommendations, please write to the Chief Examiner without delay
(reuben.kirkham+projects@monash.edu).
F. Submission of Assignment
Your report must be submitted in a PDF format in Moodle in conformity with the following
instructions.
1. The file should be named in the following form: yourStudentID-
yourFirstNameSurname-yourSupervisorName-Thesis.pdf
2. The submission should be completed in line with the timings set out in Section A
of this document. Late penalties apply per Section A of this document.
Please do not leave your submission to the last minute. Instead, you should for allow an
appropriate amount of time to upload your completed assignment.
G. Some Questions and Answers
What is the difference between a research paper and a traditional thesis?
We have introduced this change to the program to reflect the need to for there to be a
greater emphasis on research and for students to produce reports in a format that are
likely to be publishable (perhaps with some changes) after you have submitted your thesis.
What you should write is equivalent to reasonable length conference paper (or a short
journal article) at a respectable venue. We hope that many projects will be published in
the formal academic literature.
Can I have examples of past research papers?
Your supervisory team will be able to identify a number of research papers (i.e. already
published papers) that are similar in style and quality of argument to what is expected in
this program. See Annex C for a list of venues that are recognised as high quality.
Leading venues often have associated guidance that they provide to researchers about
how to prepare a high-quality submission, which you may also find to be helpful.
How long should my research paper be?
Your paper should be as concise as a usual conference research paper in your field,
although certain sections involve including slightly more information. The limit is 8000
words (excluding references), but this certainly is not a target. A lack of focus and
concision in your writing is penalised by our marking process (see Criteria 5 in the Rubric,
and the general expectation of publishable quality text in Criteria 1, 2 and 4). In practice,
it is only interdisciplinary projects and qualitative research studies that we would expect
to be close to the 8000-word limit. However, you should also make sure your report is not
too short and ensure you have provided all the required details. We would expect that
most submissions obtaining high marks will be at least 5000 words (excluding
references).

8 https://www.monash.edu/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/2300925/Assessment-Regime-
Procedure.pdf
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Are diagrams and illustrations included in the word counts for the research paper?
No, they are not. After all, diagrams, pictures and illustrations are not words. However,
you should be judicious in your choice of diagrams and charts, just as you would be if you
were preparing a research paper for submission to a conference or journal.
Why is ‘novelty’ ignored in the ‘Substance of Research’ criteria?
Well designed and executed research studies can fail to produce ‘positive’ or ‘statistically
significant’ results, without this being the fault of the researcher, especially if the
researcher has a limited amount of time to complete a project. What’s more, determining
whether or not something is a ‘contribution’ can be a somewhat opinionated exercise
which academics sometimes reasonably disagree on: see for example the ‘NIPS
experiment’.9 To be fair to the students on the program, the emphasis is therefore on the
quality of research design and the extent (and competence) of the implementation of the
project. Of course, if you successfully persuade your examiners that you produced novel
results based on a rigorous approach, then you would obtain high marks anyway for this
criterion. Notably, making an original contribution to knowledge is the standard of a
(three/four year) PhD program and is not a requirement of a Minor Thesis or Honours
level project. In effect, our approach is to review and assess in line with ‘pre-registered’
studies10, rather than to emphasise the final results.
Why do I have to resubmit my previous literature review as Part I of this assignment?
This needs to be made available so that the markers can see the wider context when they
are assessing the research paper. After all, it is likely that your examiners might not have
seen (or marked) your previous assignment: even if they have done so, they will have
marked it some time ago.
How long should I expect to spend preparing Appendices?
We expect this will take no more than a few hours for most students. It is simply a matter
of cutting and pasting (and possibly shortening) existing material you produced during
the course of research, with a few brief additional explanatory notes to explain what the
material is.
How will the examiners know which ‘FIT Quality List’ venues that are relevant to this work
when applying the marking criteria?
The reference list you provide in Part 2 will make this clear, as a proportion of the related
work will be from those venues. It is worth noting that the difference in writing quality
between these types of venues is minimal in any event: the standard is almost uniformly
a high one. Your examiners will all be experienced researchers who will have extensive
experience of writing and successfully publishing papers at this level of quality. If you
prefer to do so, you can also be explicit about a venue that you are targeting in Part 2 of
your thesis, but this is optional.
How do I make sure that I am sufficiently clear about the work that I have done and that
of others?
The best way to do this is to briefly indicate this in the text. For example, if you developed
someone else’s software library, you might write ‘I expanded [Library X] by [Joe Bloggs]

9 http://blog.mrtz.org/2014/12/15/the-nips-experiment.html
10 https://www.cos.io/our-services/registered-reports
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by adding [specific features]’. If you used someone else’s data, then you could say that ‘I
analysed the [Dataset Name] dataset by [Joe Bloggs], which he has already collected prior
to this study’. If you are unsure what to write, please ask your supervisors. If you prefer
you can use footnotes in the relevant places. You can also use the optional
acknowledgements section to do this as well, if needed.
How should I format my research paper?
Any consistent format is acceptable. However, we would recommend that you consider
adopting a format used for a relevant conference or journal identified in Annex C. When
preparing figures, you should also be consistent in the use of typeface, colour and so forth
with any target venue.

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ANNEX A – MARKING RUBRIC FOR RESEARCH PAPER
A1 Overview and Publication Quality Types
This rubric is drafted with respect to different levels of academic publications as a comparator. A full understanding of what is required
generally requires substantial experience as an academic and is context-specific: this is why students will normally regularly meet with
supervisors to help understand their progress and receive feedback on their drafts before submission. In outline, the following publication
standards are applied in this Rubric:
Lightly peer-reviewed / Poster / Work in Progress (D): These works tend to be of the extent of a small pilot study or investigation,
albeit executed without any major errors or flaws. The methodology will have the core details, but some high-level decisions taken will be
unclear in terms of their justification. The quality of writing will leave some details missing and the argument need not to have much
insight or innovation, albeit there will be an accurate interpretation of the (often limited) results in question.
Lower tier / National level conference (Lower HD): These works will be of a more substantial extent than a pilot study, albeit of a
scale unlikely to be accepted in a higher-tier conference. The execution may contain a small amount of innovation and the study or
investigation will have been executed without any notable errors or substantial flaws. Most of the text will be drafted in a focussed manner,
albeit with the occasional infelicity of expression: any missing details will be minor oversights. The argument will have some insight and
innovation and there will be an accurate interpretation of the results in question, including in respect of their potential wider implications.
Higher tier / Q1 conference / Q1 Journal (Upper HD): These works will be of a substantial extent and scale, with a substantive
amount of innovation, as well as offering a carefully reasoned consideration of all key decisions taken in respect of the design of study or
investigation. The text will be drafted in a focussed manner and the arguments advanced will be easy to read and understand, with the
points being argued having been carefully selected. The study or investigation will have been executed without any errors or notable
deviations from recognised best practice. The work will be described in a manner as to be reproducible, insofar as practicable, with it being
clear as to why each decision was taken in the design of the study or investigation. The arguments advanced will be insightful, with there
being an accurate interpretation of the results, and an innovative reflection of their wider implications.

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A2 Marking Descriptors
This assignment is marked out of 100. The rubric should be read with the rest of the assignment instructions, which are also binding
on examiners. Penalties in respect of the quality of writing (but not argument) can only be applied in respect of criteria 5A and 5B. The
marks are apportioned as follows:
Criteria 1A: Abstract and Introduction (5 Marks)
Grade11 Description
N (0%-49%) There is little or no discernible introduction and abstract.
P (50%-59%) There is a discernible introduction and abstract, but it is not clear as to what the paper is about or what the proposed
contributions are.
C (60%-69%) There is an introduction and abstract, but it is somewhat unclear as to what the paper is about or what the proposed
contributions are. There is an attempt to connect the introduction with the existing literature.
D (70%-79%) There is a clear introduction and abstract, with a reasonable, if not imperfect attempt to connect the introduction with the
existing literature.
Lower HD (80%-89%) There is a clear introduction and abstract. The introduction is strongly connected with the existing literature. The quality
of reasoning and argument is at the level of a work publishable at a lower-tier but reasonable quality venue (e.g. a national
level conference, or a lower ranked journal).
Upper HD (90%-
100%)
There is a clear introduction and abstract. The introduction is strongly connected with the existing literature. The quality
of reasoning and argument is at the level of a work publishable at a well-recognised venue (e.g. a Q1 journal or conference,
or a venue in the Faculty Quality List).

Criteria 1B: Background (5 Marks)
Grade Description
N (0%-49%) There is no background section, or this is brief and contains very little literature (e.g. <5 papers). The background section is
poorly drafted and argued.
P (50%-59%) There is a limited background section with some connection to the literature (e.g. 5-10 papers). The background section is
poorly drafted and argued. No clear gap is proposed.
C (60%-69%) There is a background section with some connection to the literature (e.g. 5-10 papers). A gap is proposed, although not fully
argued for.

11 For honours students taking FIT4444 or FIT4448, the appropriate grade will be given per the University grade descriptor
https://www.monash.edu/exams/results/results-legend. So, a mark of 80% or above will correspond to a ‘HI’, a mark of 70-79% would correspond to a
‘HIIA’ and so on.
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D (70%-79%) There is a background section with a reasonable connection to the literature (e.g. 11-15 papers or more). A gap is proposed
with a reasonable justification, but the argument for it has some obvious and significant limitations.
Lower HD (80%-89%) There is a focussed and well-argued background section that contains a judicious selection of literature (i.e. all the
literature chosen is relevant to the argument being made). The quality of reasoning and argument is at the level of a work
publishable at a lower-tier but reasonably quality venue (e.g. a national level conference, or a lower ranked journal).
Upper HD (90%-
100%)
There is a focussed and well-argued background section that contains a judicious selection of literature (i.e. all the
literature chosen is relevant to the argument being made). The quality of reasoning and argument is at the level of a work
publishable at a well-recognised venue (e.g. a Q1 journal or conference, or a venue in the Faculty Quality List).

Criteria 2: Methodology and Justification (20 Marks)
NB: The analysis of this criterion takes place as if it were the assessment of a pre-registered study, rather than whether results are
‘positive’ or statistically significant. The main consideration is whether they have set out a clear plan and justified it.
Grade Description
N (0%-49%) There is little or no clear methodology.
P (50%-59%) There is an account of the method, but little or no argument justifying it. The method is generally unclear.
C (60%-69%) There is an account of the method and this can be mostly understood, except in respect of small details. There is a limited
argument justifying the choice of method.
D (70%-79%) There is an account of the method that can be fully understood. There is a clear but substantially flawed argument
justifying the methodology.
Lower HD (80%-89%) There is an account of the method that can be fully understood. The quality of the justification of the methodology is at the
level of a work publishable at a lower-tier but reasonable quality venue (e.g. a national level conference, or a lower ranked
journal).
Upper HD (90%-
100%)
There is an account of the method that can be fully understood. The quality of the justification of the methodology is that
the level of a work publishable at a well-recognised venue (e.g. a Q1 journal or conference, or a venue in the Faculty Quality
List).
Criteria 3: Substance of Research (30 Marks)
NB: The analysis of this criterion takes place as if it were the assessment of a pre-registered study, rather than whether results are
‘positive’ or statistically significant. This criterion is assessed on the basis that a minor-thesis student normally has 8 weeks (full-time
equivalent) to directly conduct their research, whilst an honours student normally has 12 weeks to conduct their research.
Grade Description
N (0%-49%) The research presented is fundamentally flawed and has little or no connection with appropriate research practice.
P (50%-59%) Whilst the research was mostly competently conducted, the volume of work is greatly limited or trivial.
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C (60%-69%) Whilst the research was mostly competently conducted, the volume of work is too limited to have had a reasonable prospect
of a publication (even in a ‘non-paper’ track of a well-respected conference).
D (70%-79%) The research was conducted in line with appropriate research practice and without any major flaws. The extent and
competence of the research conducted (ignoring novelty / contribution of the final results) is equal in substance to
that of a typical publication in a (lightly peer-reviewed) ‘non-paper’ track at a well-respected conference, for example as a
‘work in progress’ or a ‘poster’.
Lower HD (80%-89%) The research was competently conducted in line with appropriate research practice. The extent and competence of the
research conducted (ignoring novelty / contribution of the final results) is equal in substance to that of a typical
archival publication at a lower-tier but reasonable quality venue (e.g. a national level conference, or a lower ranked
journal).
Upper HD (90%-
100%)
The research was competently conducted in line with appropriate research practice. The extent and competence of the
research conducted (ignoring novelty / contribution of the final results) is equal in substance to that of a typical
archival publication at a well-recognised venue (e.g. a Q1 journal or conference, or a venue in the Faculty Quality List).
Criteria 4: Analysis of Results and Discussion (20 Marks)
NB: The analysis of this criterion takes place as if it were the assessment of a pre-registered study, rather than whether the final results
are ‘positive’ or statistically significant. As such, this concerns the presentation, analysis and the interpretation/discussion of whatever
results that were obtained, rather than marking the results themselves.
Grade Description
N (0%-49%) There are little or no clear results. The results are not interpreted or discussed.
P (50%-59%) A limited but unclear set of results is presented. There is a very brief attempt to discuss or interpret the results.
C (60%-69%) There are some mostly clear results. However, there is only a limited attempt to discuss or interpret the results.
D (70%-79%) The results are clear. There is a reasonable, but substantially deficient attempt to discuss and interpret the results.
Lower HD (80%-89%) The results are clear and presented effectively in line with the conventions of an academic paper. There is a reasonable
discussion and interpretation of results. The quality of the discussion is at the level of a work publishable at a lower-tier
but reasonable quality venue (e.g. a national level conference, or a lower ranked journal).
Upper HD (90%-
100%)
The results are clear and presented effectively in line with the conventions of an academic paper. There is a strong
discussion and interpretation of results. The quality of the discussion is at the level of a work publishable at a well-
recognised venue (e.g. a Q1 journal or conference, or a venue in the Faculty Quality List).
Criteria 5A: Concision and Focus of Writing (10 Marks)
Grade Description
N (0%-49%) The writing is inappropriate and mostly unclear.
P (50%-59%) There is a limited and mostly unsuccessful attempt to ensure that the account is focussed.
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C (60%-69%) There is some attempt to ensure that the account is focussed, although there are numerous passages with prolixity and a lack
of focus.
D (70%-79%) There is a reasonable attempt to ensure that the account is focussed, although there are a substantial number of passages
with prolixity and a lack of focus.
Lower HD (80%-89%) The argument is drafted in a focussed manner with only the occasional prolixity or clunky wording. The quality of the
writing is at the level of a work publishable at a lower-tier but reasonable quality venue (e.g. a national level conference, or
a lower ranked journal).
Upper HD (90%-
100%)
The research is drafted in a focussed manner which is easy to read and understand. The quality of writing is at the level of
a work publishable at a well-recognised venue (e.g. a Q1 journal or conference, or a venue in the Faculty Quality List).
Criteria 5B: General Communication Skills (10 Marks)
Grade Description
N (0%-49%) - The style and vocabulary used in the writing are not accurate or articulate, and the writing may consist of poorly
structured sentences with frequent grammatical errors.
- Poor paragraph structure and development (too short or long) and lack of logic detract from the writing;
subheadings, if used, do not clarify the writing.
- The document produced has an unclear format, inappropriate for the scope of the task, and technical requirements
required by the faculty and/or the discipline have not been addressed.
- The student does not attempt to undertake citing and referencing.
P (50%-59%) - The style and vocabulary used in the writing is not accurate or articulate most of time, and the writing, while still
able to be followed, may contain some grammatical errors.
- Paragraphs are not developed, structured and/or linked logically throughout; if applicable, section headings are not
used effectively to clarify the writing.
- The document produced has some attempt at formatting, though not entirely appropriate for the scope of the task;
the student neglects most technical requirements required by the faculty and/or the discipline.
- The student has attempted to undertake citing and referencing with frequent errors.
C (60%-69%) - The style and vocabulary used in the writing is often not accurate or articulate, while the writing consists in the
main of clearly structured sentences with few to no grammatical errors.
- The writing consists of a set of mostly well composed paragraphs that are in most cases linked logically throughout;
if applicable, subheadings are used mostly effectively to clarify the writing.
- The document produced has a readable format appropriate for the scope of the task, and the student observes some
technical requirements required by the faculty and/or the discipline.
- The student follows the requirements for citing and referencing, with some errors.
D (70%-79%) - The style and vocabulary used in the writing are generally accurate and articulate, and the writing consists of
clearly structured sentences without noteworthy grammatical errors.
- The writing consists of a set of well composed paragraphs that are linked logically, and if applicable, subheadings
are used effectively to clarify the writing.
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- The document produced has a clearly readable format appropriate for the scope of the task, and the student
observes most technical requirements required by the faculty and/or the discipline.
- The student follows the requirements for citing and referencing, with some minor errors.
HD (80%-100%) - The style and vocabulary used in the writing are consistently accurate and articulate, and the writing consists of
clearly structured sentences with no grammatical errors.
- The writing consists of a set of very well composed paragraphs that are linked logically throughout, and if
applicable, subheadings are used effectively and accurately to clarify the writing.
- The document produced has a clearly readable format appropriate for the scope of the task, and the student
observes technical requirements required by the faculty and/or the discipline.
- The student follows the requirements for citing and referencing.

NB – for marks within this range, a perfect piece of work would obtain 10 marks, with deductions made as appropriate up
and until the point three or more of the above descriptors fall at the D level, or some of them fall at the C level.


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Annex B: Suggested Content of Appendices
The following is a non-exhaustive set of examples of types of research activities and the information that could be provided in the
appendices in respect of them. Some projects will involve completing several of these activities, in which case the expected material for
each activity may be provided. Appendices may also be provided as separate files external to the thesis document.
Project Example Activity Examples of Potential Appendices
Collection of research dataset. 1. Any required ethical approval documentation.
2. Data collection protocols. This may include photographs of an experimental setup, or a copy
of the questions in a survey (if this was the approach used).
3. The dataset (or an excerpt thereof if the dataset is particularly large).
Computational experiments and/or
data analysis.
1. The computer code that was written by the student. If the code was developed in
collaboration with others, the student should highlight the lines and aspects of the code
which is their own.
a. This may include examples of code used to conduct testing (e.g. unit tests) to ensure
the software is robust.
2. Experimental protocols and details so that the examiner can see how the experiment was
conducted. This might include:
a. Description of the experimental environment (e.g. software user, operating system).
b. A list of external libraries relied upon.
c. Identification of the dataset in question (if the student did not collect it themselves).
Implementation of an interactive
system (e.g. game, web application
or simulation) or novel/adapted
hardware (e.g. Arduino, Embedded
hardware).
1. The computer code that was written by the student. If the code was developed in
collaboration with others, the student should highlight the lines and aspects of the code
which are their own.
2. Screenshots with brief annotation so that the system can be understood. This may also
include an illustration of the hardware, for example by way of captioned photographs.
Qualitative interview study and/or
design exercises and subsequent
analysis.
1. Ethical approval documentation.
2. List of pre-prepared questions or other supporting material (e.g. prompts, paper prototypes
or other relevant artefacts).
3. Annotated transcripts (or examples thereof) that demonstrate that the qualitative analysis
was conducted by an appropriate method (e.g. thematic analysis).


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Annex C: Faculty Quality List Conferences
Below is the list of Faculty Quality List Conferences as of September 2020. Conferences with higher Core Ranking (A* is the best) or H5-
index tend to be the most highly regarded venues. There are also journals that meet the Faculty Quality List standard, which for journals
is normally a SNIP of 1.5 or greater on the Scopus Source List and/or (best) quartile of Q1 on the Scimago Journal List.12 Most students
will use conference papers as a relevant comparator, given the relative length of most journal papers.
Acronym Conference Name Google
Scholar H5-
Index
CORE Rank
AAAI AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence 126 A*
ICWSM AAAI International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media 48 Unranked
CSCW ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social
Computing - proceedings now published in journal - Proceedings of the ACM
on Human-Computer Interaction
61 A
CODASPY ACM Conference on Data and Application Security and Privacy 28 Not in CORE
EC ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (previously ACM Conference
on Electronic Commerce)
40 A*
SENSYS ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems 34 A*
CoNEXT ACM Conference on Emerging Networking Experiments and Technology 33 A
Hypertext ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media (previously ACM Conference
on Hypertext and Hypermedia - HT)
21 A
RecSys ACM Conference on Recommender Systems 46 B
EuroSys ACM European Conference on Computer Systems 38 A
SIGSPATIAL ACM International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information
Systems
25 National

12 Your supervisor will have access to a complete list of journals accepted as being of sufficient quality in the Faculty.
Page 15 of 27

CIKM ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management 54 A
IDC ACM International Conference on Interaction Design and Children 24 B
ISS ACM International Conference on Interactive Surfaces and Spaces (previously
ACM International Conference on Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces)
16* A
MobiCom ACM International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking 48 A*
ICMR ACM International Conference on Multimedia Retrieval 30 B
SIGIR ACM International Conference on Research and Development in Information
Retrieval
57 A*
ICS ACM International Conference on Supercomputing 25 A
WSDM ACM International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining 54 A*
UbiComp ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing
(merger of Pervasive & UbiComp)
54 A*
HPDC ACM International Symposium on High Performance Distributed Computing 25 A
MOBIHOC ACM International Symposium on Mobile Ad Hoc Networking and Computing 26 A
ESEC/FSE ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on
the Foundations of Software Engineering (previously ACM SIGSOFT
International Symposium on Foundations of Software Engineering)
53 A*
ACMMM ACM Multimedia 58 A*
MMSys ACM Multimedia Systems Conference 31 Not in CORE
SODA ACM SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms 49 A*
SIGGRAPH ACM SIG International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive
Techniques - proceedings now published in journal - ACM Transactions on
Graphics
- A*
SIGMETRICS ACM SIG on Computer and Communications Metrics and Performance -
proceedings now published in journal - Proceedings of the ACM on
Measurement and Analysis of Computing Systems
- A*
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SIGCSE ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education 31 A
SCA ACM SIGGRAPH/Eurographics Symposium on Computer Animation 19* B
KDD ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining 90 A*
SIGMOD ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data 67 A*
PODS ACM SIGMOD-SIGACT-SIGART Symposium on Principles of Database
Systems
25 A*
PLDI ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and
Implementation
46 A*
OOPSLA ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Object-Oriented Programming,
Systems, Languages, and Applications
29 A*
PPOPP ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles & Practice of Parallel Programming 29 A
POPL ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT Symposium on Principles of Programming
Languages
48 A*
SAC ACM Symposium on Applied Computing 30 B
SoCC ACM Symposium on Cloud Computing 34 Not in CORE
CCS ACM Symposium on Computer and Communications Security 88 A*
AsiaCCS ACM Symposium on Information, Computer and Communications Security 37 B
SOSP ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles 42 A*
SPAA ACM Symposium on Parallelism in Algorithms and Architectures 24 A
PODC ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing 28 A*
STOC ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing 63 A*
UIST ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology 44 A
HOTNETS ACM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks 20 National
HRI ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human Robot Interaction 46 Not in CORE
IPSN ACM/IEEE International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor
Networks
22 A*
ISLPED ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Low Power Electronics and Design 21 Not in CORE
FPGA ACM/SIGDA International Symposium on Field Programmable Gate Arrays 32 Not in CORE
Page 17 of 27

FOGA ACM/SIGEVO Conference on Foundations of Genetic Algorithms - A*
Allerton Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing 32 Not in CORE
ACC American Control Conference 41 Not in CORE
AMIA American Medical Informatics Association Annual Symposium 26 National
AMCIS Americas Conference on Information Systems 23 A
ACSAC Annual Computer Security Applications Conference 29 National
ITiCSE Annual Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science
Education
21 A
ACL Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) 135 A*
SIGDIAL Annual Meeting of the Special Interest Group on Discourse and Dialogue 29

CHI-PLAY Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play 25 Not in CORE
AIME Artificial Intelligence in Medicine in Europe ~11 B
ACCV Asian Conference on Computer Vision 33 B
BMVC British Machine Vision Conference 57 B
CHI Computer Human Interaction (CHI) 95 A*
SIGCOMM Conference of the ACM Special Interest Group on Data Communication - ACM
SIGCOMM Conference (previously ACM Conference on Applications,
Technologies, Architectures, and Protocols for Computer Communication)
65 A*
EACL Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational
Linguistics
45 A
INTERSPEECH Conference of the International Speech Communication Association
(INTERSPEECH)
81 A
HLT-NAACL Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for
Computational Linguistics
90 A
CoNLL Conference on Computational Natural Language Learning (CoNLL) 39 A
CHES Conference on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems (CHES) ~36 A
DIS Conference on Designing Interactive Systems 31 B
EMNLP Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP) 112 A
Page 18 of 27

FAST Conference on File and Storage Technologies 41 A
GECCO Conference on Genetic and Evolutionary Computation 38 A
CIDR Conference on Innovative Data Systems Research 34 A
COLT Conference On Learning Theory 54 A*
WMT Conference on Machine Translation (previously Workshop on Statistical
Machine Translation)
35 Not in CORE
UAI Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI) 34 A*
DCC Data Compression Conference 20 A*
DAC Design Automation Conference (DAC) 52 A
DATE Design, Automation and Test in Europe Conference and Exhibition 46 B
ECRTS Euromicro Conference on Real-Time Systems 23 A
ECAI European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI) ~18 A
ECCV European Conference on Computer Vision 144 A
ECIR European Conference on Information Retrieval 27 A
ECIS European Conference on Information Systems 34 A
ECMLPKDD European Conference on Machine Learning and Knowledge Discovery in
Databases
31 A
ECOOP European Conference on Object-oriented Programming (ECOOP) 20 A
ESORICS European Conference on Research in Computer Security 34 A
EUSIPCO European Signal Processing Conference 31 B
ESA European Symposium on Algorithms 26 A
ESOP European Symposium on Programming 25 A
ESWC Extended Semantic Web Conference (previously European Conference on the
Semantic Web)
31 A
ETRA Eye Tracking Research & Application ~18 Not in CORE
Page 19 of 27

FSE Fast Software Encryption (FSE) - proceedings now published in journal - IACR
Transactions on Symmetric Cryptology
- B
HICSS Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences 45 A
DAS IAPR International Workshop on Document Analysis Systems 18* B
SECON IEEE Communications Society Conference on Sensor, Mesh and Ad Hoc
Communications and Networks
22 B
CSF IEEE Computer Security Foundations Symposium 29 A
CVPR IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition 299 A*
CDC IEEE Conference on Decision and Control 40 A
CEC IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation 70 B
CCNC IEEE Consumer Communications and Networking Conference 27 B
CICC IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference 20 Not in CORE
EuroS&P IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy 34 NEW
GLOBECOM IEEE Global Communications Conference 57 B
ITW IEEE Information Theory Workshop 21 B
IEEE InfoVis IEEE Information Visualization Conference - now published in journal - IEEE
Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics
- A*
ICASSP IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing 86 B
ICALT IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies 17 B
AVSS IEEE International Conference on Advanced Video and Signal-Based
Surveillance
27 B
ICAC IEEE International Conference on Autonomic Computing 20 B
Big Data IEEE International Conference on Big Data 41 Not in CORE
Page 20 of 27

BTAS IEEE International Conference on Biometrics 23 Not in CORE
CLOUD IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing 29 B
CLUSTER IEEE International Conference on Cluster Computing 21 A
ICC IEEE International Conference on Communications 67 B
INFOCOM IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications (previously
Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies
(INFOCOM))
72 A*
ICCV IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision 176 A*
ICDM IEEE International Conference on Data Mining 48 A*
DCOSS IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing in Sensor Systems 16* B
FUZZ IEEE International Conference on Fuzzy Systems 20 A
HPCC IEEE International Conference on High Performance Computing and
Communications
23 B
ICIP IEEE International Conference on Image Processing 52 B
ICME IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo 30 B
ICNP IEEE International Conference on Network Protocols 21 A
PERCOM IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and
Communications
26 A*
ICRA IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation 94 B
SCC IEEE International Conference on Services Computing 19* A
SANER IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and
Reengineering
40 Not in CORE
ICSME IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution 33 A
ICST IEEE International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and
Validation (ICST)
27 A
Page 21 of 27

SMC IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics 29 B
TrustCom IEEE International Conference on Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing
and Communications
26 A
IEEE VR IEEE International Conference on Virtual Reality 28 A
ICWS IEEE International Conference on Web Services 21 A
BigData
Congress
IEEE International Congress on Big Data 21 Not in CORE
IJCB IEEE International Joint Conference on Biometrics (joint conference of BTAS
and ICB)
23 Not in CORE
RE IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference 27 A
ISSCC IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference 56 A
WoWMoM IEEE International Symposium on a World of Wireless, Mobile and
Multimedia Networks
25 A
CCGrid IEEE International Symposium on Cluster Computing and the Grid 25 A
DYSPAN IEEE International Symposium on Dynamic Spectrum Access Networks ~17 B
HPCA IEEE International Symposium on High Performance Computer Architecture 53 A*
ISIT IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory 57 B
ISMAR IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality 20 A*
IPDPS IEEE International Symposium on Parallel & Distributed Processing 36 A
ISPASS IEEE International Symposium on Performance Analysis of Systems and
Software
20 B
WIFS IEEE International Workshop on Information Forensics and Security 23 Not in CORE
ISGT Europe IEEE PES Innovative Smart Grid Technologies Conference Europe 16* Not in CORE
Page 22 of 27

Radarcon IEEE Radar Conference 34 Not in CORE
RTAS IEEE Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium 24 A
RTSS IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium (RTSS) 21 A*
SLT IEEE Spoken Language Technology Workshop 25 Not in CORE
FCCM IEEE Symposium on Field-Programmable Custom Computing Machines 27 A
FOCS IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science 54 A*
LICS IEEE Symposium on Logic in Computer Science 31 A*
S&P IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy 74 A*
VLSIC IEEE Symposium on VLSI Circuits (VLSIC) 28 A
VTC IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference 46 B
WACV IEEE Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision (previously
IEEE Workshop on Applications of Computer Vision)
54 A
WCNC IEEE Wireless Communications & Networking Conference 37 B
BHI IEEE-EMBS International Conference on Biomedical and Health Informatics 18* Not in CORE
ASE IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering 45 A
ICCAD IEEE/ACM International Conference on Computer-Aided Design 33 A (Not primarily CS)
MICRO IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Microarchitecture 45 A (Not primarily CS)
DSN IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks 32 A
NOMS IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium 22 B
IROS IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems 63 A
INTERACT IFIP Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 20 A
IFIP
Networking
IFIP International Conference on Networking 23 A
ITA Information Theory and Applications Workshop 27 Not in CORE
IVA Intelligent Virtual Agents 16* B
Page 23 of 27

ASSETS International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility 26 Not in CORE
JCDL International ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries 18* A*
ICALP International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming 32 A
ICER International Computing Education Research Conference 24 B
SC International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking,
Storage and Analysis
44 A
MSR International Conference Mining Software Repositories 40 A
AINA International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and
Applications
26 B
CaiSE International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering 21 A
XP International Conference on Agile Software Development (previously
International Conference on Agile Processes in Software Engineering and
Extreme Programming)
23 B
ACNS International Conference on Applied Cryptography and Network Security 21 B
ASPLOS International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming
Languages and Operating Systems
55 A*
AISTATS International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics 57 A
AIED International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education 21 A
ICAPS International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling 25 A*
AAMAS International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems 40 A*
ARES International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security 24 B
ICB International Conference on Biometrics 29 Not in CORE
ICCC International Conference on Computational Creativity 20 Unranked
EvoMUSART International Conference on Computational Intelligence in Music, Sound, Art
and Design
- Not in CORE
COLING International Conference on Computational Linguistics 49 A
Page 24 of 27

CAV International Conference on Computer Aided Verification 38 A*
ICCCN International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks 25 A
CONCUR International Conference on Concurrency Theory ~19 A
ICDE International Conference on Data Engineering 56 A*
ICDT International Conference on Database Theory 18* A
ICDCS International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems 39 A
ICDAR International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition 35 A
EDM International Conference on Educational Data Mining 29 B
EDBT International Conference on Extending Database Technology 27 A
FC International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data Security 46 B
ICFP International Conference on Functional Programming - proceedings now
published in journal - Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages
- A*
FASE International Conference on Fundamental Approaches to Software
Engineering
19* B
MobileHCI International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile
Devices and Services
30 B
ICIS International Conference on Information Systems 30 A*
ITS International Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems ~11 A
IUI International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces 30 A
LREC International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation 38 C
LAK International Conference on Learning Analytics and Knowledge 40 Not in CORE
ICLR International Conference on Learning Representations 203 Not in CORE
ICML International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) 171 A*
Page 25 of 27

ICMI International Conference on Multimodal Interfaces (ICMI) 33 B
ICONIP International Conference on Neural Information Processing 22 A
NIME International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression 17* Not in CORE
PACT International Conference on Parallel Architectures and Compilation
Techniques
23 A
ICPP International Conference on Parallel Processing (ICPP) 22 A
ICPR International Conference on Pattern Recognition 35 B
PKC International Conference on Practice and Theory in Public Key Cryptography 29 B
CP International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint
Programming (CP)
21 A
RECOMB International Conference on Research in Computational Molecular Biology 23 B
ICSE International Conference on Software Engineering 75 A*
KR International Conference on the Principles of Knowledge Representation and
Reasoning
~19 A*
TEI International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction 27 A
ISWC International Conference on The Semantic Web 37 A
ASIACRYPT International Conference on the Theory and Application of Cryptology and
Information Security
42 A
EUROCRYPT International Conference on Theory and Applications of Cryptographic
Techniques (EUROCRYPT)
61 A*
TACAS International Conference on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and
Analysis of Systems
33 A
UMAP International Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization 26 B
VLDB International Conference on Very Large Databases 70 A*
CRYPTO International Cryptology Conference (CRYPTO) 52 A*
Page 26 of 27

IJCAI International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence 95 A*
IJCAR International Joint Conference on Automated Reasoning (merger of CADE,
FroCoS and TABLEAUX)
19 A*
IJCNN International Joint Conference on Neural Networks 46 A
ISMIR International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference 36 Not in CORE
CGO International Symposium on Code Generation and Optimization 26 A
ISCA International Symposium on Computer Architecture 55 A* (Not primarily CS)
ESEM International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and
Measurement
21 A
SEA International Symposium on Experimental Algorithms 16* B
ISWC International Symposium on Wearable Computers 24 A*
ISSRE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering 21 A
ISSTA International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis 36 A
ISSAC International Symposium on Symbolic and Algebraic Computation 17 A*
PACIS Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems (PACIS) 23 A
IWCMC International Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing Conference 25 B
SemEval International Workshop on Semantic Evaluation 50 Not in CORE
IMC Internet Measurement Conference 37 A
MICCAI Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention 61 A
NDSS Network and Distributed System Security Symposium 71 A*
NIPS Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) 198 A*
PAKDD Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (PAKDD) 23 A
SAT Theory and Applications of Satisfiability Testing 23 A
RSS Robotics: Science and Systems 51 A*
SDM SIAM International Conference on Data Mining 33 A
Page 27 of 27

WiOpt International Symposium on Modeling and Optimization in Mobile, Ad Hoc,
and Wireless Networks
21 B
OSDI Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI) ~49 A*
STACS Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science (STACS) 21 A
WWW The Web Conference (previously International World Wide Web Conference) 80 A*
SoCG Symposium on Computational Geometry 20 A