In our seminar, you should learn to present research results concisely, both in writing (Seminar Thesis) and speaking (Seminar Presentation). Additionally, you should learn to give proper feedback for both the presentation and the thesis of other students in this seminar.

To achieve these goals, we have the following main parts in our seminar (in chronological order):

1. Submission of a preliminary version of the seminar paper.
   This submission is intended to provide a very early feedback on your paper.
2. Submission of a pre-final version of the seminar paper.
   This is a finished version of your seminar paper that is then reviewed by other students in the seminar.
3. Submission of the reviews.
   Each student is assigned and has to submit two reviews of their peers papers. The reviews you receive should help you to improve your own paper.
4. Presentation of your paper.
   This presentation is held in front of the whole seminar, and you grade each other, the presentation that receives the highest grade from their peers receives the “Best Presentation” award. (This grade is independent of the grade you receive from us for the presentation.)
5. Submission of the final version of the seminar paper.
   This version includes the feedback from the reviews and is the one graded by us.

Additionally, we have presentations on the topics of research, writing, review, and presentation skills.

Dates

• The topics are distributed in the first week of the semester.
• The presentations of the seminar papers will be held as a block seminar at the end of the semester.
  • The date is TBD

Deadlines

• TBD: Partial Seminar Paper Submission
• TBD: Final Seminar Paper Submission
• TBD: Peer Review Submission
• TBD: Presentation Slide Submission (you can still change your slides a bit before the talk)
• TBD: Camera-Ready Seminar Paper Submission

The seminar will be organized over Panda. Deadlines are till the end of the day (23:59 local time/as according to Panda).

Presentations

We will have five meetings, with different topics which will (hopefully) be helpful for you to pass the seminar:

• TBD Introduction (TBD)
• TBD Research Skills (TBD)
• TBD Writing Skills (TBD)
• TBD Review Skills (TBD)
• TBD Presentation Skills (TBD)

They are part of the “All Seminars” course on PANDA, you can find all information there.

Topics

The central topic of this seminar are scientific papers published by developers of censorship infrastructure. This gives you unique insights into censors' architecture and design principles. Two examples of relevant papers are

A high throughput distributed log stream processing system for network security analysis

Identifying VPN Servers through Graph-Represented Behaviors

Grading, Demands, and Expectations

The final grade consists of your presentation (30%), your paper (60%), and your reviews (10%). Additionally, you must meet all deadlines. Getting 0% (i.e., not submitting/not presenting) means failing the seminar. Attendance for all presentations of other students is mandatory.

Seminar Paper

Preliminary Version

• at least 5 pages of text (excluding title page, table of contents, references, figures, …) using our LaTeX template (unchanged)
• describes the main paper problem
• a short version of your paper (approximately an A4 page) that summarizes and interprets the original paper. Think Wikipedia-style short summary in Markdown

Final Version

• Essay written according to the standards of a scientific paper.
  Unless otherwise discussed with us:
  • Your paper should summarize the original paper.
  • You should introduce concepts so that any other student in the seminar can understand your paper. (This does not include basic cryptographic/computer science terms.)
  • Like the preliminary, the final paper version has to have the short A4 version of your paper attached as a Markdown file.
• It MUST be written using our LaTeX template (unchanged).
• We expect around 15 pages of content, the hard lower limit is 9 pages of text (excluding title page, table of contents, references, figures, …). In most cases, the paper should not be longer than 20 pages of content.

Presentation

• 20 minutes presentation. 5 minutes discussion and questions.

The best presentation will be awarded! More information will be given in the first meeting.

Reviews

We will follow a peer review procedure similar to scientific publications:

• You submit your paper on PANDA
• Some (2) peers (other students) review your submission:
  • Read and understand the submitted paper
  • Criticize your paper
  • Make recommendations on how to improve
  • Be honest, polite, and helpful when writing your reviews
• The reviews you receive will not influence your final grade (but you should address/apply them in your final version)
• Each student has to write 2 reviews (each 1–2 pages)