The research jargon glossary
A skimmable A to Z of the words researchers use like everyone already knows them.
The research jargon glossary
Researchers speak a dialect. Nobody hands you the dictionary, so here it is: the terms you will hear in your first year, one line each. Skim now, return whenever a meeting confuses you.
A to Z
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Abstract | The 150 to 250 word summary at the top of a paper; often the only part people read |
| AoE | Anywhere on Earth: a deadline timezone, meaning you have time until the last place on the planet hits midnight |
| APC | Article processing charge, the fee for gold open access publishing |
| Artifact | The code, data, or materials behind a paper, sometimes formally evaluated for a badge |
| arXiv | The big free preprint server, pronounced “archive” |
| Camera-ready | The final, publisher-formatted version of an accepted paper; the name predates cameras being involved |
| Citation | A formal pointer to prior work; also the unit of academic credit |
| CFP | Call for papers: a venue’s announcement of topic, deadline, and rules |
| Corresponding author | The listed author who handles all email about the paper |
| Desk reject | Rejection by the editor or chairs before any review, usually for scope or rule violations |
| Double blind | Review where authors and reviewers are hidden from each other, see peer review, decoded |
| DOI | A permanent ID for a paper, like 10.1145/xxxxx; the reliable way to cite |
| et al. | Latin “and others”; “Smith et al.” means Smith plus the rest of the author list |
| h-index | A researcher metric: h papers with at least h citations each; treat with skepticism |
| Impact factor | Average recent citations per paper for a journal; a prestige proxy, also treat with skepticism |
| IRB | Institutional Review Board: the ethics committee that must approve studies involving humans |
| Keynote | The big invited talk that opens a conference day |
| Lit review | Reading and summarizing the existing work on a topic |
| LNCS | Springer’s yellow proceedings series, see ACM, IEEE, and friends |
| Major revision | Journal verdict: substantial fixes required, then re-review |
| Novelty | Whether the work does something genuinely new; reviewers’ favorite axe |
| PC | Program committee: the reviewer pool for a conference |
| PI | Principal investigator: the professor who leads the lab and holds the grant |
| Poster | A printed summary you present standing beside it at a conference session |
| Preprint | A paper shared publicly before peer review |
| Proceedings | The published collection of a conference’s accepted papers |
| Rebuttal | The authors’ short response to reviews before the decision |
| Related work | The paper section positioning your work among prior papers |
| Reproducibility | Whether others can rerun your work and get the same results |
| SIG | Special interest group; ACM’s subcommunities (SIGPLAN, SIGGRAPH) |
| Single blind | Review where reviewers know the authors but not vice versa |
| Submission number | Your paper’s anonymous ID during review; you will memorize it involuntarily |
| Supplementary material | Extra appendices, proofs, or videos submitted alongside the paper |
| Survey | A paper mapping an entire research area |
| Venue | Any place papers get published, see journals, conferences, and workshops |
| Version of record | The official published copy of a paper |
How to use this
Do not memorize it. Bookmark it, then go read something real: the paper anatomy tour shows these words in their natural habitat, and what a research paper actually is ties the big ones together.