The Purposes of Starting this Publication: Computer Science Literature Review

The world of computer science (CS) is changing faster than ever before. New start ups, new products and new researches using the ideas from the latest CS researches are sprouting up faster than ever before. One day, I felt that I was falling behind the latest trends. So, making the best efforts to keep myself afloat on the latest updates related to CS, I attempted to follow endless articles on TechCrunch, attend various tech talks and conferences, read bunch of different papers and participate in open-source projects. However, each of these tasks required significant amount of effort and I found myself with not enough time. Also, I found myself becoming more narrow-sighted to the field that I was spending the most time on. Making things worse, as I grew more narrow-sighted, I found it becoming harder and harder to consume materials from other fields of computer science, as I lacked the latest background knowledge required for the material.

So, while trying to finding ways to easily accustom myself to other fields in computer science, I soon realized that there is no place where I can quickly and easily consume easy summaries of what is happening in CS academia. Academic papers are too difficult and time consuming for a newbie to just grab and read. Also, I couldn’t find any blog that was broad enough or gives enough background knowledge of the material that I was reading. So I felt that it is a right timing to create a medium publication that anyone can come and quickly learn about a quick overview of researches in computer science.

The main goal of this publication is as follows.

1. Provide quick and easy summary on the latest papers in the computer science research. This is not to provide a deep insight on every paper that is being published. Rather, it is a meant to be a place where people can come and get a quick grasp on the latest papers and entice them to go read the actual paper.
2. Bringing more information to the public about the research that we are doing, which can also advertise our research.
3. Lowering the learning curve for anyone to learn about what is going on in various fields of computer science by providing more broader and easier background.
4. Allowing students to grow habits and techniques in reading and critiquing research papers and also to communicate knowledge in a simple fashion.

To stick to these goals, I hope to follow these principles for this publication.

1. All posts will be focused at readers who do not know the material at all. The writers will focus on the overview and the background, and not focus on the correctness or the minute details of the paper.
2. We will cover most areas of computer science, but will mostly likely focus on practical researches that can be easily consumed by anyone.
3. Any profits from the publications will be donated for a better cause.

I hope this publication can grow to be a place where anyone can quickly grab the latest and the coolest information on what’s going on in the world of CS!

We are looking for more writers in all fields of CS!

I believe that one of the main and most important habit that a grad student must have is to read papers at a regular fashion. I thought that being a paper reviewer with a light amount of responsibility gives incentives to read more papers. So, I personally started this blog for me to record what I was reading and I found it really really helpful. I hope that more can join my experience and have a great learning experience in the process! Feel free to email me at yo2seol@cs.stanford.edu if interest!