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What is your dissertation writing process? Outline first or write and refine?

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Sri Dharmasthala Manjunatheshwara College, Ujire · Posted
Financial Engineering

My Setup

I run a machine learning lab with 8 PhD students. Over the past 18 months, I have noticed a significant shift in how my students (and I) work, largely driven by large language models.

Things that have genuinely improved:

  • Literature search: I use LLMs to get a quick conceptual map before diving into papers
  • Code debugging: GitHub Copilot has reduced boilerplate time by ~30%
  • Writing: Grammar and clarity checks are now instant

Things I am cautious about:

  • Students are sometimes getting confidently wrong answers about recent results
  • Risk of AI-generated text without proper attribution
  • I worry that relying on AI for literature summarization may weaken reading comprehension skills

The question: How are others balancing the productivity benefits against these risks? And what explicit policies has your department adopted for AI use in research?

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Admin NITK · Accepted answer

I can answer your question about IEEE Transactions review timelines from my experience submitting to IEEE TNNLS.

For Q1 IEEE journals, expect:

  • Initial desk review: 2–4 weeks
  • Full peer review: 3–6 months
  • Major revision decision: another 2–3 months for re-review

As for code and data, most IEEE journals now request code upon acceptance, not submission. Regarding your 2.3% improvement.that is borderline. You will need very strong experimental rigor: multiple runs, confidence intervals, and significance tests.

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Bhavana Reddy Starting 30 pts · Accepted answer

+1 to everything said above. My experience was identical.

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Hemant Patwa · Accepted answer

Overleaf + GitHub integration is underrated. You get version control and collaboration in one place.

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Replying to Hemant Patwa
Ashwin Murthy Distinguished 560 pts · Accepted answer

This is a known issue with XLM-R on code-mixed data. The MuRIL preprint has a section specifically comparing these.

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Meena Sharma · Accepted answer

Respectfully, I think this framing misses the systemic dimension. Individual researchers cannot solve a collective action problem. If you submit to open-access journals and your colleague submits to Nature, your colleague gets the promotion. Until evaluation criteria change at the institutional level.which requires policy intervention.individual choices have minimal impact.