We’ve written before about doing research in high school, and how exactly you can both conduct it, and write and publish research papers. Doing research is one of the best ways to show colleges your academic passions, and for you to explore areas often not covered by high school coursework.
Finding a good place to share your research is often a challenge for high school students; many professional journals and conferences do not accept submissions from high school students. In this article then, we’re going to go over one excellent option for publication, the IEEE family of conferences and journals. We’ll cover what these are, how they review papers submitted to them, and some that Ivy Scholars’ students have published in before. Let’s get started!
What is IEEE?
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a large professional organization for, as the name suggests, electrical and electronics engineers. Beyond this, they have a large focus on technology generally, and publish a significant amount of research on the frontiers of technology. They especially are one of the premier places that computer science research is published. While they aren’t alone here, they are one of the best known and respected research venues.
You do not need to be a member of IEEE to publish or present with them, though membership may be a good idea to gain access to what they do. There are reduced membership dues for students; while it isn’t necessary to join, we recommend investigating whether or not it would benefit you.
Most of their access for students is through conferences. IEEE sponsors conferences at a lot of colleges; these are generally aimed at undergraduates, but almost all of them will accept work from high school students if it is done at a sufficient academic level. These conferences all have their own themes, both broadly and annually. For example, a conference may be devoted to computer science research generally, and choose one year to focus on novel applications of LLM systems.
Where to Publish with IEEE
Ivy Scholars has helped students present their research in a number of IEEE conferences. Here is a sample of them, to give you an idea of what these conferences are like, and how they operate.
IEEE International Conference on Application of Information and Communication Technologies
This is a true international conference, and is held abroad as frequently, or more so, than it is held in the US. Their subject matters vary, but tend to cover information technology, including data science, big data, cyber security, machine learning, and the application of information communication technologies (ICT) to various fields.
Papers must be submitted online, and must meet the conference’s formatting standards. All submitted papers will be peer reviewed by the organizers of the conference.
Note that they expect all authors to present their papers at the conference. As this conference is often held outside of the US, this may be prohibitive for some students. Work with your mentor to determine if this is feasible for you, or if you should focus on submitting your paper to a conference which allows for poster presentations instead. Papers which are not presented may not be published in the conference proceedings.
IEEE International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications (ICMLA)
As the name suggests, this conference covers all aspects of machine learning, and how that can be applied to different facets of daily life or other industries. This conference may be held in the US or abroad, depending on the year.
Submitted papers must meet all of their formatting guidelines. Papers will be subject to a double blind review, and must cover original research. Papers may be submitted for oral or poster presentation, which have different standards. We recommend students do poster presentation papers in most circumstances. Information for poster presentations is here. You will need to attend in person to hang and discuss your poster, which may be an issue for some students due to scheduling.
IEEE MIT Undergraduate Research Technology Conference (URTC)
Held annually at MIT, this is our most popular destination for research presentations, as it is the most accessible to students, both in terms of research level, and in terms of physical access. The conference is run for and by undergraduates (both form MIT and around the country), but high school students are also welcome to submit papers for inclusion.
Submitted papers must meet their guidelines; in general our students submit for poster presentations. It is encouraged to attend the conference to discuss and present your poster; this also gives you a chance to visit MIT’s campus, and perhaps other colleges in the Boston area. Presenting here does not give a specific boost when applying to MIT, but can still bring you into contact with professors or others from the school.
IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence (SSCI)
Another moving international conference, held in a different city globally each year. The conference focuses broadly on the applications of computer intelligence, and accepts papers within that category. They accept papers for both oral and poster presentation; students generally benefit most from submitting posters.
All submitted papers must comply with their guidelines. Submitted papers will be subject to double blind review before being selected for inclusion. You are encouraged and expected to make your data and code available upon acceptance of your paper, or to have a justification for why you cannot. They recommend having a stable link to the code somewhere on your poster.
All papers must be presented, whether orally or via a poster, and all authors are expected to attend the conference. Depending on location, this may not be the best venue for submissions.
How IEEE Evaluates Submissions
When a paper is submitted to a journal or conference, it is reviewed before being accepted and published. This is to make sure your research is valid, and conducted to the standards the organization holds. This is true of IEEE conferences as well; while each has their own slightly unique approach as decided by their organizers, overall they are looking for the same things, and review research in the same ways.
When you submit research to IEEE, it is reviewed by two independent peer reviewers. These reviewers do not know who you are, nor do they read each other’s comments; each reacts to your research independently, and reviews it based on specific metrics. Depending on their review, your research may be accepted, rejected, or returned for further revisions.
The following metrics are what you are graded on by reviewers:
- PROBLEM STATEMENT AND GOALS: Are the goals of the work/project well-developed and explicitly stated?
- SCHOLARSHIP: Is the paper grounded in relevant literature?
- METHODS: Rate quality of methods and/or research approaches. Methods may be qualitative, quantitative, mixed, or more specific.
- RESULTS (Full Paper): Are the analyses and results thorough and appropriate?
- WIP Results: Rate the Work-in-Progress analysis and results.
- CONCLUSIONS (Full Paper): Rate the quality of conclusions and future work (if any) for this full paper.
- WIP Conclusions: Rate the Work-in-progress conclusions and the scope for future work
- WRITING: Rate the writing style and mechanics of the paper/abstract/proposal.
- Poster Introduction and Background: Rate the Introduction and Background sections of the abstract. Are the problem and goal statements clear? Is context/background provided?
- Poster Methods/Process: Rate the described methods and process. as applicable.
- Poster Results and Future Work: Rate the Results and Future Work sections of the abstract.
For each of these, you are given a ranking of 0-3, depending on how well the work you did aligned with their view of what ideal research should be. Research is accepted if all of these come back as 2 or higher.
In general, these are going through the same steps your research mentor took you through in formulating your research and drafting your paper, and then judging how well you executed on that. They are looking for research which clearly states its goals, has well described and thorough methodologies, well supported conclusions, and with an analysis that fully explains what happens, and what the impacts of this research are.
You will be graded on this metric by both peer reviewers; they may assign different scores on different categories, but tend to be consistent. Peer reviewers are all experienced researchers, and know what to look for when reading a paper in this discipline.
In addition to the metric rankings, reviewers will also give a sentence or two of feedback on the paper as a whole. This feedback is meant to be constructive, illustrating what you did well, or noting places where you may need to add more focus. Here are examples of feedback received by a past IS student on a paper submission:
- Extremely interesting paper! You did a very good job of going through the steps/procedures that you took in great detail. The explanation of the results were also very well done. Definitely continue working on this project in the future as it could make a huge difference in the world!
- Well organized and well written paper. Author should mention where this work was carried out.
This feedback is quite valuable, as it shows where you are doing well in your research and writing, and where you should focus your efforts on improving for the next time you submit a research paper.
Final Thoughts
Doing research is an excellent way to stand out to colleges, but the only way for them to know how legitimate that research was is to disseminate it. The point of research is to create something new and novel, and then to share that new knowledge with the broader field, so other researchers can build on it in turn. This is how human knowledge increases as a whole, and progress is made.
There are many possible venues to share your own research, depending on topic and field. We hope this article gave you a good introduction to one, and showed you just what you can accomplish as a high school researcher. If you are looking for help pursuing your own research projects, Ivy Scholars research mentors can help. These are professional researchers with years of experience under their belts, who can teach you exactly how to conduct and publish your own research study. Schedule a free consultation today to learn more about how we can help you.
