The specific criteria for the evaluation of your paper may vary for your seminar.

Nevertheless, here are some general criteria that will typically be applied to evaluate your paper:

• Bibliography
  • Entries correctly formated, e.g. conference papers mention the conference.
  • All entries are referenced.
  • For all references there is an entry.
  • Thumb Rule of the scientific quality of a publication based on the strength of the respective review process:
    Journals > Conferences > Workshops > Technical Reports ~ Books (> Online Presentations > Blogs ~ Newsgroups > Website)
  • Direct citation of Wikipedia should be avoided and the correct further references should be used instead.
  • Online Representations and Blogs/Websites/Newsgroups should only be cited for an opinion of the respective author and need further critical discussion based on academic research.

• Citations
  • Papers referenced for statements that are in the focus of the paper (and not just randomly touched).
  • All quotes are identifiable as quotes (E.g. “within quotation marks” or as separate paragraph) and reference is given.
  • Less then 10% of the text should be quotes.
  • Plagiarism is a serious offense!
  • Books should be referenced with the page numbers.
  • Simple rephrasing is still a plagiarism, for further information see this article on correct paraphrasing.

• Content
  • Are the main aspects of the topic covered?
  • Is there a Golden Thread? How is the logical structure and “reading flow”?
  • Are the newest publications cited?
  • Are the summaries of publications correct?
  • Are the ideas illustrated with examples (The literature might present different examples. Nevertheless it is highly desirable that you use just one or two examples to illustrate the different aspects covered by the literature.)
  • Relevance of the content
  • [In case you present own ideas: Originality of the ideas.]

• Argumentation
  • Nothing stated without justification
  • Sound logic
  • Presented in clear flow

• Readability
  • Correct spelling
  • Correct grammar
  • Introductions and summaries (Say, what you are going to explain - Explain it - Say what you explained)
  • Non trivial terms are defined before (!) usage
  • Consistency of used formalization (Don't change names for functions, variables etc. randomly, just because you are relying on different papers.)

• Figures
  • Own creations are strongly preferred!
  • If figures are not own creation, references are required!
  • Figures should be referenced by the text.
  • Explaining text (in smaller font) should allow to understand the figure on its own.
  • Keep your figures elegantly simple.