First of all, please note, that this is an e-course. All course materials can be found here:
http://www.linkgroup.hu/education.php
For the completion of the course a 5 to 10 page essay is needed
1. Preparation to write the essay
To write the essay you should read these 3 basic papers/books first:
http://barabasi.com/networksciencebook/
http://linkgroup.hu/weaklinks_EN.php
http://linkgroup.hu/docs/13PharmTher.pdf
English slides of the lectures can be downloaded and the voice recording of the lectures can be accessed here: http://www.linkgroup.hu/education.php
The essay should use minimum 3 additional research paper references besides the 3 compulsory references listed above. You may explore these additional papers by finding the papers cited in the above 3 works, or by searching PubMed here:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/advanced
(changing All Fields to Title+Abstract and using phrases in quotation marks, like “signaling network” will help to reduce the number of papers found)
or Google Scholar here http://scholar.google.com
Papers found can be downloaded from http://scholar.google.com
2. Format requirements
Please note that larger font size than 12 and larger space between lines than double spaced, as well as larger margin than one inch (2.5 cm) can not be used. Also note, that the space of figures should be deducted from the length reaching the minimal 5 pages. Besides these there is no particular format-requirement of the essay. (However, well-formatted, “neat” essays will reach a higher grade.) Pictures and Tables are most welcome but please make sure that they are substantiating your message and are not just illustrations. Please cite the original source of Figure/Table. (If you make your own pictures and tables, these will upgrade the mark given to your work.)
If you want a higher mark, please make sure that you cited all references used in the paper and applied the same style for all references like e.g. this one:
1. Csermely P, Korcsmáros T, Kiss HJ, London G, Nussinov R. (2013) Structure and dynamics of molecular networks: a novel paradigm of drug discovery: a comprehensive review. Pharmacol Ther. 138: 333-408.
3. Proof that you have read the 3 basic references and listened to the online lectures
Your essay must give a proof that you have read the 3 basic references cited above and downloadable from https://linkgroup.hu/education.php as well as listened to the online lectures available there as well. You may provide this proof by defining some basic network properties such as small-worldness, scale-freeness (hubs), modules, bridges, bottlenecks, hierarchy, network core and periphery. The second part of the proof will be that you will explain the presence of these properties in your example network, as detailed below. Without this proof the essay will not be accepted.
4. Definition of the „new idea” which should be included to the essay
Your essay MUST contain a new idea. “New idea” means that you should make a summary of a certain, network related-topic using your own words summing up related segments of the 3 papers above and combining the 3 additional research papers to your arguments. Note that this new idea will not come from AI-answers since they (currently) use a limited database and give very similar “new” ideas to every user. Your essay will be one of the close to two hundred essays submitted this year. In case you use AI to include the “new idea”, your essay will be very similar to all others and will be rejected.
Feel free to formulate open, research questions (you may find some of these open questions in my book, try to find similar ones), or expose an idea as a possible solution to a network-based problem, based on the literature evidence you read and cited in your essay. Please note that simple summaries of 3+3 papers will not be accepted. These also mean that the title and content of the essay is up to your decision. However, please note that the essay has to be linked to networks. Otherwise it will be rejected and you have to submit a new one, to get a valid mark.
Potential solutions to these requirements are found at the end of this description.
5. Definition of „network-related”
“Network-related” means here that you have to apply the basic concepts and definitions of network science found in the 3 intro papers above (such as hubs, small-world-ness, modules, bridges, bottlenecks, network core/periphery, hierarchy etc. etc.) to a specific network or a specific field described in the additional 3 papers as references.
6. Specific warning about copy-pasted sentences and copying essays
Essays which contain copy-paste parts of published material will be rejected. Please note that your essay should not contain ANY copy-pasted sentence from the internet. Please note that copying an essay of another student is a serious ethical misconduct for both the student who copied, and the student who allowed to get his/her essay to be copied. Therefore, the student whose essay was copied will have his/her formerly achieved mark revoked (please do not share your essay file; if you do this despite this warning please make sure that you warn the other student that copying any part of that is a serious ethical misconduct which will be penalized to both). In more serious cases an official report will be filed to the Dean of the respective Faculty asking for the start an official procedure by the university to examine the misconduct. Please note that ALL essays submitted will be a subject of an automatic computerized cross-check against ALL essays submitted ever before in this course. Therefore copying any sentence from any former essay will be automatically detected. Our program detects any two words written in an identical sentence, so please do not attempt to copy even small parts of any former essay. Rewriting of a former essay will also be detected.
7. Specific warning about the proper use of artificial intelligence-derived texts
If you use artificial intelligence to help your essay (which you – obviously – may), make sure that you double-checked the sentences you received, since they do contain obvious errors, which may lead to the rejection of your essay. In addition, compose the fragments of the information you received to an intelligent, fluent whole text containing cross-references between pieces of information throughout showing that you did understand the AI-derived information – and not only copied. Essays being a collection of fragmented texts without cross-references between different segments of the text will also be rejected. Please note that the proof that you have read the three basic references as well as you listened to the lectures must be provided to obtain a valid mark. How to give this proof: see the details above.
Please note that current AI methodologies are specifically wrong when citing research papers. They cite irrelevant papers and give you completely different web-page links than the paper cited. In case your essay contains such an error it will be immediately rejected, since it will become obvious that you did not read the original paper you cited.
7. Sample essays receiving a mark “5” before
Please find at this webs page 5 sample essays receiving a mark “5” before:
http://linkgroup.hu/education.php
————Addendum————————————
In an ideal case, your essay containing novel idea should have 3 parts:
Part A sums up some major concepts of network structure or dynamics such as hubs, modules, bridges, hierarchy, core/periphery or network perturbations, spread in networks, jams in networks, damage of networks, attractor changes of networks etc. etc. This can be done using the 3 basic literature I gave. This should be 1 or 1.5 pages.
Part B sums up the properties of a selected network which may be chosen as a reference paper from the 3 basic literature or any other network of your choice including e.g. the network of your own friends. This is already a “new idea” since the selection and description of the real-world network is your own work. This should be 1 or 1.5 pages.
Part C is the really “new idea”, where you apply the basic concepts described in part A to the network described in part B. If the network was analyzed in the original paper from one point of view already (like hubs) please extend your rational to judge the potential other properties of the network like modules, bridges etc. If some of you may want to measure these (which is NOT necessary) you may download programs for this here
http://linkgroup.hu/links.php#Networkanalysis
and network data from here
http://linkgroup.hu/links.php#Networkdatasets
Part C should be 2 to 3 pages.
Alternatively, you may assess some properties of a network. Network data can be found here http://linkgroup.hu/links.php#Networkdatasets
(You may also evaluate your own friendship network, too.)
Network analysis methods can be found here
http://linkgroup.hu/links.php#Networkanalysis
In this case please make some arguments evaluating the data you received.
