Friends,
Karel's proposal that we involve our research students on the
editorial and review side is excellent. I purposely repost it in
full, below.
The problem of demanding that students publish before completion --
and it is a problem -- came up in a debate on this list one year ago.
I'm going to Oguzhan Ozcan's question and my reply next.
One thing that did not come up is the extraordinary suggest that
Karel offers -- get research students involved in processes that will
help them to learn the ropes and master the skills of publishing so
that they will be ready to participate in the process as authors.
Anyone who nows edits or reviews recognizes the current overload of
immature and poorly developed material. We discard much of the
material we reject on basic grounds -- bad writing, unclear ideas,
poor explanations, failure to meet journal format standards. Often,
failure to meet journal format standards serves as a proxy for
rejecting articles that simply don't merit a full review. We cannot
spend our entire lives writing reviews.
I've got an odd review on my desk right now. The author asked some
good questions, but failed to address these questions in a robust
way. Right now, my reply has taken nearly a week or thinking and
writing in fits and starts -- to unpack the problems and answer
respectfully has taken nearly five thousand words, a reply as long as
the manuscript that occasioned it. Normally, I don't use this much
time, but the author asked good questions. Still, a normal review
takes as much as six hours. Today's system would break down if every
research student were to submit one article per year.
There are ways around this, and Karel shows one good way forward.
This would help to ensure that students who do submit articles are
ready to submit the kind of article that treats the subject matter
well -- while using editor and reviewer time respectfully.
Ken Friedman
--
Karel van der Waarde wrote:
Dear all,
Terrence Love stated: "There simply isn't enough journals in design
research" and asked for 'thoughts'.
There is a clear practical conflict between 'the need to publish' and
the available capacity.
A very practical solution is to focus a part of the PhD on 'editing
and reviewing'. Although PhD-students must be able to publish towards
the end of their studies, it is far more important that they are
familiar with the absolute details of the publishing process.
Reviewing and editing papers will introduce PhD-students to several issues:
- contents: is it new enough? (and how do I check that?)
- language: is it publishable and is it clear (and how do I check that?)
- presentation: can these results be presented better? (and how do I
check that?)
- are the references suitable and appropriate? (and how do I check that?)
+ all practical issues (file formats, deadlines, personality clashes, ...)
At the moment, the editing and reviewing of papers and conferences is
done as an unpaid spare time activity. (Aren't Sunday mornings and
long flights great for reviews?) This has reached its limits.
Terry mentioned large numbers of papers. Each would require at least
two reviewers and some time to edit before publication. Finding
suitable reviewers and editors has always been very difficult. The
figures Terry gave make this practically impossible.
It is fairly easy to teach and evaluate a PhD-students developments
and achievements in reviewing and editing. 'How many papers did you
review?', 'How many conference presentations?', 'Can you show exactly
what you did?: original draft, your comments, second draft, your
comments, published paper.' It is also fairly easy to interpret the
Bologna publishing standard/DEST points/RAE in this way. It should
not be: 'the number of publications in selected journals', but 'the
involvement in academic publishing, as shown in reviewing, editing
AND publishing'.
Of course, PhD students must publish - it is part of an academic
training. However, a PhD cannot depend on the number of published
papers. The time-span of a PhD rarely matches publishing schedules
and editors should not be put under pressure to 'publish before the
viva'. Alternatively, the starting dates of PhDs should not be
determined by academic years, but by the deadlines of academic
journals.
--
Ken Friedman
Professor
Dean, Swinburne Design
Swinburne University of Technology
Melbourne, Australia
+61 3 92.14.68.69 Tlf Swinburne
+61 404 830 462 Mobile
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