Here i wonder why we are pushing from publication to 'excellent'  
publication.   Given the amount that needs to be published...  
excellence is highly unlikely from any early career researcher, much  
like it is unlikely from an early-career designer, which is why most  
work early in their career in some sort of studio, with others.  Some  
people will do well and get one or two excellent papers in their first  
5 years as  a professor... but most won't.  Even people coming out  
with super dissertations don't tend to make substantively more  
excellent papers.    The standard of excellence isn't really what  
research is about in any case, research is about nibbling away on  
little things until they add up to something bigger, it is when done  
right huge periods of boredom and failure marked by short periods of  
excitement and joy.  It takes a good long while to discover something  
new, to research something enough so... you aren't going to be merely  
a footnote.  This is why when you read self-reports of researchers  
working on a problem... you are hearing things like 80-100 hour work  
weeks for months on end.   So... I think we need to tone down the talk  
of excellence for every paper, especially given assessment exercises  
and the increasing need to publish just about everything.

We have to realize that the goal of the paper is not really to  
convince someone to give you a job either, or to develop any other  
type of portfolio.   The paper's sole goal is to disseminate  
knowledge.  The paper might contribute to such a portfolio, but that's  
not its purpose at all, and the confusion between careers and research  
is hugely problematic and worrisome.

Patents btw.. are publications, at least by definition.  A patent must  
be published to be a patent.  That is the trade off that patents give  
you.  The state says... 'we will give you monopoly rights on this  
invention for x years, if you share it with the world by  
publication.'  If you want to protect that invention longer than 20  
years, such as the recipe of coca cola... your only option is to  
create a "Trade Secret", which is not published.  A paper on the other  
hand, unless encumbered by patent pending marks, is only protected by  
copyright, which doesn't prevent use of the innovation at all, as the  
transition from paper to object is usually transformative.  Also what  
is in papers are usually not innovations, but... ideas and facts,  
which cannot be patented in most countries.

For the purposes of tenure review, I'm thinking patents outweigh  
papers given the rights.  Especially if the patents have clear markets  
and aren't merely patent spam.  (much like many papers are paper spam).






On Jun 1, 2009, at 6:06 AM, David Durling wrote:

> Mattias Arvola wrote:
>
>> patents are not publications (even though some people count them).
>
>
> An invention, an innovation, a novel step of some kind, some  
> incremental change that is new, might be said to be 'published' when  
> it has been subject to close peer review, where there is an enduring  
> record in the public domain, and where it can be searched for and  
> located for all to see and scrutinise, and for future scholars to  
> follow or build upon.
>
> A _full_ patent has all these attributes. Compared with some  
> journals and conference proceedings, I would consider it to be a  
> very solid publication (patent _applications_ do not hold the same  
> value because they have not necessarily been subject to deep  
> scrutiny).
>
> As Chris Rust suggests, paper or product is not 'either/or', and all  
> evidence may form part of a portfolio that seeks to persuade an  
> audience of the merits of the case and/or demonstrate the research  
> process.
>
> I sometimes have the feeling that for some, the peer reviewed and  
> printed [on real paper] journal article is the only means of  
> publishing. Some journals are very good and have excellent peer  
> review processes, some journals do not. The fact that the work is  
> published in a journal does not guarantee excellence. A few  
> conferences uphold high standards of peer review (and have very high  
> rates of attrition), and some conferences accept almost everybody  
> who applies.
>
> I often say to early career researchers that they must be critical  
> of the face value of _every_ publication, and seek to verify it by  
> carefully considering and checking the research process described  
> and its results, and by consulting as many other sources as possible.
>
> David
>
> .........................................................................
>
> David Durling FDRS PhD   http://durling.tel
> .........................................................................