I hesitate to get into the battle comparing exhibitions and the practice of
art or design with research publications, but I must correct one item of
fact that Ken got wrong.
Ken stated:
On Sat, Dec 4, 2010 at 7:30 PM, Ken Friedman <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> nearly no student manages to publish a single-
> author article in a refereed journal before earning his or her PhD. This is
> true
> in all fields. One is normally on salary as a full-time member of academic
> staff
> before published one single-author article let alone five.
>
Sorry, Ken but this is demonstrably false, Today, it is quite common for
graduate students in psychology, cognitive science, or computer science (to
select three fields I know well) to publish single-author, high quality
papers in some of the best journals (or highly refereed conferences) in
their respective fields. This includes the CHI conferences of the ACM (the
Computer Science society) which are highly refereed. How do I know? I've
been a journal editor and reviewer in these fields. I still am a reviewer
and am still on numerous editorial boards.
In fact, some academics claim that it is necessary for graduate students to
have published solely authored papers in respectable places in order to get
a job in today's highly competitive market. I have been on hiring committees
in Computer science that turn down new PhDs for lack of publications. So
Ken's statement is not just false, but in some fields common practice goes
against it. (I am not a fan of this tendency to get students to publish,
but it is a fact of today's academic life.)
---------
Personally this fact adds nothing to the debate. The reason a student -- or
anyone -- can do this is that they have spent years doing research on the
topic. It then does NOT take 1000 hours to write the publication. I have no
idea where Ken got that number. It takes a month or two (I have no idea how
many hours, but given that writing by students and faculty alike (and for me
as well) has to be squeezed into a really crowded schedule, the number of
hours is in the low hundreds, maybe 100.)
Note that after submission of such a paper it can take between 6 months and
a year to get back a review. The majority of papers are not accepted without
revision, and the revision cycle can take another year. The time between
submission of a paper to a high-quality journal and its eventual publication
is measured in years.
====
But whether a student can publish high quality work, and the number of hours
of work it takes, seem quite irrelevant to me. The real point is whether a
work makes a substantive contribution to our understanding of a field,
increasing the knowledge base. To me, most works of practice and most
exhibits are wonderful to behold, but not research contributions. A clever
device by an engineer, a clever design are useful, but neither qualifies
as permanent, general contributions to knowledge. In
neither engineering nor design does the pice stand alone. The contribution
to knowledge requires deep analysis of the underlying principles, valid
tests of any claims, and a clear statement of how the new ideas build on,
contribute to, or possibly contradict what was known before. The PhD is NOT
a measure of one's skill, cleverness, or craftsmanship, but rather a measure
of one's contribution to deep understanding.
But I promised myself not to get into this argument.
Don (Now in Copenhagen for the week)
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