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On Mon, Jun 1, 2015 at 7:39 AM, jean schneider <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> As Ken is mentioning the pressure for publication as a source of
> disruption/distortion,
> ...
>
I am not sure that I qualify as a « grumpy old man » on that list, but for
> sure I have an old fashioned (and soon outdated) understanding of what
> (academical) research is. Or maybe : was.
I am very concerned about this trend. (I like to think myself as a
cheerful old man, none of this grumpiness stuff. Although others may wish
to challenge the cheerful part, the old is without dispute.)
In the late 20th century, I taught my psychology graduate students not to
write until they had something important to say. At the same time, our
biggest rival, Stanford psychology graduate students in the same field of
research, were encouraged to publish as soon as they had anything to say.
My students graduated with zero or 1 papers. Stanford student would have 10
or more. In those days, people did look for quality: my students got
excellent jobs and went on to illustrious careers. But today they wouldn't
get those jobs.
In product design there is the concept of Minimum Viable Product,
a philosophy I champion. But in the rush to product, many people focus upon
the word minimum, ignoring viability.
In academia, I fear the new rule is minimum publishable unit. And I didn't
make this up: hell, it already has a Wikipedia entry
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Least_publishable_unit )
--
There are other culprits.
I know of some major design schools that require publication in a
peer-reviewed journal for the Phd, a requirement that clogs the journals
and wears out the reviewers. I know of one computer science Human-Computer
Interaction course where the professor required that every student submit
a paper to major HCI conference, once more, deluging the conference with
low-quality submissions. And i know of one university that has a
ridiculous page requirement for PhD theses, so long that I refused to serve
on a committee because length simply wears out reviewers.
In traditional academic departments, there are lots of experienced people
to act as reviewers and to try to sift through all the submissions and
select quality papers. But even the best refereed of these conferences
suffers from overload. In the field of design, the PhD is still a new
requirement and even there, there are not yet well accepted standards for
the degree. The number of qualified reviewers is low.
These practices are ways in which clueless people substitute arbitrary
rules in place of careful, systematic attention to quality and importance.
One reason so many crappy papers get accepted is reviewer burnout. Also
ill-trained reviewers. with so many papers having to be reviewed, journals
and conferences are forced to use inexperienced reviewers.
Call me grumpy for this statement, but I have yet to attend a design
conference that comes anywhere near the quality of a computer
science/psychology/cognitive science conference. (I discussed this with
one of the founders of the Design and Emotion conference series who agreed,
but who felt that we simply need another decade of learning. I hope he is
correct, but a decade of listening to low quality papers may be teaching
precisely the wrong message.)
In many academic design conferences almost all the papers are presented by
students. Sometimes there is a senior professor's name listed on the paper,
but in many cases the professor does not even show up to the presentation.
I call that wrong, immoral, and evil. Professor's stick their names on
papers to embellish their own publication record, but do not even go to the
presentation? I wonder if they have even read the paper. No wonder quality
sucks.
Design conferences have become graduate student practice grounds. Look, I
love my graduate students: they are going to be the future leaders of our
professions. many are a lot more capable than me, but the conference is for
learning form the other papers so we should only have the best papers and
the best presenters. This sets the high standard that our students will
learn from. And will dramatically increase the quality of the conferences.
How many reviewer are qualified -- or have the time -- to repeat the
statistical calculations, think carefully about experimental
design, check the references, think about the premises and conclusions
deeply? Take the time to help authors who have important things to say, but
who are saying them badly?
Another really bad rule is that most universities and granting agencies do
not allow conference attendance unless a paper is being submitted, once
again crowding the programs and overtaxing the reviews. What ever happened
to attendance in order to learn something?
By coincidence, this article appeared in this morning's New York Times
(June 1, 2015)
http://nyti.ms/1KwYb3n
Beyond Publish or Perish, Academic Papers Look to Make Splash
====
We are in a crisis, and it is our own fault.
Thank you. Geesh. All this has made me grumpy.
Don
Don Norman
Prof. and Director, DesignLab, UC San Diego
[log in to unmask] designlab.ucsd.edu/ www.jnd.org <http://www.jnd.org/>
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