5 ms·

If you feel you have made an actual contribution/extension of existing work I would try contacting the authors to see if they will review your work and potentia

If you feel you have made an actual contribution/extension of existing work I would try contacting the authors to see if they will review your work and potentially co-author something with you?

TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
If he did the work, why should he need a co-author?
- Q6T46nT668w6i3m 9y ago
  If it’s your first paper, co-authors can be extremely useful to help guide the author through the publication process. It’s also helpful for marketing purposes. Hell, this is basically the graduate school route.
  - TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
    It seems like having all those arbitrary requirements is good for nothing but gatekeeping higher education. Why not have those requirements publicly known and not unnecessarily complicated so that everyone can submit info?
    - hprotagonist 9y ago
      Normative publication behavior varies by field, but is generally well known and openly discussed, critiqued, modified, etc. inside each field. It's not exactly kept quiet.
    - Q6T46nT668w6i3m 9y ago
      Tottaly. While ACM, IEEE, and similar organizations provide some of this information and do substantial outreach, more progress on this type of work would benefit everyone.
    - goodcanadian 9y ago
      The requirements are generally clearly communicated. The strictness is about publishing quality science. Someone who has not been through the peer review process before might be quite shocked by the stringent requirements to get a paper published. Again, it is NOT arbitrary; it is about making sure the journal is publishing real science and not quackery. It is entirely possible for someone outside of academia to publish, but having guidance to get through the peer review process is invaluable.
    - probably_wrong 9y ago
      They are publicly known. But I would say most paper requirements are "necessarily complicated", simply because science is hard. Writing a scientific paper requires both solid science (both good results and good scientific practices) and solid writing skills to convey an important idea in a clear and precise way. Mastering both aspects requires time and effort. An academic author is a person who made a job out of it. Most people don't like doing that, and that's fair, but I don't think it's fair to say that "they are gatekeeping education" when that same uninterested people suddenly find out that the pro level is hard. (Disclaimer: I'm working in academia, although not in AI)
      - BeetleB 9y ago
        >Writing a scientific paper requires both solid science (both good results and good scientific practices) and solid writing skills to convey an important idea in a clear and precise way. The only person who would read a journal paper and say that the the author has good writing skills is another academic. No one outside of the research community would look at a typical journal paper and claim that the writing skills demonstrated are "solid". Asimov once wrote about his own dilemma when he was ready to write up his PhD thesis: He had spent over a decade up to that point honing his writing skills, that he truly did not know if he had it in him to write as poorly as is needed for academia. From my experience in academia: 1. Far too many people still prefer the passive voice over the active voice. 2. Far too many prefer to refer to themselves in the 3rd person. 3. Trying to explain how I arrived at an expression that took me weeks to derive was discounted and I was told to remove it by my advisor: As long as I wrote the starting point "any competent researcher should be able to derive it" (hint, probably half cannot). 4. Writing any background so that someone who is not already an expert can understand was strictly forbidden - always guaranteed to get a complaint by some reviewer or another. If it appears in a textbook or in another paper, do not think about including it in your paper. As a result, the only people who can understand your paper fully are those who have happened to read the same textbooks and papers you have. A poor new graduate student may need to look through several papers and a book or two to get the background needed for one section of your paper, even though you could have explained it all in a page or two. But nope - they may have to go scan over a hundred pages of material to have an idea. Just a few I remember off the top of my head. Results may vary with discipline.
    - avs733 9y ago
      the 'requirements' that are being referred to go well beyond objective rules (e.g., no more than 4 journal formatted pages) and include things like lingo, citation standards, ordering of sections, and general academic writing voice. Written communication of science is hard, especially when you are new to it. I think a good 50% of what I have learned as a PhD student was how to more effectively communicate through writing. And that builds on me (honestly) being in the top quartile of writers in my program when I walked in the door. I have worked with many co-authors who have had great work rejected by journals for writing reasons. It isn't about scholarly snobbery - a lot of it just isn't understandable to anyone but the author. Writing advertising copy / business plans / anything related to startups I worked with was orders of magnitude easier. In a strict sense its gate keeping, in a more realistic sense its about norming. These standards/expectations often develop organically and are sometimes hard to write down in the sense you are asking for.
      - deong 9y ago
        It's worth mentioning that some of those standards may not be producing the best outcomes (see https://lemire.me/blog/2017/08/15/on-melissa-oneills-pcg-random-number-generator/ https://lemire.me/blog/2017/08/15/on-melissa-oneills-pcg-ran..., for example). In my own experience, I once wrote a paper in a much more casual and approachable style. I had what I felt was the same scientific rigor around the experiments and data, but tried to make the text more generally readable. I had Simpson's references sprinkled here and there, that sort of thing. The response was generally negative. The paper was accepted for the mid-tier conference I submitted it to, but on the condition that I revise to take care of reviewer concerns, many of which boiled down to "you should write with a more appropriate tone". No one complained that the paper was imprecise as a result. They just didn't like that it didn't read in the standard passive and bland academic voice. I found that somewhat depressing.
        chrisseaton 9y ago
        > I had Simpson's references sprinkled here and there, that sort of thing. I should offer to read your paper before criticising it, but I can't even begin to understand why you would think that references to a TV programme would help make a paper more readable. What if you don't happen to watch the Simpsons? Is the paper then even more opaque because none of the references mean anything? I quite like the bland academic voice - because it lets me focus on what I came for which is the science. I don't want to be amused, and I don't want academics wasting time trying to be witty or fit in references to whatever TV programme is fashionable. I want just the science, please! Delivered as clearly and simply as possible.
    - saalweachter 9y ago
      Overlooking the social or communal aspect of research is a mistake. People want to publish their research for a number of reasons (prestige, priority, profits, simple enthusiasm), and people want to read published research for other reasons (to further their own research, to understand the current state of the art, simple curiosity). Publishing a paper no one reads is pointless. To make people want to read a paper, you need to make sure it is novel (so they don't waste their time reading about something you only rediscovered) and that it is integrated into the existing understanding of the field, with citations of related research, using common terminology, etc (so they can more easily understand your work and what it means). This is what working with an existing researcher gets you. If you don't work within this framework, why would other researchers waste their time working out that when you say "frazzles" you mean "frizzles", and once you work that out the whole thing is equivalent to a conference paper from '06?
    - deong 9y ago
      The requirements are straightforward and publicly known. Here's everything you need to know to submit a paper to JMLR (http://www.jmlr.org/author-info.html http://www.jmlr.org/author-info.html). Here's the complete instructions for NIPS (https://nips.cc/Conferences/2017/CallForPapers https://nips.cc/Conferences/2017/CallForPapers). The problem with amateurs publishing papers is emphatically not that the requirements are secretive and arbitrary. The problem is that virtually no one is able to write a publishable paper without basically going to graduate school where you have years to become an expert in the minutia of your chosen field of study. There are a lot of amateur researchers who have the ability to contribute to cutting edge research, but the vast majority of them lack the background to know exactly where the cutting edge lives and how to design, conduct, and then describe a convincing experiment proving to others that the idea stands up to scrutiny. And those aren't things that anyone can or does secret away so they can form some artificial gatekeeper. They're just things that usually require a lot of concentrated effort to study and learn.

If you feel you have made an actual contribution/extension of existing work I would try contacting the authors to see if they will review your work and potentially co-author something with you?

TheAdamAndChe 9y ago

If he did the work, why should he need a co-author?

Q6T46nT668w6i3m 9y ago
If it’s your first paper, co-authors can be extremely useful to help guide the author through the publication process. It’s also helpful for marketing purposes. Hell, this is basically the graduate school route.
- TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
  It seems like having all those arbitrary requirements is good for nothing but gatekeeping higher education. Why not have those requirements publicly known and not unnecessarily complicated so that everyone can submit info?
  - hprotagonist 9y ago
    Normative publication behavior varies by field, but is generally well known and openly discussed, critiqued, modified, etc. inside each field. It's not exactly kept quiet.
  - Q6T46nT668w6i3m 9y ago
    Tottaly. While ACM, IEEE, and similar organizations provide some of this information and do substantial outreach, more progress on this type of work would benefit everyone.
  - goodcanadian 9y ago
    The requirements are generally clearly communicated. The strictness is about publishing quality science. Someone who has not been through the peer review process before might be quite shocked by the stringent requirements to get a paper published. Again, it is NOT arbitrary; it is about making sure the journal is publishing real science and not quackery. It is entirely possible for someone outside of academia to publish, but having guidance to get through the peer review process is invaluable.
  - probably_wrong 9y ago
    They are publicly known. But I would say most paper requirements are "necessarily complicated", simply because science is hard. Writing a scientific paper requires both solid science (both good results and good scientific practices) and solid writing skills to convey an important idea in a clear and precise way. Mastering both aspects requires time and effort. An academic author is a person who made a job out of it. Most people don't like doing that, and that's fair, but I don't think it's fair to say that "they are gatekeeping education" when that same uninterested people suddenly find out that the pro level is hard. (Disclaimer: I'm working in academia, although not in AI)
    - BeetleB 9y ago
      >Writing a scientific paper requires both solid science (both good results and good scientific practices) and solid writing skills to convey an important idea in a clear and precise way. The only person who would read a journal paper and say that the the author has good writing skills is another academic. No one outside of the research community would look at a typical journal paper and claim that the writing skills demonstrated are "solid". Asimov once wrote about his own dilemma when he was ready to write up his PhD thesis: He had spent over a decade up to that point honing his writing skills, that he truly did not know if he had it in him to write as poorly as is needed for academia. From my experience in academia: 1. Far too many people still prefer the passive voice over the active voice. 2. Far too many prefer to refer to themselves in the 3rd person. 3. Trying to explain how I arrived at an expression that took me weeks to derive was discounted and I was told to remove it by my advisor: As long as I wrote the starting point "any competent researcher should be able to derive it" (hint, probably half cannot). 4. Writing any background so that someone who is not already an expert can understand was strictly forbidden - always guaranteed to get a complaint by some reviewer or another. If it appears in a textbook or in another paper, do not think about including it in your paper. As a result, the only people who can understand your paper fully are those who have happened to read the same textbooks and papers you have. A poor new graduate student may need to look through several papers and a book or two to get the background needed for one section of your paper, even though you could have explained it all in a page or two. But nope - they may have to go scan over a hundred pages of material to have an idea. Just a few I remember off the top of my head. Results may vary with discipline.
  - avs733 9y ago
    the 'requirements' that are being referred to go well beyond objective rules (e.g., no more than 4 journal formatted pages) and include things like lingo, citation standards, ordering of sections, and general academic writing voice. Written communication of science is hard, especially when you are new to it. I think a good 50% of what I have learned as a PhD student was how to more effectively communicate through writing. And that builds on me (honestly) being in the top quartile of writers in my program when I walked in the door. I have worked with many co-authors who have had great work rejected by journals for writing reasons. It isn't about scholarly snobbery - a lot of it just isn't understandable to anyone but the author. Writing advertising copy / business plans / anything related to startups I worked with was orders of magnitude easier. In a strict sense its gate keeping, in a more realistic sense its about norming. These standards/expectations often develop organically and are sometimes hard to write down in the sense you are asking for.
    - deong 9y ago
      It's worth mentioning that some of those standards may not be producing the best outcomes (see https://lemire.me/blog/2017/08/15/on-melissa-oneills-pcg-random-number-generator/ https://lemire.me/blog/2017/08/15/on-melissa-oneills-pcg-ran..., for example). In my own experience, I once wrote a paper in a much more casual and approachable style. I had what I felt was the same scientific rigor around the experiments and data, but tried to make the text more generally readable. I had Simpson's references sprinkled here and there, that sort of thing. The response was generally negative. The paper was accepted for the mid-tier conference I submitted it to, but on the condition that I revise to take care of reviewer concerns, many of which boiled down to "you should write with a more appropriate tone". No one complained that the paper was imprecise as a result. They just didn't like that it didn't read in the standard passive and bland academic voice. I found that somewhat depressing.
      - chrisseaton 9y ago
        > I had Simpson's references sprinkled here and there, that sort of thing. I should offer to read your paper before criticising it, but I can't even begin to understand why you would think that references to a TV programme would help make a paper more readable. What if you don't happen to watch the Simpsons? Is the paper then even more opaque because none of the references mean anything? I quite like the bland academic voice - because it lets me focus on what I came for which is the science. I don't want to be amused, and I don't want academics wasting time trying to be witty or fit in references to whatever TV programme is fashionable. I want just the science, please! Delivered as clearly and simply as possible.
  - saalweachter 9y ago
    Overlooking the social or communal aspect of research is a mistake. People want to publish their research for a number of reasons (prestige, priority, profits, simple enthusiasm), and people want to read published research for other reasons (to further their own research, to understand the current state of the art, simple curiosity). Publishing a paper no one reads is pointless. To make people want to read a paper, you need to make sure it is novel (so they don't waste their time reading about something you only rediscovered) and that it is integrated into the existing understanding of the field, with citations of related research, using common terminology, etc (so they can more easily understand your work and what it means). This is what working with an existing researcher gets you. If you don't work within this framework, why would other researchers waste their time working out that when you say "frazzles" you mean "frizzles", and once you work that out the whole thing is equivalent to a conference paper from '06?
  - deong 9y ago
    The requirements are straightforward and publicly known. Here's everything you need to know to submit a paper to JMLR (http://www.jmlr.org/author-info.html http://www.jmlr.org/author-info.html). Here's the complete instructions for NIPS (https://nips.cc/Conferences/2017/CallForPapers https://nips.cc/Conferences/2017/CallForPapers). The problem with amateurs publishing papers is emphatically not that the requirements are secretive and arbitrary. The problem is that virtually no one is able to write a publishable paper without basically going to graduate school where you have years to become an expert in the minutia of your chosen field of study. There are a lot of amateur researchers who have the ability to contribute to cutting edge research, but the vast majority of them lack the background to know exactly where the cutting edge lives and how to design, conduct, and then describe a convincing experiment proving to others that the idea stands up to scrutiny. And those aren't things that anyone can or does secret away so they can form some artificial gatekeeper. They're just things that usually require a lot of concentrated effort to study and learn.