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Because the exchange rate isn't 1 release : 1 paper. When I worked as a programmer in academia, my lead professor said he'd had some folks from the computer sc
by ken 7y ago
Because the exchange rate isn't 1 release : 1 paper.
When I worked as a programmer in academia, my lead professor said he'd had some folks from the computer science department over to look at what we were doing, and they commented that there were at least a couple of PhDs and 5 or 6 masters theses in there.
I don't know if that's true (and I didn't stick around long enough to find out) but I know that fully organizing and documenting every bit that I'd done would take many times longer than writing it in the first place.
- mattkrause 7y agoI'm not even sure there is a fixed exchange rate, but if there is, I think it's >> 1 release per paper[0]. I can definitely imagine writing a paper for the first major release. If the software solves an pressing scientific problem (e.g., replacing laborious experiments with accurate simulations) or shows off a new algorithm, the paper itself might be a big deal. Subsequent versions seem trickier. You could certainly publish big technical advances, like a parallel version of the core algorithm. I'm not sure what you do for more routine maintenance and incremental improvements (e.g., bug fixes, more import/export formats, better UI). There are specialized journals that might take these "reports", like the Journal of Open Source Software, but I'm not sure if a CV of JOSS papers would give you a viable career. [0] If I had to guess, I'd bet there were multiple PhDs in the topic you were working on. While the code base would be a good start, there's a lot more to a research degree than organizing and documenting some code.