4 ms·

Case-in-point: my org has licensed tech from a big academic institute (which we, the founders, generated at said big institute). We have industry recognized suc

Case-in-point: my org has licensed tech from a big academic institute (which we, the founders, generated at said big institute). We have industry recognized success and awards for said commercial solutions. The academic research has lagged our commercial developments and continued to publish things that are commercially available in our systems... which use the same code-base and algorithms to demonstrate it. When we founders were at the big academic institute we won many academic awards for this tech, published the algorithms and methods. One could make many arguments for training people or expertise at said academic institute or whatever but instead these publications are presented as "novel, unpublished etc". Just not true, and the licensure of this technology means that they need to move forward. So far 5 years later they are not. Their public press releases deliberately do not mention our industry awards because if they did, they would not have much to publish.

pyuser583 3y ago
How did things get like this?
PeterisP 3y ago
I'm not sure if I understand you correctly, but if some know-how is implemented in some company but its workings are not public, then reinventing these methods really is novel, unpublished, and relevant information that is valuable to publish. It's useless to reinvent the bicycle only if the workings of bicycles were already published. No one cares what inventions are hidden in someone's desk drawers or in black-box products, we care about knowledge that is accessible to the community.
- awesomeMilou 3y ago
  > then reinventing these methods really is novel, unpublished, and relevant information that is valuable to publish. That's if you can get a journal to publish your results, isn't it? I can imagine a reviewer recommending a strong reject on the grounds that a submission is already "well-known" by virtue of having a commercial pendant available. Reverse engineering is impressive, but alas provides no novelty.
  - omgJustTest 3y ago
    Arxiv is great... also forgot to mention that people should abandon paywall journals and potentially peer-review all together in certain cases.
- omgJustTest 3y ago
  I agree that publishing methods, code or even reinventing products in an open context is valuable... it is what I thought was one of my main contributions while at the academic institution. From what I can tell, they are struggling to pay people given the 3x base salary overhead at the academic institute. They haven't been pushing out free tools, haven't been demonstrating in new scenarios, etc. They continue to publish things that are in the open literature which work for corner cases. The company has expanded the generality of solutions, which they are not innovating on or publishing. I would also say they have more money than they can spend and have delayed projects over 2years because they don't have people to lead them (getting back to the personnel problem). I'm just disappointed in them as an academic institution, deliberately missing their own mission statement and refusing to cite publications before them, and feel the 3x overhead is a waste... at the very least they should pay their people better.

pyuser583 3y ago

How did things get like this?

PeterisP 3y ago

I'm not sure if I understand you correctly, but if some know-how is implemented in some company but its workings are not public, then reinventing these methods really is novel, unpublished, and relevant information that is valuable to publish. It's useless to reinvent the bicycle only if the workings of bicycles were already published. No one cares what inventions are hidden in someone's desk drawers or in black-box products, we care about knowledge that is accessible to the community.

awesomeMilou 3y ago
> then reinventing these methods really is novel, unpublished, and relevant information that is valuable to publish. That's if you can get a journal to publish your results, isn't it? I can imagine a reviewer recommending a strong reject on the grounds that a submission is already "well-known" by virtue of having a commercial pendant available. Reverse engineering is impressive, but alas provides no novelty.
- omgJustTest 3y ago
  Arxiv is great... also forgot to mention that people should abandon paywall journals and potentially peer-review all together in certain cases.
omgJustTest 3y ago
I agree that publishing methods, code or even reinventing products in an open context is valuable... it is what I thought was one of my main contributions while at the academic institution. From what I can tell, they are struggling to pay people given the 3x base salary overhead at the academic institute. They haven't been pushing out free tools, haven't been demonstrating in new scenarios, etc. They continue to publish things that are in the open literature which work for corner cases. The company has expanded the generality of solutions, which they are not innovating on or publishing. I would also say they have more money than they can spend and have delayed projects over 2years because they don't have people to lead them (getting back to the personnel problem). I'm just disappointed in them as an academic institution, deliberately missing their own mission statement and refusing to cite publications before them, and feel the 3x overhead is a waste... at the very least they should pay their people better.