1. University of Toronto (where I got my B.Sc. and M.Sc.)
2. University of Alberta
3. University of British Columbia
4. Université de Montréal (where I got my Ph.D.)
5. McGill University
6. McMaster University
7. Université Laval
8. University of Ottawa
9. University of Calgary
10. University of Western Ontario
11. University of Saskatchewan
12. Queen’s University
13. University of Manitoba
14. University of Guelph
15. University of Waterloo
16. Dalhousie University
17. University of Victoria
18. Université de Sherbrooke
19. Simon Fraser University
20. Carleton University
21. Université du Québec à Montréal (where I pretend to work)
22. Memorial University of Newfoundland
23. York University
24. Institut national de la recherche scientifique
25. University of New Brunswick (where I am an adjunct professor)

Acadia University where I was once an assistant professor is ranked in 48^th position.

Source: researchinfosource.com

Our global knowledge grows in slow, incremental steps. Darwin and Einstein mostly reinterpreted existing ideas. However, practical implementations sometimes take the world by storm. You might think that the experts are responsible for changing the world. Unfortunately, experts are not good at thinking outside the box. Indeed, their livelihood depends on them keeping the box closed. They are known as experts precisely because they focus on the existing knowledge and systems.

Thus, radical implementations come from the black sheep, the misfits, the outliers.

• The librarians did not invent the Web. A physicist turned IT consultant did. In fact, the librarians resisted the Web initially, and it took nearly a decade or so before some of them allowed the Web in their libraries.  To this day, librarians are still catching up. Moreover, the web was popularized by a start-up, Netscape, whereas large companies (with deep pockets) such as Microsoft ignored it.
• Amazon.com was not invented by a bookstore company. In fact, the first Web sites created by bookstores were nothing more than a reproduction of their paper ads online. It took a radically different player, one which did not have anything invested in the old book publishing model to invent Amazon.com.
• While we know little about Gutenberg, he was not a scribe who grew a better way to copy books. Try as they may, the scribes could not invent the printing press.
• Journalists did not come up with blogs. In fact, many of them resisted blogs for a very long time. Now? Now their newspapers are closing down and they are struggling for new solutions.

The lessons?

• The next Google is not going to come from a University professor.
• There is a difference between a crank and a misfit. Unfortunately, most experts won’t be able to tell them apart.

Further reading: Is scientific publishing about to be disrupted? by Michael Nielsen

When I asked the director of a large—and successful—British software house his most serious problem, he said without hesitation “how to prevent clusters of incompetence from emerging”. I was reminded of that when I noticed the —for me unusual— weight given to the “peer review”. What, if the peers aren’t any better? The mechanism does not protect us from harbouring fragments that are too shallow, too speculative, or—as the case may be—too fraudulent to merit the name of science. (And let us have no illusions: such topics abound! We are fortunate in not having professors in software metrics, animation or key-wording!)

Not only does the mechanism of peer review fail to protect us from disasters, in a certain way it guarantees mediocrity: the genius has no peer. And to make matters worse, his publication record does not reflect his work either. At the time it is done, truly original work —which, in the scientific establishment, is as welcome as unwanted baby— is very hard to publish as it takes at least another ten years for the appropriate journal to be founded. (I sooner blame someone for his publication list being too long than being too short.)

The moral is that we cannot delegate our responsibility to judge ourself. We can forsake it, but not delegate it. By hiding behind the excuse “But that is not my specialty” we degrade ourselves to lame ducks, and we should not do so. A good young scientist is able to explain

• what he is trying to achieve
• why he is tackling this in the way he is
• why he believes he can do it
• the criterion by which he will decide whether he has succeeded or failed.

He is, in fact, able to explain this to his next-door neighbour. If we are too lazy or too stupid to follow such an explanation, we should resign. By urging young scientists to submit papers for publication and to apply for grants so that we can rely on the judgements of others we make ourselves ridiculous.

Source: Edsger W. Dijkstra, EWD1018, Nuenen, 21 December 1987

Disclaimer: I did not write a single word of this blog post (not even the title). But I agree with all of it.

My colleague Stevan Harnad thinks it is silly to boycott for-profit journals. My ex-colleague Stephen Downes admits to being a boycotter, but he claims not to be silly.

Both of them are silly.

• Stephen Downes has worked outside the realm of prestigious academic journals (so he says). He claims that his career suffered in the process. Yet, he became a Senior Research Officer at the National Research Council of Canada, despite lacking a Ph.D. He is world famous and a sought-after speaker. By many measures, including citations rate and publication output, he would rank in the first percentiles among academic researchers. Stephen reminds me of a millionaire start-up owner who feels like a loser compared to real businessmen who wear business suits. (It is interesting to imagine Steven Downes in a business suit.)
• Stevan Harnad is pointing out that transforming the publication business by creating new publication venues is too slow. Much faster, he thinks, to keep the current system, but have researchers post preprints of their work. That is much like telling Woody Allen to go work in Hollywood, while posting previews of his movies for free on the net. After all, reinventing Hollywood would take too long! But let us consider where we come from… We inherited a system from an era where it was unthinkable to print a journal with thousands of pages. The scarcity meant that publishing many papers was hard. Thus, the best researchers were the ones that published many papers. With electronic publication, we maintain the scarcity because it has become the basis of our prestige system. The step forward is embrace a culture of abundance. We must adopt Open Scholarship and drastically new models such as author-centric science. Stevan is missing the point of radically new initiatives such as PLoS by objecting that its journals are not sufficiently prestigious. That is like objecting that blogging lacks prestige because anyone can write a blog. While making papers available for free (Stevan’s goal) is laudable, it will fall short of opening the scientific culture. If scientists dismiss Open Access, it is because the academic culture rewards publication above all else, including readership. To go forward, we must stop rewarding researchers for merely “publishing”. After all, nobody rewards me for writing this blog post. My reward comes when people appreciate my blog. My incentive is to be interesting, not to publish. Science publishing needs to move to the same model. PLoS already applies this model with great success: they are working toward opening the culture, not merely giving free access to the content.

Disclaimer: I am lucky enough to have had the pleasure of working with both Downes and Harnad. Because I like to live dangerously, I dare calling them silly, but do not follow my lead lightly.

You cannot get rid of your tenured colleagues—even the idiots who got tenure by luck or by cheating. So you must get your points past them.

Seb pointed me to a post about meeting power. It got me to reflect on my techniques:

1. Frame the debate along an axis that favors you. Find a way to divide your potential opponents so that some of them will be forced to take your side. Be an extremist if needed. (“What? I cannot offer my database course? Who thinks databases are unimportant here?”) After all, you cannot be fired, so you might as well express yourself and force people to take sides.
2. Quote your friends and agree with your opponents. Especially in academia, people react more favorably to quotes than original words. You simply sound more convincing when you start out by “As Professor Smith said ealier, (…).” When an opponent makes a good point, underline it.
3. Propose concrete solutions. Merely stating your opinion is not sufficient. You should propose specific actions, specific compromises, and move them forward. I have won more battles than I can remember by submitting a specific proposal for approval.
4. Know the facts, know the rules. The academic setting is complex, filled with rules, statistics and even more rules. If you know the rules of your University more than your opponents, you can often win debates before they even begin. Do you know how many students took this course you are proposing to abolish? Make sure you do.

More reading: The 15 Laws of Meeting Power