Comments on: Academic publishing is archaic

By: Daniel Lemire

Daniel Lemire — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 17:09:09 +0000

You sure like to play with semantics.

Actually, I don’t.

Just out of curiosity, what complex intellectual problems have you solved?

You are in luck. Just this morning I solved a problem I had using mathoverflow.

Reference:

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/29921/are-the-banded-versions-of-a-positive-definite-matrix-positive-definite

I’ll let you judge whether it is a “complex intellectual problem”.

Twitter’s contribution to “my intelligence” would require a post of its own, but it has an effect similar to what you get when you hang around in an office filled with smart people.

Of course, feel free not to use any of these tools if you feel they make you dumber.

By: Rexlibris

Rexlibris — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 16:25:14 +0000

BTW, I knew you would come back with some smart comment about I.Q. but I think it got the point across of what I was trying to convey. Again, no hard evidence that it makes people smarter.

By: Rexlibris

Rexlibris — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 16:22:31 +0000

You sure like to play with semantics. Using a social network is called social networking, so every time you use Twitter to make yourself ‘smarter’ you are social networking.

Just out of curiosity, what complex intellectual problems have you solved?

By: Daniel Lemire

Daniel Lemire — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 15:40:20 +0000

@Rexlibris

You’ve been reading Carr lately?

Sure I’d like Google at my disposal. It makes research easier. But there is no evidence it raises I.Q. levels one iota.

Probably not. But who cares about the I.Q. test. I thought we all knew it was pseudoscience?

Or whatever other measure of intelligence you want to use.

What about your ability to solve complex intellectual problems?

yes you did say social networks make us smarter.

I make a difference between social networks (such as Twitter) and social networking. Merely chatting by the coffee place might not do much for you other than relieve stress.

I think Twitter makes me smarter. Merely chatting with others does not. There is a purpose to my use of Twitter.

By: Rexlibris

Rexlibris — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 14:45:13 +0000

“the search engine (such as Google), the recommender system (as on Amazon.com), and the social networks (such as Twitter). Literally, these tools expand our minds. We become smarter.”

Um… yes you did say social networks make us smarter. Read your own quote.

By: Rexlibris

Rexlibris — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 14:42:55 +0000

Sure I’d like Google at my disposal. It makes research easier. But there is no evidence it raises I.Q. levels one iota. Or whatever other measure of intelligence you want to use. Where are the studies showing Google users are more intelligent?

Deep reading and deep thinking. This is what makes people smarter.

By: Daniel Lemire

Daniel Lemire — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 14:09:24 +0000

@Rexlibris

If you have to solve a hard problem, would you rather have Google at your disposal, or not? Google does make us smarter. (I didn’t write that social networking makes us smarter. I am not entirely clear on what it would mean.)

By: Rexlibris

Rexlibris — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 13:27:12 +0000

To be clear, I believe social networking is useful. However, there is zero evidence they are making us smarter. And, alphabetical indexes don’t exist to be exciting. They exist to be useful which you admit they are.

By: Andre Vellino

Andre Vellino — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 14:50:29 +0000

@Greg One (small) thing that will help in the near future is DOIs for datasets. At least you’ll be able to refer to them in some way that is analogous to publications which should make it easier to get reproducibility.

http://www.datacite.org/

By: Greg

Greg — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 14:43:22 +0000

That is a particularly strong point on the lack of ability to correct or add notes to a research articles.

Another thing to consider is that it is difficult to attach code and data to a research article so people can reproduce the results. Without the ability to reproduce results, not only does it become difficult to compare new results to previous work, but also we are missing the core of science, repeatable observation and experimentation.

By: SciPlore

SciPlore — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 22:58:16 +0000

if you are using google scholar, our article “on the robustness of google scholar against spam” might be interesting for you. we have analyzed how difficult it is to spam google scholar and manipulate e.g. citation counts. in short: it is very easy. accordingly, it might make sense to use data from google scholar (especially citation data) with care. read here the full article: http://sciplore.org/blog/2010/06/12/new-paper-on-the-robustness-of-google-scholar-against-spam/

By: Kevembuangga

Kevembuangga — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 15:13:35 +0000

LOL Archaic but still going "strong"...

By: Andre Vellino

Andre Vellino — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 02:22:30 +0000

In “Everything is Miscellaneous” David Weinberger has a nice paradoxical phrase. “The solution to the overabundance of information is more information”.

By: Erik Duval

Erik Duval — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 20:19:03 +0000

@Bryan: you can find the article at http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3228379/blair%202003.pdf?sequence=2 – the joy of institutional repositories

By: Bryan O'Sullivan

Bryan O'Sullivan — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 19:56:50 +0000

It tickles me that the Blair article you link to is behind a login wall. A helpful strategy for dealing with information overload, courtesy of the academic publishing industry!