Computer science: “Write-only articles”
Not an improvement, apparently, on read-only memory. From Bio-Complexity’s editor-in-chief Robert Marks II, some more thoughts on peer review: Authors are often asked to write short autobiographies in the third person at the end of their papers. In these biographies we often read self-congratulatory phrases like “Dr. Pythagoras is the author of over 500 journal and conference papers.” This is like saying “Dr. Pythagoras pounded 500 nails into various types of lumber.” The pounding of the nails is unimportant. It’s what you’ve built that counts. I once found myself in a discussion about publication count with a newly minted acquaintance at a neural network conference in Japan. He asked me how many publications I had. I told him. He looked Read More ›