Eventyr

Is the paper important?

Teaching was not the only criterion of assessment.  Research was another and, from the point of view of getting promotion, more important.  Teaching being increasingly dreadful, research was both an escape ladder away from the coal face and a means of securing a raise. The mandarins in charge of education decreed that research was to be assessed, and that meant counting things. Quite what things and how wasn't too clear, but the general answer was that the more you wrote, the better you were. So lecturers began scribbling with the frenetic intensity of battery hens on overtime, producing paper after paper, challenging increasingly harassed librarians to find the space for them.  New journals and conferences blossomed and conference hopping became a means to self-promotion. Little matter if your effort was read only by you and your mates. It was there and it counted. 

Today this ideology is totally dominant all over the world, including North America.  You can routinely find lecturers with more than a hundred published papers and you marvel at these paradigms of human creativity.  These are people, you think, who are fit to challenge Mozart who wrote a hundred pieces or more of music.  And then you get puzzled that, in this modern world, there should be so many Mozarts - almost one for every department.

The more prosaic truth emerges when you scan the titles of these epics. First, the author rarely appears alone, sharing space with two or three others.  Often the collaborators are Ph.D. students who are routinely doing most of the spade work on some low grant in the hope of climbing the greasy pole. Dividing the number of titles by the author's actual contribution probably reduces those hundred papers to twenty-five. Then looking at the titles themselves, you'll see that many of the titles bear a striking resemblance to each other.  "Adaptive Mesh Analysis" reads one and "An Adaptive Algorithm for Mesh Analysis" reads another. Dividing the total remaining by the average number of repetitions halves the list again. Mozart disappears before your very eyes. 

But the last criterion is often the hardest.  Is the paper important?  Is it something people will look back on and say 'That was a landmark'.  Applying this last test requires historical hindsight - not an easy thing.  But when it is applied, very often the list of one hundred papers disappears altogether. Placed under the heat of forensic investigation the list finally evaporates and what you are left with is the empty set.   

From: Why I am Not a Professor  OR  The Decline and Fall of the British University

Research Methods

This graduate course aims to help students understand science and the scientific method, and looks at research in academic and industrial contexts. It also aims to provide practical skills in finding and using sources of research information, research management, and basic data analysis techniques.

I've decided that I really like teaching DPhil Students.  I suspect taking over the Research Methods Course this term falls under the category of a good plan.

Because Monkeys are Everything

I love Survey Monkey.

Not much more to say, but that it does what it says on the tin and really does make conducting surveys suprisingly simple and convenient.

Partners in Research

It starts with MEN...

I was introduced to American Women: Partners in Research today. It was a short film made in the 1960's to describe the market research undertaken by Corning Glass Works prior to marketing a coffeemaker. It aims to suggest design through using real women to do research ("market" research) might be a good thing...

It is hilarious. And makes me relieved I'm doing my research now.

My how things date.

Mock Grant Proposal

As part of the Research Methods in CSAI course I prepared a dubious and sketchy Mock Grant Proposal, EPSRC Grant Form and Workplan about which I gave a 30 minute presentation (including referencing applying with a Blue Form under FEC, Sussex Ethical Guidelines / Standards and Guidelines on Research Ethics and Research Salary Scales) on Monday 07 November 2005.  I am making this available for anyone to view (and be entertained by). 

Hopefully the next assignment, which I need to complete by Friday, will emerge more to my liking.

I have to get some other notes typed up so you should see some backtracking on these pages today.

Keywords

On the advice of the Research Methods course tutor I have set up a list of keywords (see right).

Hopefully these should help me when I am ploughing through the Scopus, Inspec and Zetoc abstract database searches...

Narrative Course

Ok, I have established that I need to be doing the Postgraduate Certificate in Narrative Research at the Centre for Narrative Research at UEL to support my research.

I just need to find someone to pay for it...

Skills Audit

OK, I am now completely satisfied that I already completely fulfil the Research Councils Postgraduate Skills Requirements (I even made a little check-table (passworded), which, even though it is only partially completed, confirms my suspicions). 

Here are as many of the reasons why that I can recall (I am sure there are more)...

1999-2001: Educational ICT Tutoring

2002: Advanced Technical Communication
Covering:
Giving oral presentations, writing short abstracts
Brand, ethics, peer review
Tools of the trade
Preparing web pages
Writing technical and scientific documents
Introduction to LATEX and LATEX2HTML
Academic CV preparation and job applications
Assessment:
Video recorded and peer-reviewed oral presentation on a technical topic
Web page (or pages) on a technical topic
Academic review of a recent technical book of your own choosing
Peer reviews

Also 2002: Poster Presentation Competition

Also 2002: Project Management work

2003-2004: Generic Training for Research Students
Being A UH Research Student (3-5 September 2003)
Learning Resources Training
Undergraduate and Postgraduate Study
UH Regulations and Registrations
The Process of Research Degree Study (Monitoring, Progression, Examination)
How To Survive a Research Degree (Responsibilities, Expectations, Self-Organisation)
Supervisor Relationships
Communicating about Research - Written and Oral
Ethical Issues in Research
Project Management
Other Courses:
Endnote
N6
Statistical Analysis
Qualitative Research
Philosophy of Research
What is Science?
Research: What is Truth?
Environmental Policy
Research Skills Training and Personal Development
Good Research Practice
Equal Opportunities Issues in Research
Health and Safety Issues in Research

2003-2005: Research Assistant in Algorithms and Adaptive Systems
Roles included:
EPSRC Grant Applications (including FEC)
Website Development
Conference Organisation
Proceeding Editing
Journal Editing
Providing one-on-one training in Endnote, N6, LaTeX, Adobe Acrobat, Library resourcing and MSOffice
Personal-directed research
Inter-rater Reliability Coding

2005: Research Methods in CSAI
Course Elements:
Is computer science a science?
Introduction to research methods
Literature reviewing: critically reading research papers
Grant proposals - structure, content and guidelines
Rationalist versus empirical methodologies
Acquiring, coding and analysing qualitative data
Introduction to quantitative data handling analysis and statistics
Research ethics
Academic research vs industrial research and development
Time management
Assessment:
Peer Review
Mock Grant Application
Research Methodology Report

How to Be My Student (SoP)

How to Be My Student

The paper summarises several important points that any student should remember about the supervisor/student relationship.

Particularly relevant for me to remember are the following:

* Ensure that meetings are regular and scheduled well in advance
* NEVER cancel if behind schedule
* If possibly provide reading material to supervisors a day in advance
* Email summary of main points covered after the meeting
* Make sure to look at courses on transferable skills and research methodologies
* Do not try to hide any problems from supervisors

How To Write An Informatics Paper (SoP)

How To Write An Informatics Paper

Hopefully I should be fairly well placed for writing papers, having edited so many over the last few years. We shall see.

This paper summarises good and bad form in Informatics Papers and most of the points felt like issues I had covered while learning to write philosophy papers, so I do not feel a need to summarise them here.

The structure given for a standard informatics paper is:
Title
Abstract
Introduction
Literature Survey*
Background*
Theory*
Specification*
Implementation*
Evaluation
Related Work*
Further Work*
Conclusion
Appendices*