Rage Against Required Templates for Paper Submissions

Anyone who wants to submit a paper to a computer science conference usually faces two options: Use a TeX template or use a Word template. I haven’t written TeX in thirty years as a first author (I do edit and contribute as a coauthor because it can’t be avoided) and I use Linux and hence LibreOffice which usually can’t handle the Word templates well.

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To Review or Not to Review

I previously reported about a bogus review for a journal submission of ours. The submission had been rejected partly or fully based on a review that obviously had nothing to do with our paper but must have been reused from before. I had complained to the editor, but I had not got any answers for my questions.

The journal, owned by one of the prestigious non-profits in my domain, seems to be on autopilot. Today I received an invitation to review a submission for this journal.

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Using Open Source to Align Academic Client-Supplier Relationships

Open source is a boon for academic project collaboration. As long as the collaboration is not only voluntary, but also on equal footing, everyone can contribute and benefit under the guidance of an open source license and processes. However, as soon as money flows between the partners, the lawyers will want to have their say, and things get complicated. Fortunately, open source can fix this as well.

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How to get a Ph.D. in Germany

In this 10min. video, I explain ways of getting a doctoral title (Ph.D.) in Germany. I specifically explain the individual doctorate and its differences to the structured programs of Anglo-Saxon universities. This talk is scheduled for Jan 24th, with 165 registrations for the live event one week before already.

Documenting a Lead Author’s Contributions for a Cumulative Dissertation

Since 2021, my Ph.D. students have been able to submit cumulative dissertations for promotion rather than the traditional monographs. A cumulative dissertation is a set of published research papers, logically stapled together, and lead by an introduction that puts the research papers into context. This way, a graduate-level researcher can work incrementally towards their dissertation, one paper at a time.

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Price for Value, not for Costs

If there is one thing I wished more of my fellow academic peers would understand when working with industry, it is this: You should

Price for value created, not for costs incurred.

Many professors, when asked about the price of some proposed work, will calculate the direct labor costs needed for the project, add some university overhead or other margin, and then quote the industry partner the resulting costs as the project’s price.

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The Place of Professional Certificates and the Significance of an Academic Degree

My Twitter feed is alight with comments on Google’s six-month “career” certificate, which, according to this SVP, Google will treat as equivalent to a four-year Bachelor’s degree. Predictably, a large number of comments are from students who conclude from their own disappointed experience that all college programs are crap. They cheer on Google. Also predictably, I didn’t see a single academic professional join and comment in the discussion.

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