Category: 1. Research
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Dear Ph.D. Student: Don’t be Afraid of Prior Art
A first step in a one-person research project in a domain new to a researcher (Ph.D. student) is to read-up on related work. This can be daunting, as sometimes it feels like everything has been done already, and there is nothing new to write a dissertation about. Fear not! With enough digging, the opportunities will…
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How to Present a Theory (as a Handbook)
The key output of research is a theory or something supporting the building or validation of a theory. A theory, in turn, is knowlege, for example in the form of a model, that lets us predict the future or create reliable output in some form. Scientists usually publish theories for other scientists to review, in…
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The Value of Articles With No Relevance
I’m listening to Lutz Prechelt’s keynote at the German Software Engineering research community conference. He is talking about how we should not be undertaking research that has no relevance, and he is demonstrating this by presenting research based on ludicruous assumptions (that will never be real, not in this nor another world). Nobody could disagree…
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Dear Editor [of an Elsevier Journal]
Thank you for the request to review an article. My usual reviewing fee for Elsevier journals is one full year of free access to your digital library for my university. However, Elsevier has locked out German universities from accessing research on their websites, including our own. So in addition to my usual fee I must…
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Does Basic Research Need to Have a Purpose?
The short answer: This question is click-bait and was written to incite reflexes rather than reflection. The long answer: The question is a red herring, because a researcher arguing that research shouldn’t have to have a purpose is actually complaining about society not seeing the value of their research as they do.
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Why Informatics is Everyone’s Business in Academia
Informatics (worse: Computing science; even worse: Computer science) is the discipline of automated data processing (where automation is both human independent and dependent, and data in context becomes information). The non-IT industry has learned the hard way over the last few decades that informatics is part of their core business, not just some support function.…