Category: 1. Research
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Pay-walled Research Papers Do Not Constitute Published Work
I just had another discussion with a reviewer (by way of an editor) who insisted that I cite (presumably their) work buried behind an Elsevier paywall. How obnoxious can you be? It is 2019 and there are still editors and reviewers who consider articles, which are not freely accessible on the web, published research? That’s…
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Inverted Research Funding
Most people believe that scientists first perform basic (“fundamental”) research and then perform applied research. Basic research delivers the fundamental insights that then get detailed and refined as they hit reality in applied research. Along with this comes the request that basic research funding should be provided by the country (because few companies would ever…
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Alternative Definition of Theoretical Saturation in Qualitative Research
Theoretical Saturation The mental state of a researcher wanting to finish up the work and go home for the holidays.
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How my Ph.D. Students Work With Supporting Students (Hint: Not Scrum)
As mentioned in a previous blog post, my Ph.D. students are often experienced software developers who take on the role of a chief programmer in the development of the software system supporting their research. In this work, at any point in time, each of my Ph.D. students is typically supported by 2-7 Bachelor and Master…
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Chief Programmer Teams Alive And Well in Academia
According to Wikipedia, “a chief programmer team is a programming team organized in a star around a “chief” role, granted to the software engineer who understands the system’s intentions the best. Other team members get supporting roles.” Amusingly, this set-up is alive and well in academia, and for good reason. At least my research group…
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What’s better: Submit to ICSE or TSE? (Conference or Journal?)
When planning a publication strategy for a dissertation, invariably the question comes up where to submit your papers. Ph.D. students naturally are biased towards conferences, because if a paper gets accepted to a conference they get to travel to a (usually) nice place. I nip this bias in the bud right away: For a journal…