Latest Comments on Science and Academia
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Internal vs. external validity of research funding
So far, most of my research funding has been from industry. Sometimes, I have to defend myself against colleagues who argue that their public funding is somehow superior to my industry funding. This is only a sentiment; they have not been able to give any particular reason for their position. I disagree with this assessment,…
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Soundness vs. importance in publishing (PeerJ computer science journal announced)
Today, PeerJ announced the creation of a new open access computer science journal. After a bit of back and forth a while ago I had accepted the invitation to be on the editorial board. (My main concern was that PeerJ is a for-profit organization but co-founder Pete Binfield convinced me that this will only be…
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Fraudulent publishers not missing a beat in 2015
Unbelievable. About everything in this Call for Papers and the website being linked to is screaming fraud. However, it is so badly done that I can only assume that someone is turning the Scigen experiment on its head.
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How academics spend their time? Not me.
I just read this review of how professors spend their time while working. It struck me that a key component that I spend a substantial amount of time and energy on is missing: Fund raising. Here is a visual summary of the article courtesy of someone on reddit: I first looked through other practices like…
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German universities to take university rankings serious
Germany is the best place I know to be a professor if you value your independence. Your rights have been codified in the German Basic Law (Constitution) and no dean can tell you what to do. You are your own person. On the downside, German professors and universities have been (for the most part) blissfully…
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Talk slides: Teaching agile methods with industry partners
I’m at ECSEE 2014, the European Conference on Software Engineering Education, and I just held a talk on how we teach agile methods at Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nürnberg. Key to our projects is the involvement of industry partners, who provide high-level project requirements to the different student teams. Here are the slides to my talk…