Latest Comments on Science and Academia

  • More hilarious-obnoxious academic spam

    More hilarious-obnoxious academic spam

    It has been bad for quite a while, but this one is beyond ridiculous. Not a request to submit a paper but a request for a review, on a topic that I have no idea about. Straight from the email: Dear Dr. Dirk Riehle, We will be most grateful if you could create time to…

  • How to recognize an academic spam publisher

    How to recognize an academic spam publisher

    I think this is self-evident to the human reader. From an email I got: Your interesting published article “Erratum to: The single-vendor commercial open source business model” drives me to call for new papers and honorary reviewer, on behalf of Computer Communication & Collaboration, which is an English quarterly journal in Canada. Oh well… And…

  • The one publisher to boycott @ReedElsevierHQ

    The one publisher to boycott @ReedElsevierHQ

    If there is one for-profit publisher to boycott, it is Elsevier. Here is the proof. My university, the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg, just published a list of the most expensive journals it is subscribed to. 19 out of 20 are Elsevier journals (page in German). My university’s library is in a negotiation stale-mate with Elsevier, which is…

  • Exemplary research papers?

    Exemplary research papers?

    I teach a hands-on lab course on how to do research. Students perform a small research project and write a paper about it, preparing them for the research work of their final thesis. I want to revise the set of example research papers I’m using. We study these research papers as good examples of how…

  • Teaching materials for agile methods course

    Teaching materials for agile methods course

    Update 2018-08-01: The old materials are not available any longer; please watch this space for the new release! I finally put my teaching materials for my agile methods course on this website. The slides are available in “source” form, i.e. Open/LibreOffice format, as well as PDFs. I also added supplementary materials like the videos I…

  • Publishers, e-books, and DRM

    Publishers, e-books, and DRM

    2012-02-18: Updated the post with translations from the original letter. I’m an Addison-Wesley author and just received a letter from Pearson, the owner of Addison-Wesley, informing me about their thoughts and steps towards e-books and the digital age. The letter is written as an open letter with no apparent secrets, so I’m making it available…