Latest Comments on Science and Academia
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Do engineering researchers care about truth?
So ICSE, the top software engineering conference, rejected our paper, again. The reviewers were actually quite positive: high-quality work, little or no flaws, interesting. One of the reviewers found the paper’s results surprising, asked for more details, and suggested new research directions. The final conclusion of both reviews, however, was the same: The work has…
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The case for German university outreach to china
On my research group’s blog I make the case for German University Outreach to China. I argue that my employer, the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, is well-positioned (and well-advised) to tap into the Chinese education market. In a nutshell, German engineering universities provide excellent education almost across the board while being comparatively cheap (no or…
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Definition of write-only journal
I thought it is a common term by now but apparently it is not. Here is my definition of “write-only (research) journal”: A write-only research journal is a research journal that publishes papers but is never read (hence write/publish-only). Its purpose is twofold: to (a) give a researcher some reputation return on their work by…
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Teaching note for case “User-Generated Content Systems at Intuit(A)” E-381(A)
Abstract: This is a teaching note for the free case “User-Generated Content Systems at Intuit(A)”, E-381(A), from the Stanford Free Case collection available at ECCH. The original case is a product management case in which Intuit, maker of consumer and small business financial software, faces the decision to “go social or not” for user help…
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Plagiarism on the rise?
I recently reviewed a paper where, a few paragraphs into the introduction, the words seemed strangely familiar. After some cross-checking, I realised that the author of the paper had copied about two paragraphs verbatim from one of my papers. After a bit more digging, I found other places in the paper where the author had…
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Rigor vs. relevance, or: What is the size of a dissertation?
While listening to a colleague’s talk the other day, I got an idea for a Ph.D. thesis (grant proposal). I wrote up a short summary and sent it to him. He thought it was fine but commented that it might be a bit “thin”. This made me wonder: How do we determine sufficient size of…