[Air-l] on journals ...

[Barry Wellman]

I am disappointed by much of what I have recently read about journal
writing. I want to provide different ideas.

1. The people I hang out with, small and large, write for journals because
they have something to say. Sure, they'd like jobs, tenure, etc, but that
is a secondary consideration. And the raises post-tenure are small enough
that major publication is a bummer on a cost-benefit basis. We write
because we want to.

2. As an inter-/trans- kind of guy, I depend on journal referees to keep
out the crap. Of which there is a huge amount as anyone who referees
knows. My problem is finding the time to actually read what has been well
refereed. The last thing I want to do is to have poor papers pour at me.

3. This, btw, is my big beef at AoIR conferences -- not enough refereeing.
It's not nice to waste people's time with poorly researched and poorly
written papers.

4. I am involved with Wikipedia, and it works pretty well (altho unlikely
Phoebe Ayers, I observe more vandalism and 3RR cases -- see current
Wikipedia Signpost for Vandalism stats -- I guard the gates of Barbara
Streisand, Anna Nicole Smith and Sandra Oh daily -- as well as the
articles on Social Network stuff.

But this would not be a good model for refereeing. Remember, that most
comments in blogs, etc are junk. Who'd want to waste their time sifting
through, when there is good research to be done -- and written up.

Having said this, I am off on a trip to May 10, and may not get a chance
to respond.

And YMMV, Barry Wellman
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  Barry Wellman   S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology   NetLab Director
  Centre for Urban & Community Studies          University of Toronto
  455 Spadina Avenue    Toronto Canada M5S 2G8    fax:+1-416-978-7162
  wellman at chass.utoronto.ca  http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman
        for fun: http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php
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