[Air-l] on conferences

[Alex Halavais]

I suspect that full-paper submission is a good low-pass filter,
catching and eliminating those who are not as prepared to present. I
would certainly agree that I have seen some excellent papers presented
at the AIR conferences, and that's the reason I keep coming back. But
I also sympathize with Barry and others: there have been some real
dogs presented. I won't exclude some of my own presentations from the
canine group.

There is no reason a move toward full papers would need to be drastic.
In future years, a call could be made for both full papers and
abstracts, the former as part of a special track that would also be
appealing to publishing arrangements with some of the journals who
have been supporters of research by AIR attendees in the past. This
would allow for the organization to "try out" full papers, without
requiring an immediate ramping up of reviewers or process.

Alex

On 4/26/07, Mia Consalvo <consalvo at ohio.edu> wrote:
> Thanks Jeremy :).
>
> In response to the discussion about submitting abstracts versus papers,
> there are of course disciplines that do both well, but one of our biggest
> challenges is our inter-disciplinary nature. One of the reviewers this year
> made a great suggestion- that when submitting abstracts have the authors
> include, perhaps as a keyword, their disciplinary affiliation. And on the
> flipside, potential reviewers would also list their disciplinary
> affiliations so that we could try to match at least one reviewer from the
> discipline to the abstract.
>
> We also, unfortunately, must sometimes assign reviewers abstracts outside of
> their areas of expertise, or simply see the abstract go un-reviewed. The
> solution there is of course to have more reviewers-- which is a challenge
> from year to year.
>
> I'd be in favor of having full papers for future conferences, but I will
> agree with Ted and some others that I do go to conferences that review full
> papers only, and it is NOT a guarantee of quality. I'd stack AoIR's quality
> against any other conference, and I think we'd win many times.
>
> Mia
>
> --
> Mia Consalvo, Associate Professor
> Director of Graduate Studies
> 213 RTV Building
> School of Telecommunications
> 9 South College Street
> Ohio University
> Athens, OH 45701
>
> 740.597.1521
>
>


--
//
// This email is
// [X] assumed public and may be blogged / forwarded.
// [ ] assumed to be private, please ask before redistributing.
//
// Alexander C. Halavais
// Social Architect
// http://alex.halavais.net
//