[Air-L] SPIR and IR and internet research and submission policies (was Re: AoIR 14 Announcement. Extended Deadline and More)

Mon Feb 25 07:42:02 PST 2013

I suppose I'm indifferent to the template that's used. Not all papers will be included in the SPIR, and of those authors, not all of them will choose to publish their work in SPIR if they get a chance (because they may have eyes on another journal for their work instead). I do think it's good that the organization is trying to make the research from its conferences widely available and published quickly (Internet research grows stale fast!), so if requiring everyone to use the SPIR template from the outset helps, good for that.

What I am very glad to see here is a longer submission format. I've reviewed for this conference for a few years and was always annoyed that the extremely short extended abstract format limited people's ability to adequately describe their methods. One year, half of the abstracts I reviewed said they came up with their conclusions "through an analysis" of some texts/data/phenomena. "An analysis" just doesn't cut it for a scholarly conference, in my opinion. Tell me your concepts, procedures, measures, or even just get more descriptive ("through a discourse analysis in the way Smith (20XX) describes...").

If anything, the longer format (and one that explicitly asks for better methodological content) will require more papers to move from 1) people seeing cool things online and promising to "analyze" them in greater depth by next October's conference, to 2) people applying some kind of rigor to the serious study of the Internet. I'm hopeful.

db

---
Daren C. Brabham, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, School of Journalism & Mass Communication
Editor, Case Studies in Strategic Communication | www.csscjournal.org
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-----Original Message-----
From: air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of David J. Phillips
Sent: Monday, February 25, 2013 10:08 AM
To: alex at halavais.net
Cc: AoIR-L
Subject: [Air-L] SPIR and IR and internet research and submission policies (was Re: AoIR 14 Announcement. Extended Deadline and More)

OK. So the new submission policies are not for reviewers, but for the editors of SPIR.  That makes more sense. And I see how the additional requirements of the content of the submissions (word length, lit review, presentation and discussion of "findings") will elicit papers more amenable to publication.

Still, I question (in all good faith and even good cheer) the practice of requiring all *conference* submissions to be in the form best suited for *journal* publications.

In my experience, AoIR is a great conference, in part because I never know quite what to expect. Regardless of my expectations, what I've consistently found is a ratio of worthwhile to useless presentations that exceeds that of more conservative, "rigorous" conferences. I'm thinking ICA in particular. I would hate to see the generosity of spirit that animates the IR conference bartered for greater ease and better outcome in the production of SPIR.

SPIR selects for publication (as far as I can tell) a small percentage of the papers presented at the conference.  I believe it should recognize that it is publishing not "the best of IR," but "the best of IR suitable to the published scholarly paper format."

I understand that there may also be a wish to raise the overall quality of submissions. This seems a fine goal. But I question (again with respect and bon homie) whether requiring the lit review, method, findings, discussion format is the way to do this.  There's got to be a way of saying to potential submitters "There's got to be a there there" without retreating so fully to a very conservative definition of what research is.

Finally, thank you, organizers, for making these decisions and offering us the opportunity to engage, resist, and/or appropriate.

djp

On 24 Feb 2013, at    22:2727, Alexander Halavais wrote:

> I don't think our aim is to be a pain in the ass. At least not solely.
> 
> You're right: consistency in submission does not necessarily aid the 
> review process. There are certainly difficulties in reviewing for an 
> interdisciplinary conference, as each of our reviews over the years 
> makes clear. But picking the same typeface won't help with that.
> 
> What it will help with is providing a consistent article style for 
> SPIR. I think you will agree that a mishmash of styles makes reading 
> such a collection difficult, and this is why collected volumes, 
> journals, and proceedings try to provide some consistency among 
> contributions. Given that the editorial committee for SPIR is entirely 
> volunteer, we are asking for your help in this process.
> 
> The pain happens somewhere, and I guarantee that those brave souls who 
> are taking the helm of SPIR for a second year will get more than their 
> share. We recognize that asking contributors to conform to a 
> consistent style adds work on your end, but it allows us to--for the 
> first time in several years--provide the work of our membership in a 
> way that the broader community can easily access. I think it's 
> important that our work have a life beyond the conference, and I hope 
> this will help provide it.
> 
> - Alex
> 
> 
> On Sun, Feb 24, 2013 at 5:53 PM, David J. Phillips 
> <davidj.phillips at utoronto.ca> wrote:
>> I would like to strongly object to this:
>> 
>>> 3. In the interests of providing reviewers with consistency in 
>>> submitted papers, all paper submissions must adhere to the SPIR 
>>> template.  That template is now linked on the CfP page of the AoIR 
>>> 14 site.  See it at http://ir14.aoir.org/cfp/
>> 
>> 
>> What is the point?
>> 
>> Does any reviewer really have a problem reading papers in formats other than this? Can they not compare the content of papers if those papers have different margins or font sizes or long quote conventions?  Do our reviewers read only one journal? Are they desperately confused by varying citation styles?  If any of these are the case, they are perhaps not qualified to review.
>> 
>> AoIR is interdisciplinary. Style templates are associated (for reasons I've never fully understood) with certain disciplines.  Why are we forcing our authors into one particular disciplinary form?
>> 
>> And simply in terms of efficiency, it is a much bigger pain in the ass (for me anyway) to write in a different template than it is to read in a different template.
>> 
>> What am I missing here? What's the point?
>> 
>> djp
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> David J. Phillips, Associate Professor Faculty of Information 
>> University of Toronto
>> 
>> 140 St. George Street
>> Toronto, ON  M5S 3G6
>> CANADA
>> (+1) 416-978-7098 / 416-978-8942 (fax)
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
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> 
> 
> 
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David J. Phillips, Associate Professor
Faculty of Information
University of Toronto

140 St. George Street
Toronto, ON  M5S 3G6
CANADA
(+1) 416-978-7098 / 416-978-8942 (fax)

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