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

Mon Feb 25 10:26:00 PST 2013

Hello, All,

Thank you for the emails and for the bonhomie in which they are
offered. For clarity's sake, I'm going to be rude and reply to the
three previous contributions at once.

First, I should note that I've taken on the replies because I have
been an instigator, proposing some of these changes to the Exec and to
Hector. This is still Hector's show, and you shouldn't read by my
replying any change in that. In other words, he has the
responsibility, but I'm happy (perhaps the wrong word: "resigned") to
take any blame.

First some clarifications on what has changed in the call from last year.

1. The word count on paper and panel submissions has increased by 400 words.

Why? To provide more to go on in reviewing and for people to know more
about the presentations.

2. All paper and panel submissions will be published in open format
(in SPIR). Just as a clarification: there will be no full paper
requirement or request this year, the submitted abstract/short paper
will be openly available. Note that the roundtable submissions
category has *not* changed.

Why? To promote more open access to the materials of the conference.

3. The required use of a template in submissions.

Why? To allow SPIR to be more consistent in look and feel, and again
to promote its broad access, browsing, and contribution to the wider
scholarly discussion of internet research.

So, with some of the context set, I'll try to address the concerns:

1. The length of submission is too long.

I suppose one way we could address this is to remove the lower bound
on the word count. It seems in some sense notional but it seems
strange to change things right ahead of the deadline. Would this put
one's 600 word abstract at a disadvantage to someone who has submitted
1,100 words. I suspect it would.

If I am reading correctly, I think that Jeremy is suggesting that the
increase in the number of words will systematically exclude graduate
students. I can't imagine that graduate students are any less capable
of producing 400 more words. I personally am probably less capable of
that now than when I was a grad student. We could, I suppose, ask
Sheizaf Rafaeli whether the 1,000 word cap for IR5.0 resulted in a
reduced number of graduate submissions. If it did, I don't think I
noticed it.

Does suggesting that reviewers will have a better grasp of the
submission result in more "rigor." I will admit to not having a very
clear idea of what this word means, and have difficulty separating it
from "mortis," so rather than address that more highfalutin question,
I will say this: The number of presentations we have accepted as a
percentage of proposals has dropped significantly over the last
several years. This is not as a result of trying to be more
"competitive," "rigorous," "selective," or "exclusive." It is a matter
of a decision among this executive and previous executives not to grow
the size of the conference. We could add four, or more, additional
parallel sessions, and (IMHO) still have a very solid set of
presentations, but I don't think anyone wants an AoIR with 12 parallel
sessions. It is, in other words, a result of math.

But what this also means is that we need to be as sure as possible we
are getting it right when we accept or reject proposals. It pains me
to know that we rejected presentations that were solid, when I showed
up to sessions where the presenter basically said that they were
presenting something completely different from their title, because
(in one case) they hadn't gotten 'round to doing the work they
proposed. We're never going to be perfect on this, but a bit more
length provides people with a chance to better present their ideas to
reviewers.

2. Public presentation of submissions

I ran for president of AoIR in part on the issue of opening the
organization up, having our work be placed more in the public eye, and
available to people who cannot afford to get to an IR conference. I
think that opening up our program is the easiest way to do this. So,
when you submit a paper (or a panel of papers) your submission will
become part of SPIR. (If you want to distribute full papers, you are
encouraged to do so, of course, and if folks want to talk about ways
of making this easier, I'm happy to be a part of that conversation.)
The special issue of ICS will be happening again this year, and I am
sure we will once again have opportunities to publish full papers
coming out of panels and in other ways.

The desire to do this is not new. When we were using Open Conference
Systems, rather than ConfTool, this was the default. My hope is that
by letting people know the kind of work we do at AoIR, we will be
promoting better internet research.

3. The template

I've already addressed this somewhat.  I don't love the template, but
I think there is value in having a consistent presentation for SPIR. I
recognize that it is somewhat onerous to copypasty into that
template... I will be doing it too. It's a pain, I realize, and we
should look at ways of making it easier (a form, instead?) but since
you need to copy and paste other things into the submission form: you
name, address, etc., I really don't think it's as onerous as it might
seem at first.

I think it's fair to distribute that work to submitters rather than to
have the volunteers who are editing for SPIR be responsible for doing
it for everyone. I recognize David's criticism: he doesn't see the
value proposition of doing formatting work as a submitter. My only
hope is that he is willing to give it a try, and that he will see the
value in the distribution of SPIR. If folks next year feel it's not
worth the effort, I'm sure we can find other ways of moving forward.

I do want to note there is nothing here that says you need to have
"findings" or a "lit review" as David Phillips suggests above. You do
need to have a title, and some text, but that has not changed from the
past. There is a section for references, but if you don't have any,
don't use it... I think we can remain interdisciplinary and still ask
that people use text and have titles.

PLEASE READ ME: Don't forget the roundtables.

Our poor roundtables have been neglected for too long. In some ways, I
fear that the strictures of a paper poorly represent the variety of
presentation styles available. I was also the one who introduced the
ignite format (and we're giving that another go this year), and would
love to see more creative use of the Roundtable proposals:
roundtables, fishbowls, relaxation sessions, instructional sessions,
marches, singalongs, posters, hangouts, etc., can all be proposed. If
the only outcome of the above changes were a greater number of
creative presentations and roundtables being proposed, I would
consider this a success. In practice, in the past, roundtables and
panels have been accepted at a much higher rate than individual paper
presentations for a reason: they tend to result in more interesting
sessions.

Best,

Alex

On Mon, Feb 25, 2013 at 9:02 AM, Jeremy hunsinger <jhuns at vt.edu> wrote:
> Here I think is where the key point if interdisciplinarity needs to be
> addressed.  Rigor varies in meaning per discipline, philosophical
> rigor, methodological rigor, theoretical rigor, empirical rigor, etc.
> also all vary per discipline and to expect them to conform to our
> expectations.  What strikes me is that for several generations of this
> conference the application procedures have become more 'rigorous', yet
> the complaint about the final presentation/paper quality hasn't been
> resolved via increased rigor or increased length.
>
> I personally thought the solution of having some people who needed to
> present peer reviewed papers because their discipline or department
> required that, was a really great idea.  I don't think the move to
> short papers for everyone is a really great idea.  I think it really
> constrains the interdisciplinary imagination of the conference and the
> organization by constructing a new disciplinary mechanism, SPIRE and
> its format.  I support SPIRE as a place to publish for those that want
> to submit there, but it should not be the submission model of choice.
> Personally, I'd argue that we should go back to the under 500 word
> abstract of proposals in order to be able to locate a more plural
> sense of interdisciplinarity, to include more graduate students, etc.
> We've raised the bar of the conference high enough already, has it
> really brought about the interdisciplinary, international with strong
> support of graduate students that the organization had?  or has this
> focus on rigor of length and argument undermined our capacity for
> inclusion, and pluralism of the communities we aim to serve?
> _______________________________________________
> The Air-L at listserv.aoir.org mailing list
> is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
> Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
>
> Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
> http://www.aoir.org/

--
--
//
// This email is
// [ ] assumed public and may be blogged / forwarded.
// [x] assumed to be private, please ask before redistributing.
//
// Alexander C. Halavais, ciberflâneur
// http://alex.halavais.net
//
// Please attribute any stupid errors above to autocorrect on my phone.
// (But I probably was typing on a keyboard.)