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

[Jeremy hunsinger]

> 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.

I did not mean imply that, but what I did imply is that the number of
student acceptances has seemed to diminish over the year.  However,
here i return to the professionalization question.  People who are
more competent at producing abstracts for conferences tend to get into
more conferences.  That is a skill set that is learned, so newer
people to the profession tend to have less access than older people.
The more words that we require them to write opens up more
possibilities for someone to write something that will get them
rejected.  Are we accepting or rejecting more of any one category of
people, surely those statistics exist and are things that are
discussed by the executive.

The question in the end is what are we, organizationally, supporting
by requiring more and more, combined with stricter modes of
production?  I understand the arguments you put forth, but I want to
suggest that there are other implications to the system being put
forth than you suggest too.  I argue that the new system ads
additional disciplinarity and requires additional professionalization.
Those things are, i think going to be antagonistic to
interdisciplinarity, grad student participation, and international
participation in the short and long run.  But i could be wrong, but I
would be remiss to not point out that possibility and warn against it.