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

[Burcu Bakioglu]

If I may interject on this graduate submission issue for a second here,
because it is a valid concern:

I've seen this at IAMCR and am involved in it in a minor capacity in terms
of reviewing abstracts... As a part of this organization, seasoned students
have created Emerging Scholars Network. This group has their own separate
track. Graduate students could send their submissions in to this track and,
from what I have seen, the submissions here have a slightly more flexible
acceptance standards. That way, they learn the ropes, get to present their
research if it is any good, and meet people when they come in. The
organization also provides mentorship, matches profs with grad students
etc...

So, I hear Jeremy's concern and the need to maintain some kind of a quality
in submissions, but we could consider building something like this within
the AoIR organization. And by "we," I mean encouraging senior grad students
to take the initiative to do so. It is for their best interest anyway, the
organizers can put this in their CV under service. Students who participate
in it would meet like minded people build their networks, get the support
they need, train on how to write their abstracts and present them in
conferences etc...

My very long-winded two cents :)

BsB



On Mon, Feb 25, 2013 at 12:45 PM, Jeremy hunsinger <jhunsinger at wlu.ca>wrote:

> > 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.
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-- 
Thanks,

Burcu S. Bakioglu, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow in New Media
Lawrence University

http://www.palefirer.com
http://palefirer.com/blog/