Dear List the other day, I had my yearly staff interview with my Head of Department. Under my list of publications, I included a document which I wrote (R-and-octave.txt) that ended up in the "contributed docs" section of CRAN. Unfortunately, neither my HoD nor the personnel person were terribly impressed with it, even though its preparation time was commensurate with many of my (co authored) dead-tree publications. They cited lack of peer-review, and fact that it was disseminated solely over the 'net as reasons. They were very nice about it, but the bottom line was that it just didn't count for very much. I tried to point out that CRAN was highly regarded, but was unable to come up with much in the way of objective evidence. How would members of the List respond to this criticism? Does anyone have anything I could use to bolster my position? Although specific feedback about R-and-octave.txt would be very welcome, I'd also like the List to suggest objective (and convincing!) facts which I could use next week at the follow-up meeting. Thanks in advance -- Robin Hankin, Lecturer, School of Geography and Environmental Science Tamaki Campus Private Bag 92019 Auckland New Zealand r.hankin at auckland.ac.nz tel 0064-9-373-7599 x6820; FAX 0064-9-373-7042 as of: Tue Oct 8 16:12:00 NZDT 2002 This (linux) system up continuously for: 404 days, 21 hours, 54 minutes -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
Dear Dr. Hankin: I think your case can be other professors cases when they write gnu documentation. I suggest to put a download counter.... but I don't know if CRAN would like to do that. The feedbacks could be a very good evidence to show how many users read your document. I hope tha HoD and the personnel person will understand that the net is sometimes even more disseminated than many publications. Robin Hankin wrote:>Dear List > >the other day, I had my yearly staff interview with my Head of >Department. > >Under my list of publications, I included a document which I wrote >(R-and-octave.txt) that ended up in the "contributed docs" section of >CRAN. > >Unfortunately, neither my HoD nor the personnel person were terribly >impressed with it, even though its preparation time was commensurate >with many of my (co authored) dead-tree publications. > >They cited lack of peer-review, and fact that it was disseminated >solely over the 'net as reasons. They were very nice about it, but >the bottom line was that it just didn't count for very much. I tried >to point out that CRAN was highly regarded, but was unable to come up >with much in the way of objective evidence. > >How would members of the List respond to this criticism? Does anyone >have anything I could use to bolster my position? Although specific >feedback about R-and-octave.txt would be very welcome, I'd also like >the List to suggest objective (and convincing!) facts which I could >use next week at the follow-up meeting. > > >Thanks in advance > > > > > >-- Kenneth Roy Cabrera Torres Celular +57 (315) 405 9339 -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
On 10/08/02 16:18, Robin Hankin wrote: Dear List>Under my list of publications, I included a document which I wrote(R-and-octave.txt) that ended up in the "contributed docs" section of CRAN.>Unfortunately, neither my HoD nor the personnel person were terriblyimpressed with it ...>They cited lack of peer-review, and fact that it was disseminatedsolely over the 'net as reasons.>How would members of the List respond to this criticism?It seems to me that the 'net is a non-issue and could be refuted by pointing to the existence of refereed journal published solely or mainly on the internet. (I started to search for them, and I found many, but no complete list.) The point about peer-review is more serious. Papers given at meetings, and even those posted on papers.ssrn.com, are often of low quality; their selection is based on the topic more than the content. But some scholarship _is_ important even though it is not refereed. I think a good way to handle this is with letters of recommendation written by people known to your evaluators. This is an imposition, of course, but such letters need not be long. I don't think hit counts are very useful. They are based more on the topic, or the author's reputation, than the content. (SSRN, however, makes a big deal out of download counts, even though these are based on reading the abstract only.) -- Jonathan Baron, Professor of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania Home page: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~baron -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
>>>>> "robin" == Robin Hankin <r.hankin at auckland.ac.nz> writes:robin> How would members of the List respond to this criticism? robin> Does anyone have anything I could use to bolster my robin> position? Although specific feedback about robin> R-and-octave.txt would be very welcome, I'd also like the robin> List to suggest objective (and convincing!) facts which I robin> could use next week at the follow-up meeting. I hate to say this, but it's pretty standard. I've had to put up with this yearly (ESS is a major time suck, and it's just one of many software/www/documentation projects that I'm involved with). Can you spin it into an R-news article, or better yet, is it written in a way that might be publishable in the Journal of Statistical Software? (R-news is listed, but not necessarily peer-reviewed, JSS _IS_ peer reviewed). I suspect that you would have to change things slightly (and it is peer reviewed, so could be rejected), but still, it might be worth a shot. http://www.jstatsoft.org/ Note that JSS is affiliated with a decent print journal, Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics, which is put out by the American Statistical Association. It would be harder to get it published there (JCGS), but there should be no issue with your HoD/etc for getting credit for publication in JSS. best, -tony -- A.J. Rossini Rsrch. Asst. Prof. of Biostatistics U. of Washington Biostatistics rossini at u.washington.edu FHCRC/SCHARP/HIV Vaccine Trials Net rossini at scharp.org -------------- http://software.biostat.washington.edu/ ---------------- FHCRC: M: 206-667-7025 (fax=4812)|Voicemail is pretty sketchy/use Email UW: Th: 206-543-1044 (fax=3286)|Change last 4 digits of phone to FAX (my tuesday/wednesday/friday locations are completely unpredictable.) -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._