pjd@alpha.ces.cwru.edu (dr. funk) (01/14/89)
Thanks, Gerald, for your reply... > If you have good research it doesn't really matter where you get your > degree --- quality results get published (with rejections it's easier on the > ego to assume that reviewers are prejudiced in some way; if you are truly > afraid of this, then ask for a blind review). No disagreement here WRT journal publication. In fact, journals probably are the only place you can get a good quality review these days! I'm appalled at the poor quality of conference reviews (both rejects and ACCEPTANCES!) Conference committees tend to be more personality-driven. Where I disagree is in the production of the good research. If you are a theoretician who only needs a pad of paper and a pencil (:-), you can crank out very good research and get into print as an unknown. Experimental people need resources and must jump across the funding hurdle much sooner. In the design environment/hardware CAD world these days, it's tough. You must compete against "centers of excellence" (read that "big name") who have more resources for implementation. A single investigator and a handful of students is severely disadvantaged. For a guy applying for his/her first research grant, the quality of the credential is often the sole criteria for judging "investigator qualifications" or competence. "Why should I give money to somebody without a track record -- just 'cuz he has a good idea?" Reviews of my first NSF proposal ranged from "I know and trust this guy" -- probably somebody who knew me personally -- to "who is this naive clown." [For all those folks who know me, I don't have too much to complain about 'cuz I did jump the right hurdles. It wasn't a day at the beach tho'.] > The few really big name schools likely don't produce most of the published > research (scan through the last 24 months of IEEE or ACM journals and check > the author affiliations). although, i suppose this depends on how > "big name" is defined. Pretty much ditto again. Conference program committees tend to favor the "home club," however. Since their job is getting poeple to submit and then choosing submissions after review, they tend to have more influence than journal reviewers/editors. > Having a friend on the inside will always get your CV moved to the > top of the pile, no matter what school you graduated from. No doubt about it. An employer is really taking a chance when hiring an individual. A degree is a "Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval" from some relatively impartial group of people with some kind of standards. A former colleague, supervisor, etc. who has seen you in action is the best credential (or deterrent :-) 'cuz the risk is lower. paul j. drongowski usenet: {decvax,sun,att}!cwjcc!pjd!pjd case western reserve university csnet: pjd@alpha.ces.cwru.edu
karam@sce.carleton.ca (Gerald Karam) (01/15/89)
In article <388@cwjcc.CWRU.Edu> pjd@alpha.ces.cwru.edu (dr. funk) writes: >> If you have good research it doesn't really matter where you get your >> degree --- quality results get published (with rejections it's easier on the >> ego to assume that reviewers are prejudiced in some way; if you are truly >> afraid of this, then ask for a blind review). > >No disagreement here WRT journal publication. In fact, journals probably >are the only place you can get a good quality review these days! I'm appalled >at the poor quality of conference reviews (both rejects and ACCEPTANCES!) >Conference committees tend to be more personality-driven. conferences are a bit more of a problem because: (1) there is less prestige in conference publication, and (2) the process feels a little less anonymous. In Canada, NSERC (roughly equiv. to NSF), which is the major gov't funding agency (almost everybody does research at the pleasure of NSERC in sci. and eng. in Canada), attributes very little value to conference publications because of the variations in quality --- it's journals or nothing (that's a bit extreme but captures the sense of their direction). >Where I disagree is in the production of the good research. If you are a >theoretician who only needs a pad of paper and a pencil (:-), you can crank >out very good research and get into print as an unknown. Experimental people >need resources and must jump across the funding hurdle much sooner. In the >design environment/hardware CAD world these days, it's tough. You must >compete against "centers of excellence" (read that "big name") who have >more resources for implementation. A single investigator and a handful of >students is severely disadvantaged. Being in the applied boat myself, I have to agree to a certain extent: again in Canada the funding in NSERC is much more widespread (this was confirmed by some comparison conversations with my US collegues). There are several reasons for this: (1) there are almost no private universities with huge endowments and "all the big names", thus talent and resources are somewhat more distributed. Also with only public institutions, there is less competition. (2) Federal Gov't policy also tends to distribute public wealth more evenly. (3) the country is smaller. (4) NSERC runs completely by peer review, and committees change every year, constantly using different faculty from schools, large and small from across the country. I agree with the centres of excellence comment, but again with our smaller scale, who isn't in one? :-) gerald