Links

1. Anjali Vaidya at India BioScience: Unaddressed demands remain after research fellowship hike. Uses several quotes from IISc students and faculty!

2. Prashant Nanda in Mint: Govt climbs down, to drop IIM council plan. "The HRD ministry’s change of heart came after the business schools raised concerns, say two government officials".

3. Adam Connor-Simons in MIT News: How three MIT students fooled the world of scientific journals. SCIGen is 10 years old, and this is a timely (and short) profile of the MIT grad students who created it.

4. For the Ilayaraja fans: Rare Photos Of Music Composer Ilaiyaraaja. Look at those bell-bottoms!

IISc Alumni Global Conference - 2015 will be right here at IISc

IISc and its alumni started this series of conferences with the first one in Santa Clara, California, in 2007 (Flickr pics) -- just a year before, and possibly as a prelude to, the Institute's Centenary Celebrations. The second edition followed in due course in 2013, this time in Chicago, Illinois.

The third edition of this Conference is coming home to the Institute. The dates are: 26-28 June 2015.

It is a sign of the times that this Conference gets announced on social media well before the conference website is ready. Much as I hate to send you to any of these time sinks, here are the links to the community / group pages:

• Facebook

• Google+

• LinkedIn

If Twitter is your social media poison of choice, the relevant hashtag is #IIScAGC.

* * *

If you happen to be an IISc alum, do please pass this message along to your buddies.

Scamferences and Scam Journals ...

... have become so numerous that even the king of the MSM jungle -- I mean, NYTimes -- has an article about it [I thank Prof. Dheeraj Sanghi for the e-mail alert]. The bottomline is that since their numbers have become large, and they have become better at deceiving their audience, even the smart and the savvy have fallen prey to them. In other words, the list of victims goes beyond the clueless and/or the greedy.

The article does a good job of identifying the problem and its variants (both conferences and journals) with plenty of illustrative examples. Where it goes horribly wrong is when it indulges in a bit of drive-by shooting by conflating the problem (scam journals and conferences) with open access models of scientific publishing.

I mean, while it is true that there has been a huge increase in the number of journals and conferences that take money from authors and publish their papers with little or no peer review scrutiny, it is also something that would have happened irrespective of whether these papers are placed in the public domain. The drivers for this trend are easy to enumerate, and include:

1. the huge expansion in scientific research (especially in the non-OECD countries) in recent years.

2. the ever-increasing pressure on researchers to publish, publish, publish.

3. the global university ranking business that puts a premium on research publications (and now, citations and other scientometric indicators), which in turn adds to (2).

Since the number of papers has grown (but the number of journals has not), someone is just going to come along and provide an outlet for all these new papers. And since a growing fraction of these extra papers is junk, the said someone is just going to take money to publish them. Insert your favorite cliche here -- Win-Win, the Invisible Hand, Magic of the Market, Nature abhors unpublished papers, whatever.

And none of this has anything to do with open access.

It is a fact that almost all of these "journals" are online-only operations. But open access has nothing to do with this business model, except perhaps as an unintended consequence.

* * *

I became aware of this problem quite sometime ago -- in November of 2009 -- when someone perpetrated a scam by "organizing" a scamference in an auditorium in the IISc campus! See this, this, and this (and see this as well!).

Since then I have also been alerted about all kinds of online journals. At least one of them used Google Sites (a free website builder) for its operations; that is, it didn't even bother to have, and pay for, its own domain name!

Links

1. Nick Rowe: The Depressing Job of Grading Exams.

2. Thomas Anderson: Conference Reviewing Considered Harmful [pdf]:

   ... We present data to show that the variability between reviewers is often the dominant factor as to whether a paper is accepted. We argue that paper merit is likely to be zipf distributed, making it inherently difficult for program committees to distinguish between most papers. We use game theory to show that with noisy reviews and zipf merit, authors have an incentive to submit papers too early and too often. These factors make conference reviewing, and systems research as a whole, less efficient and less effective ...

3. The Triumph of the Nerds: "The internet has unleashed a burst of cartooning creativity." Both SMBC and XKCD make an appearance, and so do Oatmeal and Dinosaur comics.

4. SMBC Cartoons on a mathematician's fantasy fight with a physicist and Assburger's Syndrome.

Workshop on Academic Ethics

Rahul Siddharthan and Gautam Menon of the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, along with N.S. Siddharthan of the Forum for Global Knowledge Sharing, are organizing a Workshop on Academic Ethics this July (specifically, 15-16 July 2011) in Chennai. I am grateful to be invited to give a talk. This is the first time I venture outside my technical discipline, so I'm a bit nervous ...

In his blog post announcing the workshop, Rahul says:

Anyone who would like to join in is welcome to write to us, at the address listed on that webpage. We would prefer advance notice, even from Chennai residents, for logistical reasons.

So, do please spread the word.

* * *

The Workshop has a pretty ambitious coverage. I especially liked this part:

Possible outcomes from the meeting:

• A perspective on how these problems are viewed globally and what various national academies and scientific societies, including our own are doing to address these problems

• Proposals for a syllabus (readings, material, discussion topics, case studies) for a module on "Scientific Ethics" to be introduced in the University syllabus as part of the "Methodology" exam. Indian Academies could collaborate on creating this material and liaise with UGC to ensure its implementation.

• Formal mechanisms for examining ethics issues: What avenues exist currently? How does a university Vice-Chancellor deal with ethics issues? Is there a natural way in which such discussions might find their way to the Academies? Is there a need for a formal research ethics values watchdog, and should the academic community take initiative in forming [one]?

• Legal aspects of action which can be taken in respect of scientific ethics complaints. What can institutions/universities do at all in terms of mechanisms to evaluate these complaints? If they are upheld, what mechanisms are there to discipline the persons involved?

• General guidelines for maintenance of repositories, lab books, computer code etc. Are there typically institutional guidelines for these? Should the Academies discuss and propose such guidelines as a general rule?

• ...

Conferences, Journals and Computer Science

In my field (and also in most physical and biological sciences), journals are the preferred destination for our research output. There was a time when conference proceedings had a lot of prestige, but they started losing their sheen in the 1970s.

While conferences themselves are doing well, it is the proceedings whose reputation has suffered: the decline and fall have been so precipitous, someone joked recently, that proceedings now rank barely above e-mail spam!

Things are so completely different in Computer Science and allied fields, where conferences rule.

This difference in disciplinary cultures has always intrigued and fascinated me. So I was glad to find this paper by Jonathan Grudin who narrates the story of "why computer science in the U.S. shifted [away from journal articles] to conference publication in the first place."

A key quote:

Technology and a Professional Organization Drove the Shift to Conference Publication

By the early 1980s, the availability of text editing or word processing among computer scientists enabled the relatively inexpensive production of decent-looking proceedings prior to a conference. This was something new. Anticipating that libraries might shelve proceedings, ACM printed many more copies than conferences needed, at a low incremental cost.

ACM also made them available by mail order after a conference at a very low price. Papers in ACM conferences were thus widely distributed and effectively archival. These are the two features that motivated the creation of journals centuries earlier. [Bold and italic texts are from the original]

Are there other explanations for the shift [which, Grudin says, was largely US-centric, and didn't spread to Europe]?

* * *

Thanks to Suresh at The Geomblog for the pointer.

Yukti: 19-20 February 2011

Yukti 2011, an event to promote scientific temper, ... will take place on Febuary 19-20, 2011 at the premises of Karnataka Rajya Vijnana Parishat at Banashankari, Bangalore.

We've brought together the foremost experts in the war against pseudo science, providing the participants with a chance to indulge in discussions and talks on all things rational. Take a look at our speakers.

Yukti promises stimulating talks, and fun discussions. It is targeted at working professionals and students from Bangalore.

See this page for more details about this wonderful little conference put together by the good folks at Nirmukta, an organization of rationalists and freethinkers.

Thanks to A.V.N. Murthy for the e-mail alert.

I wonder if it was such a great idea ...

... for the Indian Women Scientists Association to give the two prominent places in the Inaugural Session of its All India Meeting of Women in Science to ...

... men!

[here's the program (doc)]

More often than not, inaugural sessions in conferences feature one or two prominent people who are neither organizers nor participants. These celebrities -- ministers, directors, vice chancellors, and the like -- usually don't stick around for the rest of the meeting, and their primary job is to add a certain aura to the proceedings, to help get some press coverage for the meeting, and if the organizers are lucky, to help get some coverage for their organization and its vision-mission-objectives. In the event, the press coverage of this meeting doesn't mention even a single woman who spoke in the inaugural session.

Even without the press coverage problem (the organizers don't have any control over the level of cluelessness of the reporter, etc...), I wonder about the symbolism of having two men giving the inaugural and keynote addresses at the Meeting of Women in Science.

And this is not the first time I have wondered about this ...

Links ...

1. After one Rao (CNR, in 2005), it's time for another: C.R. Rao Bags India Science Award.

2. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's speech at the 2010 Indian Science Congress at Thiruvananthapuram. You are better off reading a summary in The Hindu or The Telegraph (by T.V. Jayan).

3. Citara Paul in The Telegraph: Call for First Caste Census:

   India may next year witness its first census since Independence that refers to caste, if the Centre accepts a social justice ministry recommendation that could be politically controversial.

   Officials said the ministry had asked for caste to be included as one of the criteria in the 2011 census, and recommended a differential headcount of the Other Backward Classes and reassessment of their conditions that could lead to changes in the OBC list.

   Here's my view from 2007 supporting the caste census.

4. This 2007 post has relevant links to the academic debate on caste census.

Conference with No Participation

We have already seen one version -- the scamference, which is essentially a fraud.

Thanks to an e-mail alert from a colleague, I became aware of a second kind: Journal Conference.

Journal Conferences are virtual conferences, where blind papers are peer reviewed by at least two/three experts and accepted papers are published in International Journals. No paper presentation is required.

Don't you love that part about "blind" papers?

Going by the names of people in the National Committee, it seems like an Indian operation. Poking around that site, I couldn't find a physical, "real world" address, though.

Anyways, the conferences (in four areas!) "didn't happen" in 2009. I wonder if they will be repeated next year ...

The scamference goes completely "In Absentia"

On the ICFCA-2010 website, this is what we find:

Due to unexpectedly higher number of "Application of Absentia", ICFCA Board has found it unfeasible to conduct an oral presentation of the research papers for a minor number of attendees as previously mentioned in the website on 20-21 March, 2010. Publishing Board of ICFCA apologizes to the few students who opted for oral presentation. However, all the selected research papers will be published in IJFCA Digital Library as regular research papers ...

Some update:

1. In this comments thread, someone mentioned that the conference has a bank account in a Bangalore branch of ICICI Bank.

2. The identity of the organizer(s) is yet to be established.

3. The logos of several tech companies are still flashing in the left panel, misleading people into believing that they are associated with the conference.

I'm sure I'm not the only one to see the rich irony in an online scamster taking a whole bunch of tech-savvy people -- tech companies, ACM, IISc, researchers, faculty, students -- for a ride.

The scamference is supposed to be devoted to "futuristic computer applications." The organizer perhaps wanted to lead by example, with an application called "Conference In Absentia". Looks like it has been one hell of a success so far...

What can one do about the fake conference?

Let me start with an apology. In my previous post on a scamference, I was being needlessly offensive towards the victims of that hoax. What I said about the participants was in poor taste. I was wrong, and I apologize.

* * *

A quick update about the conference venue: "Prof. J. Thorpe" (who, as we now know, does not exist at Duke University) has responded to a query from IISc officials (about booking the J.N. Tata Auditorium) stating that the conference may move to Madrid, Spain!

* * *

Let me go out on a limb here. Given:

• the extremely low conference registration fee -- just $45 which is far too low to run a professional conference),

• the shadiness involved in the unauthorized use of ACM, IISc, (and possibly every "real" person on the technical committee, as well as the sponsors), and

• that no "real person" has emerged to take the responsibility for the conference,

we really ought to consider the possibility that the "organizers" never intended to, you know, run this conference.

In other words, we are not talking here about a low-quality conference with a near 0% rejection rate. We are talking about the possibility that there's NO conference at all!

* * *

In the comments thread, the discussion has taken a constructive turn; now that so many people have been cheated, what can they do now to punish the guilty?

Someone suggested that the cybercrime branch of Bangalore police must get involved. I'm not sure. The entire operation seems to be run out of the US.

Given that a paper trail exists -- bank accounts, money transfers, etc -- it should be possible to establish the identity of folks behind this scam, and go after them.

A loss of $45 is too small for an individual to take the trouble to file a case. Thus, any action has to be by the collective of victims.

Let me throw out two possibilities:

1. First, the participants need to organize -- which requires them to know who the other participants are -- the conference website does not have a list of participants (unsurprising). The way to solve this problem would be to form an (open) online group -- Google, Yahoo, Ning, or Facebook. I'm sure the group will have quite a few public-spirited folks who can help guide group's actions.

   [I'll be happy to link to the group in an update to this post, as well as the previous post.]

2. We can be reasonably certain that at least some of the so-called "sponsors" of the conference have been scammed. Perhaps the participants can write to these companies -- Google, Yahoo, Intel, HP, Philips, Alcatel, etc; I'm sure they all have friends, former students, and family members who work in one or more of these companies. They should alert them about the possible illegal use of their companies' logos on the conference website.

I would think the second option is probably more effective. If the companies didn't agree to be the sponsors (likely), why are their logos being flashed (and why were they mentioned as "supporters" in the conference brochure)? On the other hand, if the companies did pay to become sponsors, I think they have an even stronger case to go after the scamsters because of all the misrepresentations they have made. Either way, alerting the companies and goading them into action would be quite effective.

Any other suggestion?

Now available online: Videos of the IISc Centenary Conference

Go straight to the Conference Program, and they are all there.

[Update: Oops! The page has this statement:

These videos can be downloaded and watched within the campus LAN only. Access from outside campus will be made available ... after the [copyrights] are put in...."

Sorry for the false alert. Will post the links -- again -- when the videos are *really* available to the world outside. In the meantime, the following links work only within the campus.

And thanks to the anonymous commenter for pointing out this problem.]

Two strong recommendations from me:

1. Prof. Subra Suresh's keynote (hi-res version if you are on our campus). After a longish introduction, Suresh's talk starts at about 8 minutes; he spends the first part on what engineering is about, and how its mission is getting redefined, and hence, how engineering education must be re-oriented. Bottomline: an awareness of and a concern for the environmental and cultural effects of all that they engineer, and therefore, an interdisciplinary focus that includes not just the physical sciences, but life sciences, social sciences and humanities as well.

   He illustrates these trends with a couple of examples. This part relies quite heavily on slides (animations, videos, etc); since the video, sadly, missed the slides, this part does not come out all that well. Just so you know.

2. Prof. Sidney Brenner's keynote (hi-res). You can safely skip the long introduction and go straight to the 20th minute -- yes, the intro was *that* long!

   Before he gets to his main theme -- how to read the genome -- Brenner does two things: he starts with a great story that takes a dig at the lengthy intro, and he trashes a couple of sub-fields: systems biology and synthetic biology. It's not just that he points out the major limitations of these enterprises, but just plain trashes them -- for example, he calls them "low input, high throughput, no output" sciences. Ouch!

   If you enjoy strong views that are backed up by strong arguments and a willingness to wage verbal war -- and if you are not a systems or synthetic biologist -- you'll greatly enjoy this part of the talk.

   The other part is very good too. It's an excellent illustration of a great public lecture: presenting some of the key ideas of a field to an audience that includes a lot of 'outsiders'. Don't miss it!

   Here's a great quote from the talk:

   Someone said that sequencing the human genome is like sending a man to the moon. They were absolutely right. [pause] Because sending a man to the moon is easy; [it is] getting him back which is the problem.

TED Conference is definitely coming to India

This November. In Mysore.

So we learn from Sidin Vadukut's report in Mint -- the TED site doesn't have any info on its Mysore edition yet. We neither know the dates, nor the conference fees which, for the US versions, can go upto $6000!

Here's what the TED website says about speaking at one of its conferences:

This isn't a typical conference. The TED audience has exceedingly high expectations of the speakers; we will work with you well in advance of the conference to help you shape a presentation that will succeed on the TED stage. Rules for TED speakers include a ban on "selling from the stage" (no plugging your company or organization), and a strict enforcement of the clock.

TED presentations last just 18 minutes. We've found that a carefully prepared presentation of this length can have astonishing impact. This format also allows us to fit in more than 50 speakers/performers over 4 days. Everyone hears every presentation; there are no breakout sessions. Thanks to the intimate feel of the venue and the energy and attention of the audience, many speakers conclude that their TED appearance was the most exhilarating and valuable public speaking experience of their lives.

I really like this: "[W]e will work with you well in advance of the conference to help you shape a presentation that will succeed on the TED stage"!

If you know someone who really ought to be speaking there, go ahead and nominate her/him.

Ms. Aruna Roy of MKSS is my nominee. Who's yours?

The IISc Centenary Conference: The Speakers

The IISc Centenary Conference is just 107 days away. The Conference website has some new information about the speakers.

First, check out the impressive line-up of plenary speakers. I'll just highlight a few personal favorites:

• Archbishop Desmond Tutu, 1984 Nobel winner for Peace (public lecture).

• Prof. Eric Maskin, 2007 Nobel winner in Economics (keynote).

• Prof. Subra Suresh, Dean of the School of Engineering, MIT (keynote).

• Mr. Sam Pitroda, Chairman of the National Knowledge Commission (public lecture).

• Dr. S. Ramadorai, CEO, Tata Consultancy Services (keynote).

In addition, the Conference will host quite a few workshops and panels, each featuring 5 - 7 speakers. My personal favourite among them is Prof. P.M. Ajayan -- we were classmates at BHU!

* * *

I believe some of the invitees are yet to confirm their participation; so the list of speakers will see some additions in the coming weeks.

Conferences, sponsors, freebies

This post is only vaguely related to Sunil's post on vendor shows where the main attraction is the freebies.

* * *

Major conferences -- and especially those that happen in convention centers and star hotels (such as this BIG one starting this Monday) -- cost a lot money, and are impossible to organize without support from industry. In materials science conferences, sponsors tend to be makers of experimental equipment -- electron microscopes, atomic force microscopes, nano-indenters, vacuum systems, furnaces, etc. These sponsors get to set up a stall at the conference venue, and display their products and/or brochures. Since most of the stuff they sell are very, very expensive, all that a conference participant can hope for -- by way of freebies -- are glossy, colorful brochures.

My wife, who is an ophthalmologist, attends conferences where the sponsors are makers of expensive diagnostic equipment as well as pharmaceutical companies. Thus, she comes back with brochures and bags full of all kinds of medicines.

Some years ago, she went to a meeting at Salem, Tamil Nadu. For whatever reason, the organizers of this event ended up getting a sponsorship from a major neighborhood company whose product line has nothing to do with ophthalmology.

Result? My wife came back from this meeting with brochures, medicines and severral packets of masala powder (sambhar, rasam, garam masala, ...). And who do you think was this unconventional sponsor of an ophthalmology conference?

Sakthi Masala!

IISc Global Conference at Santa Clara, California

It's scheduled for 22-24 June 2007 (less than three weeks from now!). The Conference website is here. Here's the press release:

... Preparations have been underway for a number of months and the enthusiasm and anticipation amongst alumni is building with each passing day for this first ever event of its kind. This conference will be a platform for interactions between the Institute, alumni, industry and academia, in India and the US, to build long term partnerships that will take on the global challenges at hand in the 21st century. Participants will get to hear a video address by the President of India His Excellency Dr Abdul Kalam, Nobel Laureate and Venture Capitalist Arno Penzias, Applied Materials’ Chairman of the Board Mr James Morgan, CEO of TCS Mr S Ramadorai, Vice Chairman at Cognizant Technology Solutions Mr Lakshmi Narayanan, the Chancellor of the University of Berkeley Prof. Robert Birgeneau, and top officials from IISc itself such as the Director Prof Balaram and many senior faculty members.

Day One

No, I'm not going to say anything about all the events on Day One of the Big One. I just want to link to a quick summary by Santonu.

The Big One

The next few days are going to be really exciting. I will be in the Big Conference on Small Things. Take a look at the program (pdf), and you'll realize why we are all excited. It has nanophysics, nanochemistry, nanobiology, nanomechanics, nanoelectronics and nanoelectromechanics. It's going to be great!

Since it's being held right here in Bangalore, there is a lot of Big People (aka organizers) sweating the small stuff; and many of us are helping them with getting things done.

I know it's redundant to say this, but still ... Regular blogging may have to wait till the Big Conference is over. As for irregular blogging, we'll have to wait and see ...