Scholarly Communication

Listen to this interview of Georgios Bouloukakis, Associate Professor at Télécom SudParis / Institut Polytechnique de Paris, France. We talk about the community in middleware systems research, and in particular, about the distinguishing marks of a top contribution in that field.Georgios Bouloukakis : "You know, what’s so impressive about the PerCom conference and all such high-quality conferences — it’s this whole set of people, the PC members and the organizing committee — everyone working collectively for the best result. And for me, personally, I find this hugely motivating, you know, to participate in conference committees.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Paul Gazzillo, Associate Professor of Computer Science, University of Central Florida. We talk about peer reviewing at conferences versus journals, and we talk about how different venues define research problems differently.Paul Gazzillo : "One important purpose of scientific publication is novel contributions. And so, applying logic to that, you can disprove that something's a contribution by demonstrating that it's unsound. But as to novelty — well, it's very hard to make a quantifiable measure of that. But you can, to some extent, qualitatively measure novelty, because if you know there's a whole bunch of work in that area, well then, from there you can estimate a qualitative distance between that work and the contribution the authors are claiming to make. That should allow you to decide the amount of real novelty in a manuscript."Link to talk by Simon Peyton-Jones about writing papers Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Gabriela Michelon, Software Engineer and Project Manager for AI-driven Product Development at Marquardt Group, Germany. We talk about the career path for software engineers, and we talk, too, about how the gap might be closed between research and practice.Gabriela Michelon : "When a company has a research program for PhDs, it’s an empowered way of showing just how the company values the research and as well, researcher efforts. That way, the company really shows how they care about society and about the advancement of research, perhaps even beyond their own market interest and goals.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Who controls what is taught in American universities – professors or politicians? The answer is far from clear but suddenly urgent. Unprecedented efforts are now underway to restrict what ideas can be promoted and discussed in university classrooms. Professors at public universities have long assumed that their freedom to teach is unassailable and that there were firm constitutional protections shielding them from political interventions. Those assumptions might always have been more hopeful than sound. A battle over the control of the university classroom is now brewing, and the courts will be called upon to establish clearer guidelines as to what – if any – limits legislatures might have in dictating what is taught in public universities. In You Can't Teach That!: The Battle over University Classrooms (Polity Press, 2024), Keith Whittington argues that the First Amendment imposes meaningful limits on how government officials can restrict the ideas discussed on university campuses. In clear and accessible prose, he illuminates the legal status of academic freedom in the United States and shows how existing constitutional doctrine can be deployed to protect unbridled free inquiry. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Alessio Bucaioni, Associate Professor, Mälardalen University, Sweden. We talk about his coauthored paper Continuous Conformance of Software Architectures (ICSA 2024).Alessio Bucaioni : "Yeah, I agree: A plethora of definitions for the same thing or concept may very well slow down progress in the research. And actually, I think that this issue is peculiar to software engineering, perhaps computer science more generally — because if you think about the branches of science, say, mathematics or physics, there it is not very common that you have plethora of definitions. You typically have things that are very well defined, with theorems and the definitions proven.”Writing guide which Alessio refers to during our conversation: They Say / I Say Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Alessio Bucaioni, Associate Professor, Mälardalen University, Sweden. We talk about his coauthored paper Technical Architectures for Automotive Systems (ICSA 2020).Alessio Bucaioni : "For Conclusion sections, I like to cater to a reader approaching our paper who’s pressed for time. So, that means, I want to enable this reader to understand our work just by reading the Abstract, the Introduction, and the Conclusion. So, I try to get the Conclusion to bond well with the Abstract and the Introduction while at the same time adding extra information to the content in the Conclusion, for example, emphasizing even further the relevance of a particular contribution.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Enxhi Ferko, PhD student, and Alessio Bucaioni, Associate Professor — both at Mälardalen University, Sweden. We talk about their coauthored paper Standardisation in Digital Twin Architectures in Manufacturing (ICSA 2023).Enxhi Ferko : "What really pleases me about this study is, sure, our contributions have proven interesting and useful to both academics and practitioners. But we were happy to reach, as well, even a third group of stakeholders, namely, the people involved in this particular standardization body. And that’s because this ISO standard is quite new, and so, it’s expected to evolve in an iterative feedback process, of which now our work is forming a constructive part!” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Dimitrios Tsoukalas, Postdoctoral Researcher at the Information Technologies Institute of the Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH), Greece; and Alexander Chatzigeorgiou, Professor and Vice Rector, University of Macedonia, Greece. We talk about their two coauthored papers, Machine Learning for Technical Debt Identification, and Local and Global Explainability for Technical Debt Identification.Alexander Chatzigeorgiou : "I think that it is important in every research endeavor — regardless of whether or not the outcome is what you expected at the start — to outline all steps of the journey for the reader. Because, you can’t know, there might be something in there that’s intriguing for someone, something that inspires further research in some other domain — what I mean to say is, the problem which you (the authors) have decided is unfeasible may actually have an answer which some reader can provide from their own area of expertise.”Link to Tsoukalas et al. Machine Learning for Technical Debt Identification (TSE 2022)Link to Tsoukalas et al. Local and Global Explainability for Technical Debt Identification (TSE 2024) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Subatomic Writing: Six Fundamental Lessons to Make Language Matter (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023), by Johns Hopkins University instructor Jamie Zvirzdin, is a guide for writing about science—from the subatomic level up! Subatomic Writing teaches that the building blocks of language are like particles in physics. These particles, combined and arranged, form something greater than their parts: all matter in the literary universe. This interdisciplinary approach helps scientists, science writers, and editors improve their writing in fundamental areas as they build from the sounds in a word to the pacing of a paragraph. These areas include: sound and sense; word classes; grammar and syntax; punctuation; rhythm and emphasis; and pacing and coherence. Equally helpful for students needing to learn to write clearly about science and for scientists hoping to create more effective course material, papers, and grant applications, this guide builds confidence in writing abilities. Each lesson provides exercises that build on each other, strengthening readers’ capacity to communicate ideas and data, all while learning basic particle physics along the way.Our guest is: Jamie Zvirzdin, who teaches science writing at Johns Hopkins University and researches ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays for the University of Utah. Her writing has been featured in The Atlantic, Kenyon Review, and Issues in Science and Technology.Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, the producer of the Academic Life podcast. She holds a PhD in history, which she uses to explore what stories we tell and what happens to those we never tell.Playlist about unpacking hidden curriculum of writing books: Before and After the Book Deal Writing Your Book Proposal The Dissertation to Book Workbook A Guide to Getting Unstuck Finding Your Argument Top Ten Struggles in Writing a Book Manuscript and What to Do About It Open Access Publishing Explained Stylish Academic Writing Tips University Press Submissions and the Peer Review Process Do You Need To Hire A Developmental Editor? Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by posting, assigning or sharing episodes. Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 200+ Academic Life episodes? You’ll find them all archived here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Jacob Krüger, Assistant Professor for Software Engineering, Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands. We talk about peer review in software engineering — what it is, and what it might be.Jacob Krüger : "When you submit to broad-themed conferences like ICSE or FSE, you cannot assume much background knowledge on individual tools or techniques which are really, let’s say, the standard in your home community. Because, to succeed as such conferences as those, your really need to communicate explicitly to your reviewers what you have done, which steps you have taken, the techniques you have used and for which reasons — so, basically, you have to explain each design decision of your study. Of course, at a small domain conference, many of these things will be obvious — but not to all reviewers at a large conference, because, remember, these are the conferences where many communities gather — here your reviewers are likely to be very diverse in their research. So, it is the authors’ job to explain and justify every move in the study.”Link to the paper where Jacob talks about the process of review Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices