Thursday, February 24, 2005
Conference: Copenhagen offshore wind (26-28 October 2005)
The conference programme at Copenhagen Offshore Wind 2005 will include presentations from key players within technology, science, business and policy. The accepted papers will be presented in an innovative setup of plenary and parallel sessions, workshops and poster exhibitions. Here is the call for abstracts (deadline: 1st March 2005).
Comments:
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Matteo, thank you for your comments; you raise lots of very interesting points. Let me try to summarize them.
1) Conference lifecycle - sending an abstract eight months in advance seems the standard in the academic conference industry. While there are plenty of sensible reasons for this practice, I cannot help wondering whether this is a legacy of past times, when the exchange of information did not exploit the web.
2) Research lifecycle - I agree that some pieces of research could be outdated in a few months. However, if partial results are valuable, they could be presented with the caveat that further investigation is under way. As a general comment, it would be interesting to know what is the average 'research lifecycle', i.e. how much it takes for a piece of research work to progress from idea to (say) conference paper. To some extent, the submission process takes account of these issues by allowing a submission of abstracts, then papers, then allowing some slack for amending papers following any reviewers' comments. However, any views on this? Are six month a realistic time horizon to determine the shelf time of a piece of research?
3) Meta-research, or research aimed at validating an expoused goal (what happens if research conclusions change under way?). I won't engage in a debate on research ethics here. I believe that if a piece of research is original and innovative, it is worth publishing regardless of the actual conclusions. I have no doubts that there will be plenty of critical contributions to any controversial finding.
Having said that, are there any takers willing to submit an abstract?
1) Conference lifecycle - sending an abstract eight months in advance seems the standard in the academic conference industry. While there are plenty of sensible reasons for this practice, I cannot help wondering whether this is a legacy of past times, when the exchange of information did not exploit the web.
2) Research lifecycle - I agree that some pieces of research could be outdated in a few months. However, if partial results are valuable, they could be presented with the caveat that further investigation is under way. As a general comment, it would be interesting to know what is the average 'research lifecycle', i.e. how much it takes for a piece of research work to progress from idea to (say) conference paper. To some extent, the submission process takes account of these issues by allowing a submission of abstracts, then papers, then allowing some slack for amending papers following any reviewers' comments. However, any views on this? Are six month a realistic time horizon to determine the shelf time of a piece of research?
3) Meta-research, or research aimed at validating an expoused goal (what happens if research conclusions change under way?). I won't engage in a debate on research ethics here. I believe that if a piece of research is original and innovative, it is worth publishing regardless of the actual conclusions. I have no doubts that there will be plenty of critical contributions to any controversial finding.
Having said that, are there any takers willing to submit an abstract?
Matteo, your comment has indeed a valid concern...why something could be presented in a time when it might have lost some of its consistency? Good point! But, and don't think I'm an expert, the reason you will submit an abstract or they will accept it is because you have reasonable ideas and propositions to make on a topic. These statements of yours are interesting because of their scientific and platonic value. If, at the end, you do not come up with results you or others would like to see, that is not the problem. Or even if the inputs for your research have been altered in some way, this fact should be stated without any concerns about the implications on the results!
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