Hello, Eduardo: There is a small travel grant available, which will not cover travel from most places but may help. And those applying from Asia, Africa, and South America are particularly targeted. More information here: http://aoir.org/ir14-0-travel-grant-applications/ A list of our keynote and plenaries may be found here: http://ir14.aoir.org/speakers/ Hope to see you in Denver. Best, Alex On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 11:09 AM, eduardo erazo acosta <rueduardo2000@hotmail.com> wrote:
Good Day,
I researcher in education and Internet in Colombia
Can anyone tell me if there are scholarships for travel?
and power particuipar speaker at the conference this year??
THANKS ¡¡
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Date: Thu, 30 May 2013 11:00:22 -0700 From: halavais@gmail.com To: jhunsinger@wlu.ca CC: Subject: Re: [Air-L] Let's talk about AoIR.
OK, so I want to separate the word-count issue from the template issue, because they are divisible and too easily conflated.
TEMPLATE
On the template issue: we've been through this once before, but the reason the template exists is to give some structure for proceedings. I made the argument--and have made the argument since I ran for VP--that I wanted what goes on at AoIR to reach a wider audience, and to spread beyond those who can attend the conference each year. Many of you running for Exec have expressed a similar interest, and have proposed various mechanisms for accomplishing this. For me, getting our work out in some form so that it was findable on the web was important.
The template exists because to be able to find and use stuff in a collection, it is easier if there is some structural similarity--you know where to find the title, the author, etc. There is nothing, at least to my mind, that says "hard science" in that. Yes, there was a format for subtitles (in case it's not obvious from this email, I quite like subtitles), and tables, etc., but none of this required their use.
Maybe the issue is APA for the citation style? I frankly couldn't care less about citation styles, and didn't pick it. This seemed to be the most common style used in most previous IR conferences, but that doesn't mean it should predominate. I don't see why it can't be "use whatever you want as long as it is findable"--APA was arbitrary. Perhaps that is what signals "hard science"? Would, by contrast, MLA or Chicago then signal "Humanities"?
I think there is value in getting our work out there. I think asking people to share what they do at AoIR is valuable. I suspect that a number of others do too. But I think there should also be options for not sharing. It may be (with deep apologies to Suely and Andrew, who have invested a lot of time and effort here) that SPIR just isn't worthy of ongoing support.
WORD COUNT
On the word count issue: One of the reason I've separated these is that I've heard largely support for the longer limits, with a few grumblings about 1,200 being too short. We've had a number of restrictions in the past, ranging from 250 to 1000. What I've heard consistently during my 8 years on Exec is people saying that it's hard to judge work based on two or three paragraphs alone, and that this results a bad refereeing process. I think the 500 word limit favors those who can write good abstracts. I count myself in that number--my longer work may not be that great, but I write an awesome 500 word abstract. That said, there were no such limits on roundtables, and some of the proposals were quite short.
We have allowed full papers for the last couple (three?) years, but the number of papers submitted was vanishingly small, and a nine-thousand word paper requires a disproportionate amount of reviewer time.
REVIEWING
Finally, on the issue of reviews, I want to thank those who volunteered to review this year. I'll note that many of you did not, meaning that (a) your expertise was missing when it came to assign reviews and (b) the reviewers who were assigned often had more reviews than we have assigned in the past. I agree we need to provide better guidance to reviewers, and some of you (reviewers and authors) will hear from me soon about helping shape that process. But the first step is to be willing to put time into reviewing.
I just want to be very clear that there was a range of excellent reviewing and reviewing that could have been much better, from a range of early-career scholars and more experienced reviewers. Regardless of this, I think our reviewers deserve a significant amount of praise and respect for volunteering to review.
Alex
On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 10:35 AM, Jeremy hunsinger <jhunsinger@wlu.ca> wrote:
I think the problem in part is that it was a template that said it was for a paper, and not a template that said it was for a proposal or abstract. This combined with the required length, added considerably to the lack of clarity. I think we need to go back to the 'those that need to submit full papers for them to count, can submit full papers' but those papers are not automatically submitted for publication, and the other track should be a simple 500 word abstract, or longer panel abstract. the clarity of the two track system was again slightly problematic, but it was inclusive in ways that this system is not
On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 1:19 PM, Alexander Halavais <halavais@gmail.com> wrote:
It would be helpful, at least to me, if folks could be more explicit about *what* they objected to in the template. There were no content restrictions. Yes, there were spaces for citations, subtitles, and for a title, but if these were omitted, they were omitted.
I am well aware of the power of defaults, but I'm missing what it was about this particular template that makes it difficult. (Yes, I've heard from folks that the word-count was restrictive, but that isn't directly a template issue.)
Best,
Alex
On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 9:35 AM, Feona Attwood <f.attwood@mdx.ac.uk> wrote:
Thanks for bringing this up Terri. I know lots of people have had similar feelings and feel awkward about how to express it.
My feeling is that the new format for submitting proposals seems to signal a real shift in style. I haven't come across anything like that before, not even for really dull conferences and I didn't put a proposal in this year because I couldn't work out a way to fit what I do into that kind of format. It seems designed to filter out anything imaginative, innovative, speculative or original. The papers I reviewed in that format were really difficult to read; the format had squashed all the life out of them. I had felt very enthused after last year's conference which seemed very lively and friendly - and then really deflated by the submission process this year. I'm hoping it was an experiment that won't be continued. I'm still planning to attend this year but I can't imagine submitting anything again if this is the new direction AoIR is taking. Feona
On 30 May 2013, at 15:27, Terri Senft wrote:
Hi Pals,
With the encouragement of Andrew and Alex, I wanted to approach the list regarding some questions I have about culture of the Association of Internet Researchers today.
I'm asking because after this round of conference proposal reviews, I feel personally and professionally a bit disconnected from this group these days. This freaks me out a bit, because I've always thought of AoIR as my intellectual home. I am wondering if this is just me (which would be fine!), or if others are in struggle as well.
Some Big Questions I Have:
1. Who are we, personally and professionally? What makes us the same as organizations like ICA or ACM? What makes us different from these organizations?
2. How do we perform our identity at our annual conference? How is it reflected in the way we phrase our calls for submissions? How is it reflected in submission procedures?
3. How do we want to define "rigorous scholarship" in our organization? How do we want to deal with scholarship that strikes us as urgent, necessary or fresh, but not sufficiently rigorous?
4. Is there even an "us" anymore? Can positivists, activists, and artists really sit in the same room and discuss 'internet studies'? My answer used to be affirmative, but that was before internet studies was as ubiquitous as literature studies.
5. Should the desire for a conference that showcases professionalization trump a desire for a conference that encourages its youngest scholars and its most senior ones to take risks, make mistakes and push the boundaries of the field?
Okay, that's plenty to start. As they say in AA, take what you want and leave the rest.
Fondly, T
Dr. Theresa M. Senft Global Liberal Studies Program School of Arts & Sciences New York University 726 Broadway NY NY 10003
home: *www.terrisenft.net <http://goog_689013053>** *(needs a serious updating) facebook: www.facebook.com/theresa.senft twitter: @terrisenft _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
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-- -- // // This email is // [ ] assumed public and may be blogged / forwarded. // [x] assumed to be private, please ask before redistributing. // // Alexander C. Halavais, ciberflâneur // http://alex.halavais.net // // Please attribute any stupid errors above to autocorrect on my phone. // (But I probably was typing on a keyboard.) _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
-- -- // // This email is // [ ] assumed public and may be blogged / forwarded. // [x] assumed to be private, please ask before redistributing. // // Alexander C. Halavais, ciberflâneur // http://alex.halavais.net // // Please attribute any stupid errors above to autocorrect on my phone. // (But I probably was typing on a keyboard.)