I don't think our aim is to be a pain in the ass. At least not solely. You're right: consistency in submission does not necessarily aid the review process. There are certainly difficulties in reviewing for an interdisciplinary conference, as each of our reviews over the years makes clear. But picking the same typeface won't help with that. What it will help with is providing a consistent article style for SPIR. I think you will agree that a mishmash of styles makes reading such a collection difficult, and this is why collected volumes, journals, and proceedings try to provide some consistency among contributions. Given that the editorial committee for SPIR is entirely volunteer, we are asking for your help in this process. The pain happens somewhere, and I guarantee that those brave souls who are taking the helm of SPIR for a second year will get more than their share. We recognize that asking contributors to conform to a consistent style adds work on your end, but it allows us to--for the first time in several years--provide the work of our membership in a way that the broader community can easily access. I think it's important that our work have a life beyond the conference, and I hope this will help provide it. - Alex On Sun, Feb 24, 2013 at 5:53 PM, David J. Phillips <davidj.phillips@utoronto.ca> wrote:

I would like to strongly object to this:

...

3. In the interests of providing reviewers with consistency in submitted papers, all paper submissions must adhere to the SPIR template. That template is now linked on the CfP page of the AoIR 14 site. See it at http://ir14.aoir.org/cfp/

What is the point?

Does any reviewer really have a problem reading papers in formats other than this? Can they not compare the content of papers if those papers have different margins or font sizes or long quote conventions? Do our reviewers read only one journal? Are they desperately confused by varying citation styles? If any of these are the case, they are perhaps not qualified to review.

AoIR is interdisciplinary. Style templates are associated (for reasons I've never fully understood) with certain disciplines. Why are we forcing our authors into one particular disciplinary form?

And simply in terms of efficiency, it is a much bigger pain in the ass (for me anyway) to write in a different template than it is to read in a different template.

What am I missing here? What's the point?

djp

David J. Phillips, Associate Professor Faculty of Information University of Toronto

140 St. George Street Toronto, ON M5S 3G6 CANADA (+1) 416-978-7098 / 416-978-8942 (fax)

_______________________________________________ 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.)

I suppose I'm indifferent to the template that's used. Not all papers will be included in the SPIR, and of those authors, not all of them will choose to publish their work in SPIR if they get a chance (because they may have eyes on another journal for their work instead). I do think it's good that the organization is trying to make the research from its conferences widely available and published quickly (Internet research grows stale fast!), so if requiring everyone to use the SPIR template from the outset helps, good for that. What I am very glad to see here is a longer submission format. I've reviewed for this conference for a few years and was always annoyed that the extremely short extended abstract format limited people's ability to adequately describe their methods. One year, half of the abstracts I reviewed said they came up with their conclusions "through an analysis" of some texts/data/phenomena. "An analysis" just doesn't cut it for a scholarly conference, in my opinion. Tell me your concepts, procedures, measures, or even just get more descriptive ("through a discourse analysis in the way Smith (20XX) describes..."). If anything, the longer format (and one that explicitly asks for better methodological content) will require more papers to move from 1) people seeing cool things online and promising to "analyze" them in greater depth by next October's conference, to 2) people applying some kind of rigor to the serious study of the Internet. I'm hopeful. db --- Daren C. Brabham, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, School of Journalism & Mass Communication Editor, Case Studies in Strategic Communication | www.csscjournal.org University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Carroll Hall, CB 3365 Chapel Hill, NC 27599 (801) 633-4796 (mobile) daren.brabham@unc.edu | www.darenbrabham.com -----Original Message----- From: air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of David J. Phillips Sent: Monday, February 25, 2013 10:08 AM To: alex@halavais.net Cc: AoIR-L Subject: [Air-L] SPIR and IR and internet research and submission policies (was Re: AoIR 14 Announcement. Extended Deadline and More) OK. So the new submission policies are not for reviewers, but for the editors of SPIR. That makes more sense. And I see how the additional requirements of the content of the submissions (word length, lit review, presentation and discussion of "findings") will elicit papers more amenable to publication. Still, I question (in all good faith and even good cheer) the practice of requiring all *conference* submissions to be in the form best suited for *journal* publications. In my experience, AoIR is a great conference, in part because I never know quite what to expect. Regardless of my expectations, what I've consistently found is a ratio of worthwhile to useless presentations that exceeds that of more conservative, "rigorous" conferences. I'm thinking ICA in particular. I would hate to see the generosity of spirit that animates the IR conference bartered for greater ease and better outcome in the production of SPIR. SPIR selects for publication (as far as I can tell) a small percentage of the papers presented at the conference. I believe it should recognize that it is publishing not "the best of IR," but "the best of IR suitable to the published scholarly paper format." I understand that there may also be a wish to raise the overall quality of submissions. This seems a fine goal. But I question (again with respect and bon homie) whether requiring the lit review, method, findings, discussion format is the way to do this. There's got to be a way of saying to potential submitters "There's got to be a there there" without retreating so fully to a very conservative definition of what research is. Finally, thank you, organizers, for making these decisions and offering us the opportunity to engage, resist, and/or appropriate. djp On 24 Feb 2013, at 22:2727, Alexander Halavais wrote:

I don't think our aim is to be a pain in the ass. At least not solely.

You're right: consistency in submission does not necessarily aid the review process. There are certainly difficulties in reviewing for an interdisciplinary conference, as each of our reviews over the years makes clear. But picking the same typeface won't help with that.

What it will help with is providing a consistent article style for SPIR. I think you will agree that a mishmash of styles makes reading such a collection difficult, and this is why collected volumes, journals, and proceedings try to provide some consistency among contributions. Given that the editorial committee for SPIR is entirely volunteer, we are asking for your help in this process.

The pain happens somewhere, and I guarantee that those brave souls who are taking the helm of SPIR for a second year will get more than their share. We recognize that asking contributors to conform to a consistent style adds work on your end, but it allows us to--for the first time in several years--provide the work of our membership in a way that the broader community can easily access. I think it's important that our work have a life beyond the conference, and I hope this will help provide it.

- Alex

On Sun, Feb 24, 2013 at 5:53 PM, David J. Phillips <davidj.phillips@utoronto.ca> wrote:

...

I would like to strongly object to this:

...

3. In the interests of providing reviewers with consistency in submitted papers, all paper submissions must adhere to the SPIR template. That template is now linked on the CfP page of the AoIR 14 site. See it at http://ir14.aoir.org/cfp/

What is the point?

Does any reviewer really have a problem reading papers in formats other than this? Can they not compare the content of papers if those papers have different margins or font sizes or long quote conventions? Do our reviewers read only one journal? Are they desperately confused by varying citation styles? If any of these are the case, they are perhaps not qualified to review.

AoIR is interdisciplinary. Style templates are associated (for reasons I've never fully understood) with certain disciplines. Why are we forcing our authors into one particular disciplinary form?

And simply in terms of efficiency, it is a much bigger pain in the ass (for me anyway) to write in a different template than it is to read in a different template.

What am I missing here? What's the point?

djp

David J. Phillips, Associate Professor Faculty of Information University of Toronto

140 St. George Street Toronto, ON M5S 3G6 CANADA (+1) 416-978-7098 / 416-978-8942 (fax)

_______________________________________________ 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.)

David J. Phillips, Associate Professor Faculty of Information University of Toronto 140 St. George Street Toronto, ON M5S 3G6 CANADA (+1) 416-978-7098 / 416-978-8942 (fax) _______________________________________________ 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/

Hello, All, Thank you for the emails and for the bonhomie in which they are offered. For clarity's sake, I'm going to be rude and reply to the three previous contributions at once. First, I should note that I've taken on the replies because I have been an instigator, proposing some of these changes to the Exec and to Hector. This is still Hector's show, and you shouldn't read by my replying any change in that. In other words, he has the responsibility, but I'm happy (perhaps the wrong word: "resigned") to take any blame. First some clarifications on what has changed in the call from last year. 1. The word count on paper and panel submissions has increased by 400 words. Why? To provide more to go on in reviewing and for people to know more about the presentations. 2. All paper and panel submissions will be published in open format (in SPIR). Just as a clarification: there will be no full paper requirement or request this year, the submitted abstract/short paper will be openly available. Note that the roundtable submissions category has *not* changed. Why? To promote more open access to the materials of the conference. 3. The required use of a template in submissions. Why? To allow SPIR to be more consistent in look and feel, and again to promote its broad access, browsing, and contribution to the wider scholarly discussion of internet research. So, with some of the context set, I'll try to address the concerns: 1. The length of submission is too long. I suppose one way we could address this is to remove the lower bound on the word count. It seems in some sense notional but it seems strange to change things right ahead of the deadline. Would this put one's 600 word abstract at a disadvantage to someone who has submitted 1,100 words. I suspect it would. If I am reading correctly, I think that Jeremy is suggesting that the increase in the number of words will systematically exclude graduate students. I can't imagine that graduate students are any less capable of producing 400 more words. I personally am probably less capable of that now than when I was a grad student. We could, I suppose, ask Sheizaf Rafaeli whether the 1,000 word cap for IR5.0 resulted in a reduced number of graduate submissions. If it did, I don't think I noticed it. Does suggesting that reviewers will have a better grasp of the submission result in more "rigor." I will admit to not having a very clear idea of what this word means, and have difficulty separating it from "mortis," so rather than address that more highfalutin question, I will say this: The number of presentations we have accepted as a percentage of proposals has dropped significantly over the last several years. This is not as a result of trying to be more "competitive," "rigorous," "selective," or "exclusive." It is a matter of a decision among this executive and previous executives not to grow the size of the conference. We could add four, or more, additional parallel sessions, and (IMHO) still have a very solid set of presentations, but I don't think anyone wants an AoIR with 12 parallel sessions. It is, in other words, a result of math. But what this also means is that we need to be as sure as possible we are getting it right when we accept or reject proposals. It pains me to know that we rejected presentations that were solid, when I showed up to sessions where the presenter basically said that they were presenting something completely different from their title, because (in one case) they hadn't gotten 'round to doing the work they proposed. We're never going to be perfect on this, but a bit more length provides people with a chance to better present their ideas to reviewers. 2. Public presentation of submissions I ran for president of AoIR in part on the issue of opening the organization up, having our work be placed more in the public eye, and available to people who cannot afford to get to an IR conference. I think that opening up our program is the easiest way to do this. So, when you submit a paper (or a panel of papers) your submission will become part of SPIR. (If you want to distribute full papers, you are encouraged to do so, of course, and if folks want to talk about ways of making this easier, I'm happy to be a part of that conversation.) The special issue of ICS will be happening again this year, and I am sure we will once again have opportunities to publish full papers coming out of panels and in other ways. The desire to do this is not new. When we were using Open Conference Systems, rather than ConfTool, this was the default. My hope is that by letting people know the kind of work we do at AoIR, we will be promoting better internet research. 3. The template I've already addressed this somewhat. I don't love the template, but I think there is value in having a consistent presentation for SPIR. I recognize that it is somewhat onerous to copypasty into that template... I will be doing it too. It's a pain, I realize, and we should look at ways of making it easier (a form, instead?) but since you need to copy and paste other things into the submission form: you name, address, etc., I really don't think it's as onerous as it might seem at first. I think it's fair to distribute that work to submitters rather than to have the volunteers who are editing for SPIR be responsible for doing it for everyone. I recognize David's criticism: he doesn't see the value proposition of doing formatting work as a submitter. My only hope is that he is willing to give it a try, and that he will see the value in the distribution of SPIR. If folks next year feel it's not worth the effort, I'm sure we can find other ways of moving forward. I do want to note there is nothing here that says you need to have "findings" or a "lit review" as David Phillips suggests above. You do need to have a title, and some text, but that has not changed from the past. There is a section for references, but if you don't have any, don't use it... I think we can remain interdisciplinary and still ask that people use text and have titles. PLEASE READ ME: Don't forget the roundtables. Our poor roundtables have been neglected for too long. In some ways, I fear that the strictures of a paper poorly represent the variety of presentation styles available. I was also the one who introduced the ignite format (and we're giving that another go this year), and would love to see more creative use of the Roundtable proposals: roundtables, fishbowls, relaxation sessions, instructional sessions, marches, singalongs, posters, hangouts, etc., can all be proposed. If the only outcome of the above changes were a greater number of creative presentations and roundtables being proposed, I would consider this a success. In practice, in the past, roundtables and panels have been accepted at a much higher rate than individual paper presentations for a reason: they tend to result in more interesting sessions. Best, Alex On Mon, Feb 25, 2013 at 9:02 AM, Jeremy hunsinger <jhuns@vt.edu> wrote:

Here I think is where the key point if interdisciplinarity needs to be addressed. Rigor varies in meaning per discipline, philosophical rigor, methodological rigor, theoretical rigor, empirical rigor, etc. also all vary per discipline and to expect them to conform to our expectations. What strikes me is that for several generations of this conference the application procedures have become more 'rigorous', yet the complaint about the final presentation/paper quality hasn't been resolved via increased rigor or increased length.

I personally thought the solution of having some people who needed to present peer reviewed papers because their discipline or department required that, was a really great idea. I don't think the move to short papers for everyone is a really great idea. I think it really constrains the interdisciplinary imagination of the conference and the organization by constructing a new disciplinary mechanism, SPIRE and its format. I support SPIRE as a place to publish for those that want to submit there, but it should not be the submission model of choice. Personally, I'd argue that we should go back to the under 500 word abstract of proposals in order to be able to locate a more plural sense of interdisciplinarity, to include more graduate students, etc. We've raised the bar of the conference high enough already, has it really brought about the interdisciplinary, international with strong support of graduate students that the organization had? or has this focus on rigor of length and argument undermined our capacity for inclusion, and pluralism of the communities we aim to serve? _______________________________________________ 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.)

If I may interject on this graduate submission issue for a second here, because it is a valid concern: I've seen this at IAMCR and am involved in it in a minor capacity in terms of reviewing abstracts... As a part of this organization, seasoned students have created Emerging Scholars Network. This group has their own separate track. Graduate students could send their submissions in to this track and, from what I have seen, the submissions here have a slightly more flexible acceptance standards. That way, they learn the ropes, get to present their research if it is any good, and meet people when they come in. The organization also provides mentorship, matches profs with grad students etc... So, I hear Jeremy's concern and the need to maintain some kind of a quality in submissions, but we could consider building something like this within the AoIR organization. And by "we," I mean encouraging senior grad students to take the initiative to do so. It is for their best interest anyway, the organizers can put this in their CV under service. Students who participate in it would meet like minded people build their networks, get the support they need, train on how to write their abstracts and present them in conferences etc... My very long-winded two cents :) BsB On Mon, Feb 25, 2013 at 12:45 PM, Jeremy hunsinger <jhunsinger@wlu.ca>wrote:

...

So, with some of the context set, I'll try to address the concerns:

1. The length of submission is too long.

I suppose one way we could address this is to remove the lower bound on the word count. It seems in some sense notional but it seems strange to change things right ahead of the deadline. Would this put one's 600 word abstract at a disadvantage to someone who has submitted 1,100 words. I suspect it would.

If I am reading correctly, I think that Jeremy is suggesting that the increase in the number of words will systematically exclude graduate students. I can't imagine that graduate students are any less capable of producing 400 more words. I personally am probably less capable of that now than when I was a grad student. We could, I suppose, ask Sheizaf Rafaeli whether the 1,000 word cap for IR5.0 resulted in a reduced number of graduate submissions. If it did, I don't think I noticed it.

I did not mean imply that, but what I did imply is that the number of student acceptances has seemed to diminish over the year. However, here i return to the professionalization question. People who are more competent at producing abstracts for conferences tend to get into more conferences. That is a skill set that is learned, so newer people to the profession tend to have less access than older people. The more words that we require them to write opens up more possibilities for someone to write something that will get them rejected. Are we accepting or rejecting more of any one category of people, surely those statistics exist and are things that are discussed by the executive.

The question in the end is what are we, organizationally, supporting by requiring more and more, combined with stricter modes of production? I understand the arguments you put forth, but I want to suggest that there are other implications to the system being put forth than you suggest too. I argue that the new system ads additional disciplinarity and requires additional professionalization. Those things are, i think going to be antagonistic to interdisciplinarity, grad student participation, and international participation in the short and long run. But i could be wrong, but I would be remiss to not point out that possibility and warn against it. _______________________________________________ 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/

-- Thanks, Burcu S. Bakioglu, Ph.D. Postdoctoral Fellow in New Media Lawrence University http://www.palefirer.com http://palefirer.com/blog/

Hi All, Unless I am missing something the template is just a matter of the document format, not an entire submission system, correct? Along with what Steve notes, could it be as simple as "only those submissions using the template will be considered for SPIR but all (traditional and rational) formats will accepted for the conference at large? Does a separate system/set of formats need to be in place? Thanks, Gordon Carlson On Mon, Feb 25, 2013 at 5:02 PM, Steve Jones <sjones@uic.edu> wrote:

Is there an option to provide options? That is, those who wish to submit their work in a particular format under particular circumstances such as SPIR could do so, and another option could be available akin to previous conferences?

I realize this probably won't be possible for this year's conference, and that it's more work to have more options. I understand the reasoning for the guidelines this year, and would like to point out that part of the spirit of AoIR is to try new things, and, presumably, keep doing things that work well, and in time perhaps there will be a hybrid. I'd also like to point out that another part of the spirit of AoIR is to contribute to the effort. Perhaps we can brainstorm options to make the conference submission and review process work better still, and then, most importantly, turn our ideas into actions.

Thanks,

Steve

On Feb 25, 2013, at 1:39 PM, Burcu Bakioglu <bbakiogl@gmail.com> wrote:

...

If I may interject on this graduate submission issue for a second here, because it is a valid concern:

I've seen this at IAMCR and am involved in it in a minor capacity in terms of reviewing abstracts... As a part of this organization, seasoned students have created Emerging Scholars Network. This group has their own separate track. Graduate students could send their submissions in to this track and, from what I have seen, the submissions here have a slightly more flexible acceptance standards. That way, they learn the ropes, get to present their research if it is any good, and meet people when they come in. The organization also provides mentorship, matches profs with grad students etc...

So, I hear Jeremy's concern and the need to maintain some kind of a quality in submissions, but we could consider building something like this within the AoIR organization. And by "we," I mean encouraging senior grad students to take the initiative to do so. It is for their best interest anyway, the organizers can put this in their CV under service. Students who participate in it would meet like minded people build their networks, get the support they need, train on how to write their abstracts and present them in conferences etc...

My very long-winded two cents :)

BsB

On Mon, Feb 25, 2013 at 12:45 PM, Jeremy hunsinger <jhunsinger@wlu.ca wrote:

...

...

So, with some of the context set, I'll try to address the concerns:

1. The length of submission is too long.

I suppose one way we could address this is to remove the lower bound on the word count. It seems in some sense notional but it seems strange to change things right ahead of the deadline. Would this put one's 600 word abstract at a disadvantage to someone who has submitted 1,100 words. I suspect it would.

If I am reading correctly, I think that Jeremy is suggesting that the increase in the number of words will systematically exclude graduate students. I can't imagine that graduate students are any less capable of producing 400 more words. I personally am probably less capable of that now than when I was a grad student. We could, I suppose, ask Sheizaf Rafaeli whether the 1,000 word cap for IR5.0 resulted in a reduced number of graduate submissions. If it did, I don't think I noticed it.

I did not mean imply that, but what I did imply is that the number of student acceptances has seemed to diminish over the year. However, here i return to the professionalization question. People who are more competent at producing abstracts for conferences tend to get into more conferences. That is a skill set that is learned, so newer people to the profession tend to have less access than older people. The more words that we require them to write opens up more possibilities for someone to write something that will get them rejected. Are we accepting or rejecting more of any one category of people, surely those statistics exist and are things that are discussed by the executive.

The question in the end is what are we, organizationally, supporting by requiring more and more, combined with stricter modes of production? I understand the arguments you put forth, but I want to suggest that there are other implications to the system being put forth than you suggest too. I argue that the new system ads additional disciplinarity and requires additional professionalization. Those things are, i think going to be antagonistic to interdisciplinarity, grad student participation, and international participation in the short and long run. But i could be wrong, but I would be remiss to not point out that possibility and warn against it. _______________________________________________ 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/

-- Thanks,

Burcu S. Bakioglu, Ph.D. Postdoctoral Fellow in New Media Lawrence University

http://www.palefirer.com http://palefirer.com/blog/ _______________________________________________ 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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_______________________________________________ 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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-- Gordon Carlson Executive Director, Society for Conceptual Logistics in Communication Research http://www.sclcr.com

Regarding the formatting issue it would be extremely helpful and timesaving for all but one generous soul if one generous soul were to create a template with that style sheet that was available for download. I totally get the rationale but the thought of hundreds of people putting hours into formatting vs a few people putting hundreds of hours into formatting are both terrible compared to one person putting half an hour into formatting and the rest of us being grateful and treating that person to beverages aplenty in Denver. I know it is counter to everything I ever did for this organization to suggest something and hope others will take care of it but hey, I'm resisting my former self. Or something. Nancy ________________________________ From: Alexander Halavais Sent: 2/24/2013 10:27 PM To: David J. Phillips Cc: AoIR-L Subject: Re: [Air-L] AoIR 14 Announcement. Extended Deadline and More I don't think our aim is to be a pain in the ass. At least not solely. You're right: consistency in submission does not necessarily aid the review process. There are certainly difficulties in reviewing for an interdisciplinary conference, as each of our reviews over the years makes clear. But picking the same typeface won't help with that. What it will help with is providing a consistent article style for SPIR. I think you will agree that a mishmash of styles makes reading such a collection difficult, and this is why collected volumes, journals, and proceedings try to provide some consistency among contributions. Given that the editorial committee for SPIR is entirely volunteer, we are asking for your help in this process. The pain happens somewhere, and I guarantee that those brave souls who are taking the helm of SPIR for a second year will get more than their share. We recognize that asking contributors to conform to a consistent style adds work on your end, but it allows us to--for the first time in several years--provide the work of our membership in a way that the broader community can easily access. I think it's important that our work have a life beyond the conference, and I hope this will help provide it. - Alex On Sun, Feb 24, 2013 at 5:53 PM, David J. Phillips <davidj.phillips@utoronto.ca> wrote:

I would like to strongly object to this:

...

3. In the interests of providing reviewers with consistency in submitted papers, all paper submissions must adhere to the SPIR template. That template is now linked on the CfP page of the AoIR 14 site. See it at http://ir14.aoir.org/cfp/

What is the point?

Does any reviewer really have a problem reading papers in formats other than this? Can they not compare the content of papers if those papers have different margins or font sizes or long quote conventions? Do our reviewers read only one journal? Are they desperately confused by varying citation styles? If any of these are the case, they are perhaps not qualified to review.

AoIR is interdisciplinary. Style templates are associated (for reasons I've never fully understood) with certain disciplines. Why are we forcing our authors into one particular disciplinary form?

And simply in terms of efficiency, it is a much bigger pain in the ass (for me anyway) to write in a different template than it is to read in a different template.

What am I missing here? What's the point?

djp

David J. Phillips, Associate Professor Faculty of Information University of Toronto

140 St. George Street Toronto, ON M5S 3G6 CANADA (+1) 416-978-7098 / 416-978-8942 (fax)

_______________________________________________ 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.) _______________________________________________ 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/