Our paper on evolutionary process improvement has been accepted for #EuroSPI #in Vienna! #spi

And at half past 12, everything finally falls #in its place. Revised paper for #Profes is finished

Vanavond politiek café door @groenlinks030 over internet als motor van de Utrechtse economie #in café Averechts (20:00) #gl #utrecht

And another paper on SPM and productization accepted for #ICSOB #in Boston! w/ Wouter Leenen, @SjBrinkkemper & @ingevandeweerd #prodmgmt #fb

Most academics really want to improve their writing, because good writing increases your chances of getting your manuscript accepted. Still, I think the academic system doesn´t reward good writing as much as it should.

The best advice I´ve seen recently on how to become a better writer is this quora post by Venkatesh Rao. He pins any quality improvements to rewriting:

The HUGE difference between everyday writing that everybody does and serious writing is the proportion that is re-writing. I’d estimate that for non-writers, rewriting accounts for maybe 10-20% of their writing. For serious writers, it accounts for anywhere between 50-90% depending on how critical the particular piece is.

I´m not sure how much rewriting goes into your average paper, but those numbers ring true for me. This makes things simpler: if you want to improve as a writer, focus on your rewriting skill. This is solid advice. Now I understand why doing revisions of a paper feels so tiresome: it’s not necessarily boredom, it’s the fact that rewriting is more effortful than actual writing.

from Academic Productivity http://www.academicproductivity.com/2012/the-importance-of-rewriting/

Windows: If you’re looking for a way to manage your Google Docs without the need to sign in via your web browser, gExplore can help you out. It allows you to upload and download files in your Google Docs account directly from Windows, and even send PDFs to your Amazon Kindle. More »

from Lifehacker http://lifehacker.com/5885750/gexplore-manages-your-google-docs-from-the-desktop

A new study in Psychological Review suggests that we store our memories in patches and move between them in the same way that bees move between flowers. To improve your memory recall, you need to know when it’s best to move from one patch to another. More »

from Lifehacker http://lifehacker.com/5885293/improve-your-memory-by-using-memory-foraging-strategies

Scott Aaronson uses an analogy to the game industry to describe the predicament academics are in:

I have an ingenious idea for a company. My company will be in the business of selling computer games.

But, unlike other computer game companies, mine will never have to hire a single programmer, game designer, or graphic artist. Instead I’ll simply find people who know how to make games, and ask them to donate their games to me. Naturally, anyone generous enough to donate a game will immediately relinquish all further rights to it. From then on, I alone will be the copyright-holder, distributor, and collector of royalties.

This is not to say, however, that I’ll provide no “value-added.” My company will be the one that packages the games in 25-cent cardboard boxes, then resells the boxes for up to $300 apiece.

But why would developers donate their games to me? Because they’ll need my seal of approval. I’ll convince developers that, if a game isn’t distributed by my company, then the game doesn’t “count”—indeed, barely even exists—and all their labor on it has been in vain.

As crazy as it sounds, this is exactly the situation with academic publishers. The ‘status quo’ is such that young researchers must publish on established journals (to gain the “seal of approval”). For older researchers, switching to open access publishing doesn’t pay off either: it’d show they don’t believe in the value the journals bring, and they are often editors of those (!).

And this is how the current academic publishing industry survives without adding much value. Survival is not the right word, because the leading firms still carry themselves around with arrogance. At the 2010 Semantic Web conference in Shanghai Jay Katzen, a keynote speaker from Elsevier, announced a big project on using the data on papers to create widgets. The API would allow people to do mashups with scientific data, that could be displayed on the publisher’s page. It was sold as “a new paradigm in the way research information is discovered, used, shared and re-used to accelerate science.” The reaction from the audience was instantaneous: “are you telling us that, not happy with monetizing the data and content we freely give you, you want us to build applications using that content for you to sell?”. The answer was honest: “… huh… yes.”

Today, many journal articles are online. In fact, the papers are often on the author’s homepage, and a simple query on google scholar or MS research search will find them. It is hard to imagine what value a publisher adds here.

However, the alternative is not clear. Open access publishing finds it difficult to obtain sustainable sources of financing. PLoS, the Public Library of Science, is financially sustainable, but ArXiv is struggling.

“Now it’s up to the rest of us to supply the anger.” Says Scott. Now more than 800 researchers have declared a boycott against Elsevier, up from 500 yesterday afternoon. Looks like the anger is there.

(An apology for the lack of posting. Dario has moved on to a position as senior researcher at Wikimedia, and I will be working on my startup full-time in a month. Often, I’ve seen blogpost-worthy issues, but I just didn’t have the mental bandwidth to follow up).

from Academic Productivity http://www.academicproductivity.com/2012/when-your-users-tell-you-you-are-not-adding-value-boycott-against-elsevier/

Piled Higher & Deeper by Jorge Cham		www.phdcomics.com
title: “By the way” – originally published 1/25/2012 For the latest news in PHD Comics, CLICK HERE!

from PHD Comics http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1465

This post if a bit of ruse, considering my foray into these top blog posts in the past (The Top Product Management Blogs 2010). However, I am going to keep it simple this year and repeat that the best list for the top product management blogs is Alltop – Top Product Management News.

Here is a list of the key blogs represented:

• Optimal product management and product marketing
• Rocket watcher
• Tyner blain
• Productmarketing.com
• Brainmates – product management people
• The accidental product manager
• Lead on purpose
• The experience is the product
• Web ink now
• Product management meets pop culture
• Spatially relevant
• Launch clinic
• Strategic Product Manager
• Outsidein view
• A random jog
• SVPG blog
• Mind the product

from Strategic Product Manager http://www.strategicproductmanager.com/2012/01/23/the-top-product-management-blogs-2012/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+StrategicProductManager+%28Strategic+Product+Manager%29