[Insight-developers] IJ Volunteers : THE MATRIX : RED PILL

Sat Sep 16 15:06:53 EDT 2006

Hi Gaetan,

I would suggest that you approach this situation with a more positive
attitude.

You are referring to the IJ the same way a tax-payer will complain
about the government.

Complaining and whining is not an effective strategy when you are trying
to change the status quo of a community that has been mushy-minded by
decades of "Publish or Perish" propaganda.

        The Insight Journal *is not* an Institution,
        The Insight Journal   *is*   a Community Resource.

   There is no such a thing as "The Owners" of the Insight Journal.

If you want to define such concept, probably the closest thing to the
"Owners" of the Journal are the 1,200 subscribers to the ITK users list.

This is a Journal intended to be supported and managed by the community.
This is why it is poised to be a real *peer-review* Journal.

The concept of "Freedom" is too new for our community, because the
traditional peer-review process treats authors and readers as children
who are supervised by the "adult" reviewers. The "adult" reviewers are
the ones who decide what is good for the children to read. Such roles,
atrophied critical thinking in the readers and lead them to passively
accept any published paper as "absolute truth", because it has passed
through the supposedly "holy" process of review by the "adults".

Members of our community read technical journals with the same level
of critical thinking that a watcher of TV-reality-shows exercise while
sitting empty-minded for hours in front of the TV-set. The concept that
they are actually entitled to question the content of papers is too
alien for them. The notion that a published paper may contain mistakes,
is a sacrilege for them. The notion that the claims made in a paper
are supposed to be verified, is a blasphemy to them.

After all,

   "Who are readers to question the judgment of the holy reviewers" ?

As a consequence our community has developed the laziness of the kid
that doesn't do his homework until the parents tell them to do so.

The concept that *everybody* is entitled to write a review, is too new
for our community. Most readers and authors assume that "reviewing" is
an activity exclusively reserved for some "supernatural" beings who are
the "Chosen Ones", the "Holy Reviewers".

Authors are still trained to submit papers to Journals and "Pray" for
the papers to be accepted by the "Chosen Ones".

It takes a lot of education, motivation and *repetition* to rehabilitate
readers and authors from the damage that the "Publish or Perish" disease
has inflicted on their minds.

     In the meantime,
     You are discharging your frustration on the wrong crowd.

Instead of complaining about the management of the Journal and its
supposed "Owners", you should brainstorm on ways of encouraging all
under-graduate and graduate students to act as reviewers. They should
learn that they *ARE* qualified to be reviewers. They should learn that
they *are* the "PEERS" that the term "Peer-Review" refers to:

           It is not "Supervisor-Review"
           It is not "Nobel-Prize-Review"
           It is not "Chosen-One-Review"
           It is not "Friend-of-The-Journal-Editor-Review"
           It is not "Owner-of-The-Journal-Review"
           It is not "Anonymous-Competitor-Review"

              It is     "PEER-Review"

   Definition of "PEER":

        One that is of equal standing with another :
        EQUAL; one belonging to the same societal group
               especially based on *age*, *grade*, or *status*

    The "PEERS" of Graduate Students are *OTHER GRADUATE STUDENTS*.

    *EVERY* person that uses ITK *IS* qualified to act as a reviewer
    of the Insight Journal.

   There is no need for being "Friend" of anybody.
   There is no need for being consecrated through some "Holy Process".
   There is no need for belonging to some influence group.
   There is no need for being member of any social circle.
   There should not be a need to be pressured by an associate editor.

That is the message that we must pass across the community.

Having 1,200 users in the mailing list, there is no shortage of
brains for reviewing less than 100 papers.

           Do not make the mistake of thinking
           that the Insight Journal is simply the
           gate for bringing source code into ITK.

The Insight Journal is the RED PILL that may help our community
to wake up from THE MATRIX of the "Publish or Perish" stratagem.

As a community resource, the *Exercise of participating* in the review
process is *MORE* important than the act of bringing code into ITK.

It is a simple matter of teaching readers to stand on their own feet,
to judge with their own minds, and to take responsibility for their
own future.

"Publish or Perish" was invented by budget managers and administrators
who didn't wanted, or were incapable of understanding the science they
were managing. It was an easy trick that made possible for them to
"count numbers of papers" in an annual report instead of having to
"read those papers" and try to understand their implications.

We as a community, are all guilty of nourishing this primitive and
decadent practice. We still assume that "number of papers" equals
"productivity", regardless of what the paper content is.

As dogs in training, the "Publish or Perish" stratagem, educated our
community members to receive cookies (productivity credits) when they
bark (publish), no matter what the barking was about. In the "Publish
or Perish" MATRIX, there are no cookies for the ones who listen to the
barking (read the publications). There are no cookies for the ones who
attempt to repeat the barking of others (reproduce publications). Only
"original barking" is supposed to be worth of cookies.

The Insight Journal is like a public library. It is there, open for
everybody. However, we can not force people to go to this library,
we can not force people to contribute reviews.

The challenge we face at this point is to untrain the damage that years
of traditional publishing system has made. Every time that we hear a
senior researcher telling a junior researcher "You should publish" we
must jump in alert and examine "WHY" and "HOW" publishing should be
done.

You are now *an ITK developer*, at this point, you have access to all
the same resources and information that any other "ITK developer" has.
You have write access to the CVS repository, access to the mailing
lists, access to the Wiki, access to the bug tracker. As you can see
there is no magic aura that suddenly appears, no sparkly dust falling
down while you walk. It is just one more entry among many other things
in your to-do list.

You can complain about other "ITK developers" not doing enough, but
that's not going to make the world move any faster. The place where
you could invest your energy in a positive way is by going to all
junior researchers around you and letting them know that "Publish or
Perish" is a lie, and that if they don't take responsibility for the
quality of work shared in their community, nobody else will. At least
nobody without an agenda of their own...

     Luis

=======================
Gaëtan Lehmann wrote:
> 
> Stephen,
> 
> Have I said or done something wrong ?
> I'm writting a review for each new paper I'm able to review - perhaps 
> I'm  late of 1 review or 2 - but I'll not submit 3 reviews per paper, 
> and will  not submit reviews for my own ones.
> 
> I'm asking about reviewer associate because their role is to assign 
> some  reviewers to a paper, and most of the papers in the IJ are still 
> lacking  of reviews - Note that I'm only talking about the contributions 
> to ITK,  not about the articles for the MICCAI. I would be pleased to 
> incite  potential reviewers to write more reviews, but again, I have 
> seen nothing  about the editor associate since your last mail.
> 
> Alsso, it seem that the ITK developers are not getting that letting a  
> contribution for 6 or 9 months in the insight journal without much  
> activity is like saying
> 
>   "we don't care about your work and the time you spent to write your  
> article".
> 
> If there can't be more reviewers for the contributions to the insight  
> journal, do not require 3 reviews to integrate it in the toolkit, are 
> stop  asking people to post their code to the IJ. If you (developers) 
> really  don't care, just keep things like that - that's fine.
> 
> Some days like this one, I'm really not sure why I'm still using the 
> IJ,  and warning their owners about what is wrong - it also look like a 
> huge  waste of time
> 
> Gaetan
> 
> 
> 
> Le Sat, 16 Sep 2006 01:52:17 +0200, Stephen R. Aylward  
> <Stephen.Aylward at kitware.com> a écrit:
> 
>> Hi
>>
>> Thanks for volunteering to provide more reviews!  There are 
>> instructions  on the wiki on how to write reviews and contribute to 
>> the IJ.
>> As each new paper arrives - I am assigning it to reviewers, but we  
>> always welcome additional reviews.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Stephen
>>
>> ___
>> Sent with SnapperMail
>> www.snappermail.com
>>
>>  ..... Original Message .......
>> On Fri, 15 Sep 2006 22:34:56 +0200 GaÃ«tan Lehmann  
>> <gaetan.lehmann at jouy.inra.fr> wrote:
>>
>>> Le Mon, 21 Aug 2006 18:19:37 +0200, Stephen R. Aylward
>>> <Stephen.Aylward at Kitware.com> a Ã©crit:
>>>
>>>> Thanks for all who have already volunteered to be Associate Editors for
>>>> the Insight Journal!
>>>> http://insightsoftwareconsortium.org/wiki/index.php/IJ-Whos-Who
>>>>
>>>> We are still looking for a few more volunteers.   You've contributed
>>>> code to open-source medical image analysis...why not help to spread the
>>>> news of your contribution and the contributions of others...
>>>>
>>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> What is the status of this initiative ?
>>> I've seen nothing about it since this mail, and there is lots of
>>> contributions in the IJ which again will not get their 3 reviews before
>>> the sept 20 (http://www.itk.org/Wiki/ITK_Release_Schedule). If 
>>> things  stay
>>> like that, some of them will be more than one year old without getting
>>> their 3 reviews.
>>> If things stay like that, lots of contributors will be discouraged
>>>
>>>   Believe me, I'm a contributor
>>>
>>> And what a waste of time.
>>> If things have been done earlier, some classes can have been 
>>> integrated  in
>>> the toolkit 2 releases ago
>>>
>>> Gaetan
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> -- 
>>> GaÃ«tan Lehmann
>>> Biologie du DÃ©veloppement et de la Reproduction
>>> INRA de Jouy-en-Josas (France)
>>> tel: +33 1 34 65 29 66    fax: 01 34 65 29 09
>>> http://voxel.jouy.inra.fr
>>
>>
> 
> 
> 