Parallel Paper Submission

[Nando de Freitas]

Dear connectionists

Some concerns:

1) Is our goal to publish as much as we can? Or is it to advance 
science and technology? May be less time writing and reviewing would 
leave us with more time for contributing to higher goals.

2) As someone who just entered the tenure track process, I honestly 
don't feel any pressure to write lots of papers - I do feel pressure to 
carry out good research. Is this a Berkeley/UBC phenomenon only? I 
suspect not. Where does this not hold? May be this is what needs to be 
fixed.

3) Whatever we do, let us remember that in most fields of science we 
encounter papers that weren't recognised for the first, say 50, years 
of existence and subsequently had a significant impact on science. How 
do we deal with this?

4) I love journals like "Journal of the Royal Statistical Society - B" 
because many of the papers include reviews at the end. It turns out 
that some of the reviews are very critical and really good. I often 
find myself reading the reviews before reading the paper! Of course, 
since the reviews get published and CITED, people make an effort to be 
constructive, soundly critical and not make fools of themselves. This 
is a great model - slow but good.

Cheers!
Nando