I agree with Kerry, unaffiliated are unusual, but I've never heard of them been discriminated in any way when publishing ... 2012/11/7 Kerry Raymond <kerry.raymond(a)gmail.com> -- Prof. Manuel Palomo Duarte, PhD Software Process Improvement and Formal Methods group (SPI&FM). Degree Coordinator for Computer Science. Department of Computer Science. Escuela Superior de Ingenieria. C/ Chile, 1 11002 - Cadiz (Spain) University of Cadiz http://neptuno.uca.es/~mpalomo Tlf: (+34) 956 015483 Mobile phone: (+34) 649 280080 Mobile phone from University network: 45483 Fax: (+34) 956 015139 Aviso legal: Este mensaje (incluyendo los ficheros adjuntos) puede contener información confidencial, dirigida a un destinatario y objetivo específico. Si usted no es el destinatario del mismo le pido disculpas, y le pido que elimine este correo, evitando cualquier divulgación, copia o distribución de su contenido, así como desarrollar o ejecutar cualquier acción basada en el mismo. -- Legal Notice: This message (including the attached files) contains confidential information, directed to a specific addressee and objective. In case you are not the addressee of the same, I apologize. And I ask you to delete this mail, and not to resend, copy or distribute its content, as well as develop or execute any action based on the same.

I’m all for startling sentences – and, given how lazy some reviewers are, put it in the title if you can! To use the Kent Beck example “Network Garbage Collection: Fast and Easy!” Would make a fine title, and note that it contains a colon in the title. Papers with colons in the title are cited more. When I first heard this, I was dubious. One day I happened to have a spreadsheet with all the papers in our university’s ePrints system which included bibliometric data, so I put it to the test and, yes, it seems to be quite true. The titles-with-colons were indeed a lot more cited on average than those without. Why? I don’t know, but I have a few theories – it’s probably a worthy subject for research! But, back to startling sentences. It’s a common technique used in lots of forms of writing to grab and hold the reader’s attention from the first sentence (so they will buy the book or whatever) – it’s usually called “the hook” if you are googling (as in fishing for a reader). “The past is another country; they do things differently there”, “Last night I dreamt I went to Mandalay again” and the all-time classic “It was a dark and stormy night” (a hook now so famous thanks to Snoopy that nobody even remembers the book).The use of “the hook” is well-known but not it seems in academic writing for which the gold standard is to be as boring as possible :-) Kerry _____ From: Ward Cunningham [mailto:ward@c2.com] Sent: Thursday, 8 November 2012 10:10 AM To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities Cc: kerry.raymond(a)gmail.com Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] Unaffiliated researchers I always liked Kent Beck's patterns for a successful oopsla submission, especially "one startling sentence": http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~wcook/papers/HowToGetaPaperAcceptedToOOPSLA/HowToG etAPaperAcceptedToOOPSLA.htm This was from a time that oopsla was big and important. It was also a conference that actively sought industry collaboration. Notice that all of the panelists were from industry. On Nov 7, 2012, at 3:32 PM, Manuel Palomo Duarte wrote: I agree with Kerry, unaffiliated are unusual, but I've never heard of them been discriminated in any way when publishing ... 2012/11/7 Kerry Raymond &lt;kerry.raymond(a)gmail.com&gt; I am not an unaffiliated researcher (but I guess I might be after my imminent retirement). But having been involved in editorial boards and conference programme committees etc, I have never been aware of any restriction on unaffiliated researchers publishing research. I would say though that it is fairly unusual to receive papers from unaffiliated authors and I think the couple of times I have encountered the situation the papers were very poor quality. But they were reviewed in the normal way and rejected on their merits. But had the papers been of better quality, then I presume they would have been accepted. On what basis could a reviewer or editor legitimately discriminate against unaffiliated authors? Kerry _____ From: wiki-research-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of emijrp Sent: Wednesday, 7 November 2012 9:12 PM To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities Subject: [Wiki-research-l] Unaffiliated researchers Hi all; I wonder if there are unaffiliated researchers in this mailing list. I know that publishing without affiliation is a bit hard, so I would like to talk with them and learn from their experience. Regards, emijrp -- Emilio J. Rodríguez-Posada http://LibreFind.org <http://LibreFind.org/> - The wiki search engine _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l -- Prof. Manuel Palomo Duarte, PhD Software Process Improvement and Formal Methods group (SPI&FM). Degree Coordinator for Computer Science. Department of Computer Science. Escuela Superior de Ingenieria. C/ Chile, 1 11002 - Cadiz (Spain) University of Cadiz http://neptuno.uca.es/~mpalomo Tlf: (+34) 956 015483 Mobile phone: (+34) 649 280080 Mobile phone from University network: 45483 Fax: (+34) 956 015139 Aviso legal: Este mensaje (incluyendo los ficheros adjuntos) puede contener información confidencial, dirigida a un destinatario y objetivo específico. Si usted no es el destinatario del mismo le pido disculpas, y le pido que elimine este correo, evitando cualquier divulgación, copia o distribución de su contenido, así como desarrollar o ejecutar cualquier acción basada en el mismo. -- Legal Notice: This message (including the attached files) contains confidential information, directed to a specific addressee and objective. In case you are not the addressee of the same, I apologize. And I ask you to delete this mail, and not to resend, copy or distribute its content, as well as develop or execute any action based on the same. _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l