Predatory Conferences and Journals

My newest pet peeve is the amount of emails I receive from predatory conference organizers. Many are not even remotely related to what I do and are fairly easy to delete. To make them look more real, they sometimes include the title of one of my publications in the email. My favorite is when they just copy the name of the first author from the publication, assuming incorrectly that this is the corresponding author.

A few however, sound relevant and are located in interesting places.  I wish there was a list of predatory conference organizing companies the way there is a list of predatory journal publishers.

The first one on my list is BIT Congress Inc. These folks are the worst. They are constantly changing their email address so I can't block them. They organize conferences for just about every topic imaginable. They don't even bother to include a fake unsubscribe button. They start their emails with guilt inducing statements like "I'm writing to follow-up on my previous email" or "we've tried contacting you multiple times."


On the predatory journal front, I've gotten used to the daily barrage of emails requesting me to submit articles and serve on editorial boards. Those I can ignore without a second thought. Recently though, a new wrinkle has emerged. These journals are inviting me to review manuscripts for them. The titles and abstracts are included in the requests and some of the manuscripts actually sound interesting and relevant to my field.

I wish they would include the names of the authors so that I could contact them and inquire whether they realize they are submitting to a predatory journal. Are the actual manuscripts much worse than the abstracts suggest? Do the authors not read? Are there other reasons they are submitting to these journals? I guess I could agree to the review, since usually the author names and corresponding author contact info are provided along with the entire manuscript, but it feels unethical as a reviewer to contact the authors. So I just delete the emails without responding. A few times I declined writing back to the editors that I don't review manuscripts for predatory journals like theirs. I've never received a reply in those instances. Internet folks, should I start fake reviewing so that I can contact the manuscript authors?

A new adventure

Semester is over! I love my summers. The escape from committee work makes academia bearable. I've been spending time in the lab recently and remembering how much fun/frustration it can be. This obviously is not the best use of my time, but my group has gotten small with several graduations during the last year and projects still need to move forward. What I'm really excited about though is that I'll be on sabbatical, so I won't be teaching this coming fall/spring, and more importantly, I won't be on almost* any committees! It'll be my first break from that in seven years.

* I say almost because my department has started spiraling toward dysfunction, and so there are a few things that I'm sure will remain on my plate, or that I'll have to get involved with. Tenure has definitely made me feel like a citizen with responsibilities to the department/college/university, which would be fine if all of my tenured colleagues equally shared this notion, and were willing to sacrifice a bit for the greater good. It's fascinating how a few bad apples can dishearten an entire group.

New Frustrations

So I haven't posted much since getting tenure. As most faculty in science/engineering will tell you, life only gets harder after tenure. I've become even more busy. Just as stressed as always because students still need to be paid, supplies still cost money. In fact, even more stressed because I no longer qualify for most early investigator opportunities. I got two separate proposal rejections yesterday. How's that for a kick in the nuts.

I started working on a post a few weeks ago while at a conference, then never got around to finishing it up. So I'm doing it now instead of grading.

I've observed multiple instances a conference recently that highlighted how much science is not a meritocracy.

First, I attended an event that was hosted by one of the more specialized societies to which I pay an annual membership. I wasn't "classically" trained in this field by one of the few select old men that invented the field, so I'm already looked at as an outsider. But what really grinded my gears was that the board members didn't recognize my name. Normally, one would not expect board members to recognize names, except that I've run for a board position multiple times at this point. Obviously, I didn't win, but my name and brief bio were one of a handful of candidates. And this is a society that has less than one hundred members.

Meanwhile, there are golden boy new professors that are winning awards without yet even accomplishing anything. They don't even have a signature publication as a PI that they could point to, but they reap the benefits of having been trained by one of the big-wigs in the field. They are introduced and promoted within the community and immediately part of the old boys club.

A separate scenario involved my students. One of the big-wigs came into the room where students were giving their oral presentations. He sat through two mediocre presentations from new PhD students from his former students lab, and then got up and left when my student got up to give their talk. First, this wasn't the big-wigs former student, it was his academic grandchild he came to support, and then he couldn't be bothered to listen to even one talk from someone that he's not affiliated with.

How am I or my students supposed to get big-wigs to recognize the value of our work if they are walking around with blinders on?

Proposal Submission Complaints

I spend so much time filling out and correcting ancillary files for my proposals that I don't actually have time to actually write the research strategy/project description.

Folks at other places, do you write your own consortium arrangement, consortium justification, budget justification, etc.? If there is a mistake found by your grant admin, do they correct it or do you have to fix it and send them the corrected version no matter how small or unimportant the change?

Career Pivot

So I officially have tenure! I really should take a day to celebrate. Party planning for me is a chore though, so I'm not super eager to have an official bash. My department wants to celebrate, but it's the middle of summer and most folks are gone. So an admin scheduled a party without checking if I was available. Some random faculty/staff are available that day, about a third of the department most of which I'm not particularly close with. I actually have meetings all day on the other side of the city, so I have to cancel my own party now. I'm trying to explain tenure to my parents. Anyone out there know the word for tenure in other languages?

I see my career as a game. I've played it pretty well. I'm not in the best position, I'm not at an R1, but I'm definitely doing well. Mostly I play fairly defensively, not gambling too much and planning carefully. But I also have a tendency to get bored. So I recently made several moves and started to position myself for the next round. Lot's of things are in flux, hopefully I haven't missed something that will end up dropping my status in the game.

I'm focusing a lot of my time on my start-up company, and I have to say it is so much more fun than my academic job. I like the students in my lab, but everything else about academia is annoying at the moment. I'm trying to position myself to just run my lab at the university and work on my company. This is a tricky maneuver though.

I do feel more powerful and influential now that I have tenure. I'm not sure if this is real or just my imagination. My institution is very volatile--constant changes in administration, new initiatives, new strategic plans, etc. I have two big plays to make at work: do I start organizing and leading multi-PI/center level grants and do I move my lab. I feel like there are few faculty at my university that like to take charge or know how to do so efficiently. I'm working on a big proposal at the moment and I feel like usurping power from the lead PI. They are just screwing things up left and right, but they are more senior than me. Separately, I may or may not have to move my lab space. I'm actually pretty happy with my lab space, but one person told me my lab will be moved and another person asked about moving my lab space. Yet there is no timeline and no one at my university can even confirm that my lab will ever move, so I may be developing a strategy for no reason.

What does it mean to learn science?

What does it mean to learn science in school these days? I watched some high school student presentations this week, given by some of the best and the brightest students. They are all bound for top colleges. The presentations were about science but they were not science. The students came up with ideas for new products as part of a project in one of their science classes. I think it was chemistry, based on the types of products they proposed. However, they had absolutely no idea how the products would be made. "It will change colors" or "it will be a foam." Most of the "judges" applauded their great ideas, very innovative they said. I didn't say anything. One of the judges wasn't from the US, and they started asking the students questions. Here is a summary of the conversation: What will make it change colors? Answer: we saw someone advertise that they have a sensor that changes colors. Do you know the compound? Answer: No, but we know it changes colors when the pH of the solution changes. Next presentation, we will make this cool foam. How will you make the foam? Answer: We will use these two chemicals that another group has used. So they made a foam? Answer: No, their material had similar properties, but it wasn't a foam. So how will you make the foam? The American judges glare at the questioner and say: They will figure it out. After we walked away, one of the judges says: Don't stifle the kids' enthusiasm, we want to encourage them to invent and be creative.

This exchange bothers me on so many levels, but I kept my thoughts to myself at the moment because I didn't feel like being a negative nelly. First, if the students had done any sort of research, they would have discovered that what they are presenting was already done. If a simple Google search reveals that a product already exists, then you aren't innovating in my book. Second, how do you not even have a clue for how to make your product? Isn't that what you are supposed to learn in a science class? We're going to be a country of Steve Jobs wannabes running around saying make this or that, but we won't have a Steve Wozniak around to actually turn the idea into reality.

Tenured?

So this week I received a letter in my mailbox at work from the Provost's office. The letter states that the Provost is recommending to the board of trustees that I be promoted to associate professor with tenure. Can I start calling myself a tenured professor or do I need to wait until the new school year starts? When do I throw myself a party? My schools leadership doesn't bother making any announcement or acknowledging this accomplishment.

My department is already treating me as a tenured professor. I really feel like they are setting me up for an administrative path, maybe to be the next department chair. I've had a bunch of new admin tasks hoist upon me this spring, could partly be because of me raising questions and commenting on inefficiencies of how the department is being run. I don't mind doing these things if they actually become enacted, which since I'm not chair, it's not obvious that they will be. I also seem to be pretty good at them. The question is, is this me? I've never seen myself as going the admin route. I'm not good at fundraising, which seems to be the most important part of my chair's job (also the only thing they seem to be good at).

I love science and engineering, but my funding levels suggest that I'm mediocre at these endeavors. What is the best metric for evaluating science/engineering accomplishment in academia? All of my graduated students have gotten great jobs in industry or gone on to top graduate programs. I publish regularly, but only in mid-level journals.

Idea for passive agressive submission

I recently had a paper torn apart by reviewers at a society level journal. This was a paper I was actually quite proud of, and even the editor sent me a separate note apologizing. If they were really sorry, they would have sent it to a second set of reviewers. The reason I thought my paper was appropriate for the sort've fancy journal is because they recently had published one on a very similar topic, using a very different approach that had far fewer results and far less value than what I had submitted. So my idea is to resubmit my paper and to ask the editor to send the paper to the reviewers that accepted for publication the other paper. I don't know who those reviewers are, so is there any reason for the editor not to honor my request? This also subtly points to the lottery of reviewing luck that seams to be occurring at this journal. I used to publish there a lot when I was a graduate student, back when it's publisher wasn't obsessed with impact factors. I want to employ this for glam mag submissions as well. Refer the editors to a paper in their journal that is similar and you know yours is clearly better than the crap they let in.

Seriously pissed

There's a journal out there that used to be my go to journal for reading and publication when I was a grad student. I liked the journal and the community. Then at some point a few years ago, the journal decided it needed to keep moving up its impact factor. They started becoming more selective and started changing the focus of what they published. They are going from engineering to more bio that happens to use engineering. Now most of the manuscripts I send to that journal get rejected without review. Ironically, they get published in lower impact journals and get more citations than the impact factor of this journal. While annoyed, I didn't mind too much, but my students care about the impact factor of the journal they publish in, and this one of the top journals in the general field of my research. I try to convince them that paper citations are more important than journal impact factor, but everyone knows that's not totally true.
I was pleasantly surprised when I was invited to submit an article for a special issue that this journal was putting together. I put together a manuscript that fits into what they are interested in and submitted. It was rejected. Now I'm really pissed. My students are going to be depressed. Who rejects invited contributions?

Near Tenure Reflection/Update

When to celebrate tenure and start calling yourself associate professor? My school allows faculty to see the voting results and summary at every stage, so I know how things are going, and I have to say, it has gone great so far. There are a few more approvals in the process, and the title won't go into effect until next school year.

No one complained about too little funding from the material I am allowed to see, which was my main worry. I really wish I could read the external letters to find out what my peers in the field think about me. Where do I stand in the eyes of full professors at other institutions? Am I in a position to move in the future? I'm not unhappy at my current place, but I'm by no means thrilled. The issues at my place primarily affect my research productivity, and I would be potentially willing to trade that for a different set of issues at another place.

Looking back, I don't think I would have done anything differently. I worried too much about teaching my first year, but going back and saying don't worry so much would not have changed my behavior. Some of my summers weren't as productive as I would have liked, but I'm sure everyone in academia wants to be more productive than they are. If I manage to get tenure with the level I worked at, then at least from a rational perspective, I didn't really need to do more work.

Anyway, back to the grind: writing, writing, meetings, writing, meetings--nothing really changes.

Update: Christmas edition

It's been a while since my last post. Life has been crazy busy. Things are going mostly well though. Learning more about start-up culture, and it is definitely a culture, almost a cult. I like the general high level of energy and excitement of people starting and working for start-ups. Mine is having its ups and downs, but continuing to build moment. A word of advice though to faculty out there: you have to keep a discerning eye regarding what should be commercialized. I've encountered a few loud-mouth professors that think every project they have is a start-up that is ready to go. This is definitely not the case, people! One was sharing how the industrial mentor he was working with was an idiot. According to this professor, the industrial mentor, who had started several successful companies, was the one that didn't know the market or the value of the technology versus the professor who has never held a job in industry. Hilarious!
In other news, my tenure package is moving along smoothly so far. 2015 was productive on the student and publishing side, but not so much on the funding side. I'm looking forward to 2016 and balancing my priorities some more. I've been handed my first real college and university level service commitments. I'm learning to hate administrators and figuring out how to undermine their ridiculous initiatives.
Finals week was insane, but now my grades are in, and I'm drinking away those memories while small children scream and run around me as I visit family. I have a nagging feeling of how I should be doing work, but the start of the spring semester is still a few weeks away and I need to purge before I dive back in.

We need revolution in the sensor community

A pet peeve of mine is engineers in academia developing technology that has zero practical application. I'm fine when scientists do it and I encourage them to keep doing it, but engineers need to stop. This is particularly a problem among people that develop sensors. THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO NEED TO MAKE MORE SENSIVITE SENSORS THAT HAVE NO SELECTIVITY. After tenure I'm going to start writing perspective articles trashing all of the sensor papers that only measure control samples under ideal conditions. Electrical engineers are the worst offenders. They get their crap published in Science because their technology is filled with buzzwords like graphene, plasmonics, and single-molecule. This type of research is getting more and more expensive and yet provides no return on investment. I have several EE colleagues that are well-funded through the NSF and especially through the DoD to make this crap and then they go around campus asking faculty in other departments if they might have a use for this technology. NO, THERE IS NO PRACTICAL USE FOR YOUR SENSOR THAT MEASURES A 0.0000001% CHANGE OF A PHYSICAL PROPERTY. Sure it can measure the wind generated by a fart three blocks away, but it will only work in outer space. Studying the mating habits of calling ducks is 100000X more practical than what you folks are doing.

2 months later

For those two or three of you that follow my blog, you might have noticed that I tend to blog less when things are going well. Well this isn't the case necessarily this time, I've really just been busy.

I tell people that I've been working on my tenure package, but in reality, that accounts for only 4-5 days. It wasn't a hard task because I've been updating my dossier regularly during the last 5 years. Most of my time went into formatting and complaining about how much crap my university requires in the package. I have over 700 pages in the appendices documenting all the stuff I've done. My colleagues say I'm in good shape and shouldn't worry about tenure. I'm not worried, I've done everything that's expected of a TT professor, although I do feel some inferiority compared to some folks in other departments and schools that raised more money than me, published in more prestigious journals, won more honors and awards. I would say my package is average, not outstanding by any means, which drives me nuts as a competitive person, but I'm not at a top 20 program, so in my mind you can't really expect me to do much more than I did.

The real time sinks were moving into a new house and vacation travel (not really a vacation since I was mostly visiting family that I haven't seen for a long time). It's hard to get anything done while doing things like that. That's normal and part of life, but as a professor I feel this guilt for having a life. I really need to get over that, it's not like I was even getting paid during those 2 months.

Now the semester is back in full swing and all the stuff I've been putting off for the last few months feels like an overwhelming insurmountable task. Everything is due or overdue, which freezes me up like a deer in headlights. I really need to just start churning through things again and it will all be fine. I've always had this problem though, and that is why I'm writing this post instead of working :P

Translational Research

I haven't talked about it here too much before, but I'm actively working on commercializing some of the technology my lab has developed over the last few years. I've had a hard time getting subsequent funding for some of the projects in my lab after obtaining initial internal and external grants for them. We got a few papers out that the proposed ideas do work, and then I've applied for new grants that build on the things we developed. I had this idea that this is how science works, but the proposals keep getting rejected. Yet people in industry and medicine keep telling me how this is important and they would actually use it. I have IP filed through the university on a lot of these things, and tech transfer has me meet with companies and investors, but they keep saying that it still needs more work to be proven to the point where they would jump in and they want me or one of my students to be involved when they do license it. So after several such interactions, I've decided to just make the jump myself.
Where before I've been struggling to get academic collaborators to try things out and them waiting until a grant gets funded before anything gets done, now I have actual product users testing out our technology because they will actually use it long term if it really works. I've applied for several small business grants over the last few months. I should hear the results fairly soon. The panels for SBIR/STTR reviews include business people, not just academics, so I'm hopeful that the importance of product development and validation isn't lost on them the way it is on many of my colleagues. For example, one of the comments I get in paper and proposal reviews all the time is that making nanochannels is easy and that I'm spending too much time on the device and not enough on the science. And if your only source of information is NanoLetters, then you think that making nanostructures is the easiest thing to do in the world. This one journal alone publishes hundreds of papers on this topic. Yet not one single company makes these structures commercially. Nanoparticles yes, channels no. So obviously there is something challenging about it that needs additional research and development. Anyway, we'll see how my latest move plays out. I'll keep the blog world posted.

Academic Exploitation

I love this comment from NeuroDojo. It sums up my feelings completely, even as I approach the final battle at the gates of tenure.




"There is a myth that being a scientist isn’t a job or a career, but a calling or vocation. The corollary is that people who want to do science must be willing to put with anything. That, my friends, is bull.



As I mentioned on Twitter, it isn’t reasonable to ask people to put up with an indefinite among of crap for an indefinite amount of time to join a profession. People do not have infinite patience, and they shouldn’t be expected to have infinite patience.



Make no mistake: people, particularly young people, will walk away from scientific careers..."

Finding the right fit

I think I might finally be discovering what I like to do. It only took 30+ years. I'm really enjoying my adventure of building a new venture. I'm consistently excited by the work and it moves at a faster pace than academia. It also doesn't have all of the administrative crap. Honestly, I feel like this is what engineering in academia should be, but isn't because truly useful ideas are very rare.

Most of my ideas are mediocre, but I admit it. I have lots of decent ideas for experiments that will advance our knowledge or understanding of a problem, but they won't solve anything. So far, I think I've had 2-3 ideas in my life that I think really have any sort of even minimal chance at changing the world. Insight for it's own sake is awesome, but it is science, not engineering. Most engineers in academia refuse to admit that. We have to keep busy while we struggle to come up with the next great idea, and advancing science is great, but just admit that that is what you are doing. Putting a bow on a turd doesn't make it any better, but professors are great at pontificating broader impacts without any facts to back up their claims. Sure the broader impacts statements are based on sound logic, but they are always, at best, substantiated by other journal papers that are equally based on a very limit world view. The entrepreneurs and successful business people I've been around the last few weeks have no qualms about calling folks out on their bullshit. I love that. Many profs don't, and a few even refuse to accept facts when confronted by people that work in their fields in industry. It was amusing and sad to see them try to argue, it was almost as bad as the anti-vaxers.

A need to gloat

I like the English language. There are so many words with nuanced meanings. My word for today is gloat. I need to do some gloating to make myself feel better. I don't feel like I have anyone I can really gloat to (partly because I was raised with the notion that it's inconsiderate brag about one's successes, stupid catholics and their humbleness) so I'll do it here on the interwebz. The problem with being meek and humble in the professors line of work is that there is then very little to talk about besides complaining, and I don't like constantly being Mr. Negativity. I had a couple proposals rejected this week as everyone can commiserate with, but I also have a lot of successes in the pipeline. With the end of the semester approaching, there is a lot of time that I'm spending informally with my work colleagues at various graduation events, appreciation lunches, etc., and I don't really know what to talk about with them. They're not my friends, and they can't relate to anything in my life. None of them watch South Park or Family Guy, or go to see the Avengers movies, or follow any professional sports. They just have their work and their families. I don't really have much to say about their work, since they work on different things from me and I think some of them are wasting their time on stupid research (they probably think the same about my stuff) and I've never met most of their families. We don't really have many things organized that include families and the few times we tried almost everyone backed out at the last minute (going back on your word/promise/commitment: a whole separate pet peeve of mine).


So that leaves complaining and gloating. We don't have any clear-cut superstar in my department that does every aspect of their job well. I certainly don't either, but I wish we had that person that I could aspire to and gloat to because I know their doing great professionally and won't mind my sharing. Most of my colleagues are hurting on the research funding side even more than me. They also don't publish very much. I think we have 1 person currently that publishes more than me. I have 3 papers currently under review at decent journals, I'm revising 1 for resubmission, and I'm formatting one to submit that we've collected all the data for already. My students have another 3-4 in various stages of the pipeline where they are collecting the data. None of these will go to glamour journals, but it's all decent mid-society level work and I usually get them through without rejections these days. One might argue that I could be trying for higher level journals based on this fact, but I don't like dealing with the time delays and formatting hoops going down the journal ladder. Plus I'm going up for tenure and need to pad the old CV with "accepted" papers. I have a pet side research project that is going pretty well and I'm generally happy with my students. Maybe this isn't really gloating, but it feels like it in my mind, especially given that most of my colleagues can't make these statements.


So that is me right now. Also, what should I talk about with folks? Should I just stand around awkwardly, as is typical of nerdy academics? I think I offended some folks yesterday by complaining that I can't do things anymore with my friends that now have little kids. I guess I can share stories about how cute my pets are, but I think that makes me look weird as well.

Paying for Journal Covers

I've been approached by a journal I publish some of my work in, fairly well respected in the field, large publisher, to submit artwork for the cover. They say that I was selected because of the quality of the research. This makes feel very good and appreciated. Then in small print near the bottom of the email is says that if my artwork is selected, I will have to pay over $1000. How common is this? Is this something that is determined by the publisher or by the individual journal? I've only had request for a cover once before, I got the cover that time and that publisher did not ask for any money.

If this is common, then there is a huge bias for large well funded labs to get even more recognition and highlight how awesome they are based on the fact that they or their department/university have money. I don't have $1000 to pay for open access publication, yet alone for cover art. I asked my chair and the college and they don't have money for this.

It's not Science or Nature, no one gets paper copies of middle of the road journals. So I would be paying $1000 to be listed on the front page of their website for about 2 weeks, and then be able to flaunt my cover art on my group's webpage, suggesting my work is awesome, but really it's that I had money to pay to get the cover. Question 2, is this a worthwhile investment of funds for someone going up for tenure soon?

April Rollercoaster

We're (my colleagues) noticing a change in our incoming graduate students. They feel more entitled. I'm a huge advocate for improving working conditions for graduate students and postdocs, but there also needs to be a balance, because after all, at least in engineering, this is a major career advancement opportunity for them and they get out of it what they put in. These folks just work less and complain. We've even had students complain to the dean that too much is being expected of them. I'm talking 60 hour weeks, in my mind this is not unreasonable. Has anyone else experienced this with their new graduate students?


Beyond that, things are again getting better in my little world. I've had a particularly productive few weeks.

March Madness

March has been filled with annoyances and disappointments.

We've recently added a senior person to our department who I respect as a scientist, but can't stand their approach to serving the department. This person came from a very different institution and doesn't have a degree in engineering. They took on several service assignments in exchange for less teaching, which annoyed me off the bat. They assign all of their work to other people (junior faculty or create subcommittees) or do such a bad job that other people take over and do things for them. They don't understand what makes our degree and department unique and constantly question why things aren't done differently instead of asking why things are done the way they are.

The people that have funding buy out so they teach less and then the people that don't have money end up teaching more and have less time to apply for grants. Seams a bit backwards.

I'm a perfectionist, like most academics, so when I had my merit review this year and saw that my scores have gone down even though my output (publications and funding brought in) more than tripled over last year, I got mad to the point of disgruntled. It's affecting my work now. I had a new very small grant funded and a few new papers accepted, and I could care less. The meaningless congratulatory emails of my colleagues don't bring me any joy anymore since I know it barely moves the merit needle and just clutters up my inbox.

I'm really questioning whether my success is limited by my ability or by the environment that I'm in. I've been visiting a lot of other schools lately, and while everyone is strapped, I've yet to meet any other junior faculty with multiple funded grants that were worried they might have to downsize their lab. Yes, there are mid- and lower-tier schools where they teach more than I do, have smaller groups, and lower quality trainees, but their universities aren't putting all of their effort into improving rankings to the point where they hurt the quality of the education. The people I meet on my visits, in general, want to talk about science and get excited about new research ideas. I'm just thinking about new funding opportunities and wondering if the new ideas are fundable.