DHS is starting it's to implement a congressional mandate to conduct a Quadrennial Homeland Security Review. The idea is to mirror the process that has produced quadrennial reviews for defense policy for some time now (in fact, the defense QDR is also in progress).
More details are here. You can participate; here is how DHS describes the process:
"This groundbreaking, web-based interactive dialogue is designed to allow a broader range of opinions and ideas to inform the QHSR process, and to strengthen the Department's relationship with its vast array of partners and stakeholders, including other federal agencies, state, local, and tribal governments, law enforcement professionals, first responders, academic institutions, and the business community."
Sign ups are available here.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Monday, July 20, 2009
Journal Articles: Crazy Exepensive?
A new study summarized in the Chronicle of Higher Education (available here for five days if you're not a subscriber) concludes it costs about $10,000 (yes, that's $10,000) to publish an article in a scholarly journal in the humanities and social sciences.
Is that a lot, or a little? After all, think of what goes into publishing. There are the actual costs of printing, distributing, advertising, etc. These turn out to account for roughly half of the cost of publication. The other half are made up of editorial functions--soliciting manuscripts, reviewing them, editing them, etc. So there are some real costs here--even if we eliminated print journals, it would still involve substantial work and expense to publish articles.
But costs in the social sciences and humanities are three times those in science, technology, and medical (STM) fields. How come?
"According to the new report, humanities and social-sciences articles tend to be longer and to have a lower acceptance rate. The average article length in the eight journals surveyed is 19 pages; the STM average is 12 pages. Acceptance rates are much lower on the humanities and social-sciences side; the eight journals in question accepted about 11 percent of the articles submitted to them, while their STM counterparts' acceptance rate hovered around 42 percent."
So a big part of the difference is the far, far lower acceptance rate. (The differences in length should not, I think, account for much of the difference in cost. I paper that is 19 pages long should not be three times as costly to edit or publish as a paper that is 12 pages long.) Why are acceptance rates so much lower in the social sciences and humanities?
One reason might be that there are simply more journals in the STM fields. The report notes that many authors in these fields have grant money that they can use to defray some of the costs of publications. If journal publishers are actually getting paid by their authors, it makes sense that they would publish more journals.
Another reason, I suspect, is that the standards for good work that merits publication are more universally accepted in the STM fields than the humanities and social sciences. Maybe this reflects my total ignorance of STM (you've been warned), but I imagine that, say, mechanical engineers do not disagree a great deal about what methods are appropriate for their field and, perhaps, what questions are most important. The social sciences and humanities see far more disagreement on these issues, which creates more bases on which to reject manuscripts submitted to journals. To paraphrase Kuhn, the STM fields engage in more "normal" science, where there is broad agreement on questions to ask and how to go about answering them, while the rest of use are in some pre-scientific (or maybe never-to-become-scientific wilderness) where these issues are still up for debate, and maybe always will be.
Is that a lot, or a little? After all, think of what goes into publishing. There are the actual costs of printing, distributing, advertising, etc. These turn out to account for roughly half of the cost of publication. The other half are made up of editorial functions--soliciting manuscripts, reviewing them, editing them, etc. So there are some real costs here--even if we eliminated print journals, it would still involve substantial work and expense to publish articles.
But costs in the social sciences and humanities are three times those in science, technology, and medical (STM) fields. How come?
"According to the new report, humanities and social-sciences articles tend to be longer and to have a lower acceptance rate. The average article length in the eight journals surveyed is 19 pages; the STM average is 12 pages. Acceptance rates are much lower on the humanities and social-sciences side; the eight journals in question accepted about 11 percent of the articles submitted to them, while their STM counterparts' acceptance rate hovered around 42 percent."
So a big part of the difference is the far, far lower acceptance rate. (The differences in length should not, I think, account for much of the difference in cost. I paper that is 19 pages long should not be three times as costly to edit or publish as a paper that is 12 pages long.) Why are acceptance rates so much lower in the social sciences and humanities?
One reason might be that there are simply more journals in the STM fields. The report notes that many authors in these fields have grant money that they can use to defray some of the costs of publications. If journal publishers are actually getting paid by their authors, it makes sense that they would publish more journals.
Another reason, I suspect, is that the standards for good work that merits publication are more universally accepted in the STM fields than the humanities and social sciences. Maybe this reflects my total ignorance of STM (you've been warned), but I imagine that, say, mechanical engineers do not disagree a great deal about what methods are appropriate for their field and, perhaps, what questions are most important. The social sciences and humanities see far more disagreement on these issues, which creates more bases on which to reject manuscripts submitted to journals. To paraphrase Kuhn, the STM fields engage in more "normal" science, where there is broad agreement on questions to ask and how to go about answering them, while the rest of use are in some pre-scientific (or maybe never-to-become-scientific wilderness) where these issues are still up for debate, and maybe always will be.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Journal of Strategic Security Looking for Articles on Insurgency and Terrorism
The Journal of Strategic Security (JSS), a quarterly publication of Henley-Putnam University, announces a call for articles that address global insurgency and terrorism. From the resurgence of Taliban militants in Pakistan to the presence of al-Qa`ida sympathizers and supporters in strategic theaters of conflict, what does the future hold for stability in the Afghanistan/Pakistan region? What strategies are most effective to combat insurgencies? What role do Special Forces and intelligence operations have on the contested battlefields of Afghanistan and possibly Pakistan? What regional policies need to be developed, refined, and implemented to tackle the increasingly complex strategic security environment across the South Asian landscape and the greater Middle East? Authors from around the globe are invited to share their perspectives on these and other strategic security issues - your creativity and unique perspective are welcome. Please send all questions, proposals, and submissions to: editor@henley-putnam.edu.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Is cyberterrorism a thing?
An interesting debate about this yesterday in my class on terrorism: can cyber attacks be considered terrorism?
I took a very narrow definitional approach to answering this question and not everyone agreed with me. My take was that cyber attacks can be considered terrorism only if they meet what we might consider the standard definition of the phenomenon: the use or threat of violence by a non-state actor with the intent of creating fear in an audience for a political objective.
Of course much of this definition can be contested, but the biggest area of debate in class was over "violence". My position was that terrorism is terrifying precisely because it creates a fear of physical harm in the audience. If an action does not seek to create such fear, it's not really terrorism. So defacing a website, or hacking into a server for information, by a terrorist group is not terrorism. Hacking an air traffic control system with the intent of causing planes to crash would be terrorism.
Given this definition, has there ever been any cyberterrorism? I cannot think if a single event that would qualify as cyberterrorism. Perhaps my recall or imagination are limited. Or it could be that some want to magnify the problems of information security and assurance by attaching the label "terrorism" to it? After all, terrorism is a bad thing, and a pretty serious bad thing at that. So calling the problem that you think about all day "terrorism" might have some inadvertent appeal. Just be careful to make this claim on my final exam.
I took a very narrow definitional approach to answering this question and not everyone agreed with me. My take was that cyber attacks can be considered terrorism only if they meet what we might consider the standard definition of the phenomenon: the use or threat of violence by a non-state actor with the intent of creating fear in an audience for a political objective.
Of course much of this definition can be contested, but the biggest area of debate in class was over "violence". My position was that terrorism is terrifying precisely because it creates a fear of physical harm in the audience. If an action does not seek to create such fear, it's not really terrorism. So defacing a website, or hacking into a server for information, by a terrorist group is not terrorism. Hacking an air traffic control system with the intent of causing planes to crash would be terrorism.
Given this definition, has there ever been any cyberterrorism? I cannot think if a single event that would qualify as cyberterrorism. Perhaps my recall or imagination are limited. Or it could be that some want to magnify the problems of information security and assurance by attaching the label "terrorism" to it? After all, terrorism is a bad thing, and a pretty serious bad thing at that. So calling the problem that you think about all day "terrorism" might have some inadvertent appeal. Just be careful to make this claim on my final exam.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Page proof hell?
I am editing the page proofs for my forthcoming book (which you can pre-order here. Or here. I'll wait a moment while you do so......)
It's nice to see that the work that went into this will result in something tangible. At the same time, though, wading through the page proofs is enraging because:
1. Somehow the prose is different when it's printed too look like a book page rather than a double-spaced manuscript. All of your imperfect sentences and word choices just jump out at you. Writing that seemed almost elegant (or at least efficient) in the manuscript now just seems pompous or incoherent.
2. That's especially frustrating because at this page proofs stage, you're really only supposed to change honest-to-goodness errors. The bad writing is supposed to stay. The publisher's guide to editing the page proofs has some scary (but not very specific) language about how major changes at this stage will be very costly, might delay publication, etc.
3. T.S. Eliot was right--I could have written a shorter book. The first version I submitted to the publisher had an additional chapter on terminology, the existing literature, theoretical extensions, research design, etc. You know, all the stuff that academics think is so important to highlight, but no one else does. My editor very wisely persuaded me that this stuff could be shortened and combined with another chapter to make the book "more readable" (although I suspect she really meant just "readable"). Reading it again, I realize I could have taken this even further and tightened up this section even more. I could not get it down to a tweet (or is that Tweet?), but there are at least 1000 words that could have been cut.
4. History matters. Once I write a paragraph or section, it's really really hard to go back to be objective about it. It reads to me as being much better than it actually is. Obviously this is because I'm too lazy to start from scratch and too dishonest to admit this to myself. So once text is in the manuscript, it's likely to stay even if it no longer belongs due to changes in other parts of the book.
5. What about a copy editor? Isn't he or she supposed to fix all of this? No. A copy editor very thoroughly reviewed my manuscript, and did in fact fix numerous errors to poor choices. But I don't think it's really in the copy editor's job description to fix the structural problems of your manuscript (i.e. to point out that section 4 should really disappear, or should be half as long but appear as section 2). Or to really even understand fully the technical elements of the argument you are making. This is frustrating for the author on two levels. First, we can't legitimately blame the copy editor for bad things that remain in the manuscript, much as we (unconsciously, of course) would like to. Second, copy editors are not Gods, and if they were the would have better things to do that fix my lousy writing. Instead, they are mortals like the rest of us, which no doubt in some cases means that they too make mistakes or overlook things.
Whining aside, my experience in the book process has been fantastic--very responsive editor who made suggestions that improved the book a great deal, super efficient production editor who is able to explain complicated (to me) processes clearly and cheerfully, and a copy editor whose diligence did save me from some embarrassing errors.
It's nice to see that the work that went into this will result in something tangible. At the same time, though, wading through the page proofs is enraging because:
1. Somehow the prose is different when it's printed too look like a book page rather than a double-spaced manuscript. All of your imperfect sentences and word choices just jump out at you. Writing that seemed almost elegant (or at least efficient) in the manuscript now just seems pompous or incoherent.
2. That's especially frustrating because at this page proofs stage, you're really only supposed to change honest-to-goodness errors. The bad writing is supposed to stay. The publisher's guide to editing the page proofs has some scary (but not very specific) language about how major changes at this stage will be very costly, might delay publication, etc.
3. T.S. Eliot was right--I could have written a shorter book. The first version I submitted to the publisher had an additional chapter on terminology, the existing literature, theoretical extensions, research design, etc. You know, all the stuff that academics think is so important to highlight, but no one else does. My editor very wisely persuaded me that this stuff could be shortened and combined with another chapter to make the book "more readable" (although I suspect she really meant just "readable"). Reading it again, I realize I could have taken this even further and tightened up this section even more. I could not get it down to a tweet (or is that Tweet?), but there are at least 1000 words that could have been cut.
4. History matters. Once I write a paragraph or section, it's really really hard to go back to be objective about it. It reads to me as being much better than it actually is. Obviously this is because I'm too lazy to start from scratch and too dishonest to admit this to myself. So once text is in the manuscript, it's likely to stay even if it no longer belongs due to changes in other parts of the book.
5. What about a copy editor? Isn't he or she supposed to fix all of this? No. A copy editor very thoroughly reviewed my manuscript, and did in fact fix numerous errors to poor choices. But I don't think it's really in the copy editor's job description to fix the structural problems of your manuscript (i.e. to point out that section 4 should really disappear, or should be half as long but appear as section 2). Or to really even understand fully the technical elements of the argument you are making. This is frustrating for the author on two levels. First, we can't legitimately blame the copy editor for bad things that remain in the manuscript, much as we (unconsciously, of course) would like to. Second, copy editors are not Gods, and if they were the would have better things to do that fix my lousy writing. Instead, they are mortals like the rest of us, which no doubt in some cases means that they too make mistakes or overlook things.
Whining aside, my experience in the book process has been fantastic--very responsive editor who made suggestions that improved the book a great deal, super efficient production editor who is able to explain complicated (to me) processes clearly and cheerfully, and a copy editor whose diligence did save me from some embarrassing errors.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)