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Re: So what are the rules about SVP and publishing? Or talking about present...
True, but for 99.9% of the presentations from the past years, I could have
written them in the sky before the meeting and there would have been no
impact. Dan Brown could do a book on SVP and its rules :-). The abstracts
and presentations are "secrets" shared by thousands of people.
It seems to me too that SVP would serve itself better if it did seek more
publicity. Can anyone who wasn't at the meeting name the other recipients
of the Lanzendorf awards? (Thanks to Tess, we know that she and Bob won
one for their Carnegie mural.) What publicity from the meeting would inspire
a person to attend a future meeting? What publicity was there at all?
Mary
In a message dated 10/20/2009 6:39:06 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
afarke@gmail.com writes:
On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 2:53 PM, B tH <soylentgreenistrex@yahoo.com> wrote:
> As a total neophyte on this subject,
> I'm curious as to why the 'secrecy' is necessary?
To answer the question in the subject line, here's a direct quote from
the SVP abstract book of this year: "Observers are reminded that the
technical content of the SVP sessions is not to be reported in any
medium (print, electronic, or Internet) without the prior permission
of the authors."
And to follow up on Mike's response. . .
1) The threat/perceived threat of being scooped by other scientists.
2) Abstracts (and presentations) are only preliminary. Many a
discussion on the DML about an abstract or presentation has been later
revealed to be hopelessly premature, with rampant speculation on a
topic for which there is little supporting information. Hence the
frequent reminder to "wait for the paper." The primary investigators
should be able to complete their work without 50 people who haven't
seen the specimen telling them how wrong the interpretations are.
3) High profile science glam magz have rather stringent criteria for
acceptance of articles. If it is perceived that a find has been
already publicized (hence hurting the journal's chance to be the
exclusive first outlet for the research), the paper may be rejected.
Because (rightly or wrongly) a paper in Science or Nature can have
huge impacts on a scientist's career (tenure, promotion, hiring, grant
funding), many folks (quite rightly, in my opinion) get a little
touchy about unauthorized discussion of unpublished results. Whether
or not anyone has *actually* been hurt by a DML posting is another
issue altogether, but perception is important.
Just my three cents,
Andy
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