Cryptography and papers
Giuliano Bertoletti
Hello,
does anyone know how the papers publishing works (this might be not
specific to cryptography, but I ask here since most of the papers I
search over the net are cryptography related so I guess most of you
experienced the same thing).
I'll try to be more specific in order to let you understand where I'm
heading too (well, actually I'm not even sure I'm making the correct
question :-).
What I mean is: when a researcher, say working for a university, is
going to publish some research paper what does he do exactly?
Why, for example, he often takes agreements with some third party which
offers to publish his work (in exchange of what) ?
Also, it seems that some publishers allow papers to be freely available
on the net, but some others are not? What's the logic behind ?
That might be a dumb question, but not being involved with these
environments, I do not understand why a researcher cannot simply make
the paper available online.
Finally, which is the best way to access those papers which are subject
to restrictions/fees. I mean, is there a sort of subscription which
allows someone to fully consult everything he wishes or does it depends
on agreements with university makes on his behalf ?
I mean is it something affordable for someone which is not involved with
research at the university?
For example, suppose I wish to consult this paper what shall I do ?
http://www.springerlink.com/content/b544lk3131704601/
Cheers,
Giulio.
Tom St Denis
> Hello,
>
> does anyone know how the papers publishing works (this might be not
> specific to cryptography, but I ask here since most of the papers I
> search over the net are cryptography related so I guess most of you
> experienced the same thing).
>
> I'll try to be more specific in order to let you understand where I'm
> heading too (well, actually I'm not even sure I'm making the correct
> question :-).
>
> What I mean is: when a researcher, say working for a university, is
> going to publish some research paper what does he do exactly?
> Why, for example, he often takes agreements with some third party which
> offers to publish his work (in exchange of what) ?
>
> Also, it seems that some publishers allow papers to be freely available
> on the net, but some others are not? What's the logic behind ?
>
> That might be a dumb question, but not being involved with these
> environments, I do not understand why a researcher cannot simply make
> the paper available online.
Many do at eprint.iacr.org but only after it's been submitted
elsewhere. Usually the first rule for paper submission is that it be
anonymous (whether it remains that way or not is another debate). so
people can't advertise their paper then submit it anonymously.
I haven't been published [in that sense] but the procedure is usually
to find a conference that is suitable (check out iacr.org for
instance) then submit when a CFP occurs.
If you just want to get your paper out there eprint is a good way,
they don't review the papers there so you can't put that on your C.V.
as being "published" but at least your results are out there.
> Finally, which is the best way to access those papers which are subject
> to restrictions/fees. I mean, is there a sort of subscription which
> allows someone to fully consult everything he wishes or does it depends
> on agreements with university makes on his behalf ?
The simplest way is to check the programmes, if there are talks that
interest you buy the journal of the proceedings. Also ask around,
collectively you'll find people tend to have a lot of broad coverage.
Someone is bound to be able to cite a paper for you if you ask
Tom
Maaartin
> For example, suppose I wish to consult this paper what shall I do ?http://www.springerlink.com/content/b544lk3131704601/
Just UTFG, most of the time it works. In this case the first result of
http://www.google.com/search?client=opera&rls=en&q=Algebraic+Attack+on+the+MQQ+Public+Key+Cryptosystem
leads to
www.cdc.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de/.../Mohamed-paper112-CANS09.pdf
Sometimes you need much more work, sometimes I failed to find it.
I consider springerlink etc., to be no better than spammers, maybe
worse. It's ok to pay for a printed book, it's ok to pay some money to
the author for an online book, but $25 for 11 pages is insane. I'd be
happy if there was a seach option for ignoring all such links.
Tom St Denis
> On Dec 28, 12:58 pm, Giuliano Bertoletti <gbe32...@libero.it> wrote:
>
> > For example, suppose I wish to consult this paper what shall I do ?http://www.springerlink.com/content/b544lk3131704601/
>
> leads towww.cdc.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de/.../Mohamed-paper112-CANS09.pdf
> Sometimes you need much more work, sometimes I failed to find it.
>
> I consider springerlink etc., to be no better than spammers, maybe
> worse. It's ok to pay for a printed book, it's ok to pay some money to
> the author for an online book, but $25 for 11 pages is insane. I'd be
> happy if there was a seach option for ignoring all such links.
The thing that gets me most (aside from the obvious character bias) is
that you have to pay to attend a conference in which a paper you paid
to write is being published in a journal that THEY make money off of.
Granted most people aren't publishing to get rich, they want their
results out there, but just the same it seems counterintuitive. I bet
if we took tenure away from a lot of the PhDs who sign off on the
papers we'd see demands for cuts of the sales ;-)
Tom
Giuliano Bertoletti
> On Dec 28, 6:58 am, Giuliano Bertoletti <gbe32...@libero.it> wrote:
>
> If you just want to get your paper out there eprint is a good way,
> they don't review the papers there so you can't put that on your C.V.
> as being "published" but at least your results are out there.
>
So basically, they offer to the researcher a service of peer review in
exchange for money.
But is the researcher bound to them once he gets the review ? What does
prevent him to publish his paper for free elsewhere (you mention it as a
possibility, but shouldn't it be the rule) ?
>
> The simplest way is to check the programmes, if there are talks that
> interest you buy the journal of the proceedings.
Yes, but I often get the reference from another paper and it seems a
waste to me buying the whole journal when I don't even know if I'm
really interesed in that paper. Paradoxically I know a paper is
interesting only after I read it. :-)
Anyway, I guess that among researchers that costs are sustained by their
respective universities. Otherwise, as you correctly pointed out,
they're not rich so I guess they won't spend money in that way. :-)
> Also ask around,
> collectively you'll find people tend to have a lot of broad coverage.
> Someone is bound to be able to cite a paper for you if you ask
>
I'm sorry, but I think I do not understand what you mean by that.
Can you please explan ?
Thank you,
Giulio.
Greg Rose
Giuliano Bertoletti <gbe3...@libero.it> wrote:
>Tom St Denis ha scritto:
>> On Dec 28, 6:58 am, Giuliano Bertoletti <gbe32...@libero.it> wrote:
>
>>
>> If you just want to get your paper out there eprint is a good way,
>> they don't review the papers there so you can't put that on your C.V.
>> as being "published" but at least your results are out there.
>>
>
>So basically, they offer to the researcher a service of peer review in
>exchange for money.
No, submission to the conference is free.
Reviewers also do their reviews for free. It costs
money to actually print the proceedings and hold
the conferences, although often students can get
stipends to make the cost of attending cheaper (or
zero).
The payback to all parties involved is in the form
of reputation capital, being better known in the
community, working with others to advance the
state of research, etc.
>But is the researcher bound to them once he gets the review ? What does
>prevent him to publish his paper for free elsewhere (you mention it as a
>possibility, but shouldn't it be the rule) ?
Historically, the authors assigned copyright to the
publisher, and they were the only people who could make
reprints available. This is, after all, how they
make their money. Of course the proceedings/journals
are usually in the local university library, so you
can read it there, a lot of the time.
More recently things like eprint, arXiv, and so on
have made this model ridiculous, and the community
is trying to adapt. All IACR members, for example,
get free access to the publications on
SpringerLink, and USENIX self-publishes, and
neither care if your paper is already up on the
web somewhere (although as Tom points out this
makes a bit of a mockery of anonymous submission).
The one thing that will really wreck your chances,
though, is submitting to multiple conferences at
the same time. This is an absolute no-no, because
it wastes the effort of the volunteer reviewers
and (if your paper is accepted) stuffs up the
program when you don't show up.
>> The simplest way is to check the programmes, if there are talks that
>> interest you buy the journal of the proceedings.
>
>Yes, but I often get the reference from another paper and it seems a
>waste to me buying the whole journal when I don't even know if I'm
>really interesed in that paper. Paradoxically I know a paper is
>interesting only after I read it. :-)
Libraries, internet.
>Anyway, I guess that among researchers that costs are sustained by their
>respective universities. Otherwise, as you correctly pointed out,
>they're not rich so I guess they won't spend money in that way. :-)
The costs that are borne by their institutions
(not all research is academic) is the time of the
researchers and their costs to attend conferences,
and this is really just part of their jobs.
> > Also ask around,
> > collectively you'll find people tend to have a lot of broad coverage.
> > Someone is bound to be able to cite a paper for you if you ask
> >
>
>I'm sorry, but I think I do not understand what you mean by that.
>Can you please explan ?
I think he means, if you really want a particular
paper, just ask and someone, somewhere, will send
it to you. ISTR that Tom got some help that way
when he was a grasshopper.
Greg.
--
Greg Rose
232B EC8F 44C6 C853 D68F E107 E6BF CD2F 1081 A37C
Ilmari Karonen
>
> does anyone know how the papers publishing works (this might be not
> specific to cryptography, but I ask here since most of the papers I
> search over the net are cryptography related so I guess most of you
> experienced the same thing).
>
> I'll try to be more specific in order to let you understand where I'm
> heading too (well, actually I'm not even sure I'm making the correct
> question :-).
>
> What I mean is: when a researcher, say working for a university, is
> going to publish some research paper what does he do exactly?
> Why, for example, he often takes agreements with some third party which
> offers to publish his work (in exchange of what) ?
>
> Also, it seems that some publishers allow papers to be freely available
> on the net, but some others are not? What's the logic behind ?
>
> That might be a dumb question, but not being involved with these
> environments, I do not understand why a researcher cannot simply make
> the paper available online.
The real reason academic publishing works the way it does is that it's
way older than the Internet. The original purpose of an academic
journal was simply to serve as a distribution channel, back in the
days when the best and only way to let other researchers see your work
was to have lots of paper copies printed out and sent around.
That's why they're called papers, you know.
That said, the reason many people still stick to this old-fashioned
model (besides simple cultural inertia) is that it's also come to
serve a lot of auxiliary functions. Some of them include:
* Peer review: This is basically the spam filter of the academic
world. When you read an article in a journal, you know it's been
checked by someone who ought to understand the subject and be able
to tell if the content is bullshit or not. The more prestigious
the journal, the more careful the review -- at least usually.
The peer review process isn't 100% foolproof, of course, and its
occasional failure (in either direction) tends to generate a lot of
complaints. But all this noise may obscure the fact that it does
work most of the time. Academic journals are remarkably free of
nonsense and crackpottery compared to, say, this newsgroup.
The review process also provides another benefit, this time to the
authors: the reviewers may notice issues in your article that you
might've missed, and may suggest corrections or improvements. In
this way, your work may be better for having been reviewed.
* Archival: Not only are the journals themselves generally diligent
about maintaining archives of past issues, the journals get
distributed to a lot of libraries around the world. Getting your
work published in a journal is pretty much the best way to make
sure it won't be lost, short of carving it on stone tablets and
burying them in the desert.
By comparison, web pages are utterly ephemeral. Your web site will
stay up just as long as you keep paying for the hosting; once you
stop, *poof*, it's gone. Sites like the arXiv, which are supported
by large stable organizations and which consider archival of their
content a priority, are somewhat less likely to just disappear, but
their reliability is still far short of that of a paper journal.
* Reputation: This is a big one. In academia, a person's reputation
is commonly measured by how many articles they've published, in
which journals, and how often they've been cited by other authors.
Building up such a reputation is, in turn, often used when awarding
positions, and thus essential if one wants to build a successful
academic career. "Publish or perish", goes the saying.
These reputation measures, however, only work because of the
filtering provided by these traditional publication channels: if
anyone could publish anything, publication alone would be useless
as a basis for reputation. Thus, while anyone's free to make their
work available by any means they choose, whether by putting it on a
web page or by circulating copies among colleagues, such informal,
non-peer-reviewed methods are not counted as _real_ publication.
* Visibility: Sure, there are a lot of obscure journals out there,
but the fact remains that, even today, getting your work published
in a high-impact journal is one of the most effective ways to get
other researchers to notice it and pay attention. Just putting it
on a web page may be easier, but who's gonna find it there?
Of course, people might find it through search engines, and there
are places (like this newsgroup) where you could announce it and
hope that people will notice. But it's an unreliable business, and
you're pretty much starting at the bottom. Publication in a
journal gets your work "pushed out" to a bunch of people who are
interested in the same field, and also makes your article part of
the official body of scientific literature, and thereby listed in a
lot more databases and indexes that others might search than an
average web page is ever likely to be.
All that said, it's been clear for over a decade now that things are,
indeed, slowly starting to change in academic publishing, and indeed
that they'll have to. The only question is how.
One step away from the traditional model, where the cost of publishing
is borne by the subscribers (and which therefore requires that access
be limited to those subscribers only) is open access publishing. This
is in fact a rather minor change: open access journals work just like
traditional academic journals, except that the money mainly comes from
other sources.
The upside to this is that the content can be made freely available on
the web; the downside is that _someone_ still has to pay the costs,
and that someone is often the author (or their employer). For a
university or a large company this is rarely much of a problem, as the
cost of publishing an article tends to be much less than the cost of
the research that led to it in the first place, but an independent
researcher working on their spare time without funding might find it
an obstacle. Not all open access journals charge publication fees,
though: some are funded entirely by sponsoring institutions,
subscription fees for print editions and/or various other sources.
Also, even traditional journals are increasingly moving away from
paper publication and into the realm of online publishing. (When even
the heads of leading journals like Science and Nature start saying
that "that's where the future is", one should take notice.) That, of
course, risks losing some of the benefits I've listed above, but it
also reduces the costs a lot. In many ways it makes sense, too: now
that we have this fancy new thing called the Internet, we no longer
_need_ all those paper journals just to get the information around.
The other major direction of change has been away from peer-reviewed
journals entirely. People still submit articles to them, since they
want the academic credit that journal publication provides, but in
many fields the "leading edge" of communication has moved to online
preprint databases and other channels that impose fewer delays than
traditional publishing. Such channel also offer less quality control,
of course, but many find the tradeoff acceptable.
I suspect the next big thing might be alternative reputation metrics.
Peer review and impact factors aren't the only ways to measure the
reliability and significant of an article, or even necessarily the
best ones -- they've just been what we traditionally had. Eventually,
as new approaches are developed, the emphasis might shift towards
things like open collaborative review and endorsement via reputation
networks. But I should emphasize that so far, all this is still pure
speculation. For now, if you want an academic career, publication in
peer-reviewed journals is still where it's at.
> Finally, which is the best way to access those papers which are subject
> to restrictions/fees. I mean, is there a sort of subscription which
> allows someone to fully consult everything he wishes or does it depends
> on agreements with university makes on his behalf ?
>
> I mean is it something affordable for someone which is not involved with
> research at the university?
>
> For example, suppose I wish to consult this paper what shall I do ?
> http://www.springerlink.com/content/b544lk3131704601/
As others have noted, just searching for the title on the web may
often turn up free copies. (Note that sometimes these might be early
draft versions with some corrections missing, so a bit of caution is
advised.) If you're using Google Scholar, remember to click the "all
versions" link, if available, and consider trying the general web
search too.
Also, if you can find an e-mail address for one of the authors, you
could try asking them to send you a copy. Most authors will not mind
taking a few minutes to help an interested reader.
Finally, there's the old fashioned way: find a library that has a
physical copy of the journal and get there (or ask your local library
for an interlibrary loan). If you find the article interesting and
would like a permanent copy, you should generally be able to obtain a
photocopy. Ask the library staff if you have any questions -- that's
what they're there for.
--
Ilmari Karonen
To reply by e-mail, please replace ".invalid" with ".net" in address.
unruh
> On 2009-12-28, Giuliano Bertoletti <gbe3...@libero.it> wrote:
>>
>> does anyone know how the papers publishing works (this might be not
>> specific to cryptography, but I ask here since most of the papers I
>> search over the net are cryptography related so I guess most of you
>> experienced the same thing).
>>
>> I'll try to be more specific in order to let you understand where I'm
>> heading too (well, actually I'm not even sure I'm making the correct
>> question :-).
>>
>> What I mean is: when a researcher, say working for a university, is
>> going to publish some research paper what does he do exactly?
>> Why, for example, he often takes agreements with some third party which
>> offers to publish his work (in exchange of what) ?
If it is a short paper ( say less than 100 pages) he will choose a
journal which deals with the subject matter of his paper, and send it to
them with a request for publication. The editor of that journal will
then decide whether or not to publish the paper, usually after sending
the paper out to one or two experts in the subject matter of the paper
for advice (eg is the material new, not wrong, understandable, etc).
If the editor decides that the paper is worth publishing by that
journal, they publish it, usually in the science without any payment to
the author. In return for that publication they either demand that the
author sign over copyright in the paper to them, or sign a license
agreement.
>>
>> Also, it seems that some publishers allow papers to be freely available
>> on the net, but some others are not? What's the logic behind ?
The journals are there to make money. Their exclusive control over the
paper is the way they do that ( through the publication fees that
especially libraries pay them). In Physics and in some other fields,
most papers are first published on www.arxive.net before they are even
sent to the journals. This was started by Paul Ginsparg much against the
wishes of the journals ( and at times the emnity of the journals) but
physicists sent in their papers and the journals, since they rely on the
physicists actually sending them papers to publish, caved in and allow
that form of prior publication ( except for Nature and Science who still
disallow it, considering their reputation to be so high that authors
would comply in order to be published there). Since journals make money
selling the journal, they do not want the articles to be free on the
net. Many place restrictions on when the article they publish can be
displayed on the net, some of them demanding from the authors a fee if
the authors want to allow their paper to be put up for free web reading.
>>
>> That might be a dumb question, but not being involved with these
>> environments, I do not understand why a researcher cannot simply make
>> the paper available online.
Promotion, tenure, and merit pay committees tend to regard only
publication in a refereed journal as being "real" publications. That
refereeing process ( ie the editor deciding to publish the paper under
the advice of some experts) is regarded as placing an imprimature on the
paper, saying it is worthwhile. Those committees, not having the
expertise to decide if the papers are nonesense or not, rely on that
refereeing process to tell them if the paper is worthwhile or not.
(people on the inside know that acceptance by a journal is far far from
a guarantee of that paper being worthwhile, but when those same people
sit on committees they switch off any critical factilities in their
brains and profess to believe that the refereeing process is wonderful.)
Thus if the academic researcher wants to be promoted, and tenured, he
must sign away all rights to their paper to some journal, and get it
published their instead of ( or as well as) on the net.
>
> The real reason academic publishing works the way it does is that it's
> way older than the Internet. The original purpose of an academic
> journal was simply to serve as a distribution channel, back in the
> days when the best and only way to let other researchers see your work
> was to have lots of paper copies printed out and sent around.
>
> That's why they're called papers, you know.
>
> That said, the reason many people still stick to this old-fashioned
> model (besides simple cultural inertia) is that it's also come to
> serve a lot of auxiliary functions. Some of them include:
>
> * Peer review: This is basically the spam filter of the academic
> world. When you read an article in a journal, you know it's been
> checked by someone who ought to understand the subject and be able
> to tell if the content is bullshit or not. The more prestigious
> the journal, the more careful the review -- at least usually.
Are you someone who has published and read academic journals, or acted
as a referee, or had papers sent to referees? And you still hold these
views? Even in private amongst your collegues?
>
> The peer review process isn't 100% foolproof, of course, and its
> occasional failure (in either direction) tends to generate a lot of
> complaints. But all this noise may obscure the fact that it does
> work most of the time. Academic journals are remarkably free of
> nonsense and crackpottery compared to, say, this newsgroup.
Occasional?
>
> The review process also provides another benefit, this time to the
> authors: the reviewers may notice issues in your article that you
> might've missed, and may suggest corrections or improvements. In
> this way, your work may be better for having been reviewed.
This is certainly true. But as anyone who has published onthe arxive
knows, that also can generate an large list of comments on your paper.
>
> * Archival: Not only are the journals themselves generally diligent
> about maintaining archives of past issues, the journals get
> distributed to a lot of libraries around the world. Getting your
> work published in a journal is pretty much the best way to make
> sure it won't be lost, short of carving it on stone tablets and
> burying them in the desert.
More importantly, the journal serves as a central site where others can
come to ask for permission to use the article intheir own works.
>
> By comparison, web pages are utterly ephemeral. Your web site will
> stay up just as long as you keep paying for the hosting; once you
> stop, *poof*, it's gone. Sites like the arXiv, which are supported
> by large stable organizations and which consider archival of their
> content a priority, are somewhat less likely to just disappear, but
> their reliability is still far short of that of a paper journal.
The Arxive with its many mirrors is probably as good an archive as any
journal and a hell of a lot easier to search through.
>
> * Reputation: This is a big one. In academia, a person's reputation
> is commonly measured by how many articles they've published, in
> which journals, and how often they've been cited by other authors.
> Building up such a reputation is, in turn, often used when awarding
> positions, and thus essential if one wants to build a successful
> academic career. "Publish or perish", goes the saying.
>
> These reputation measures, however, only work because of the
> filtering provided by these traditional publication channels: if
> anyone could publish anything, publication alone would be useless
> as a basis for reputation. Thus, while anyone's free to make their
> work available by any means they choose, whether by putting it on a
> web page or by circulating copies among colleagues, such informal,
> non-peer-reviewed methods are not counted as _real_ publication.
Despite the fact that the practitioners know that they they now rarely
look at the journals, instead looking at teh Arxive instead to read the
papers.
>
> * Visibility: Sure, there are a lot of obscure journals out there,
> but the fact remains that, even today, getting your work published
> in a high-impact journal is one of the most effective ways to get
> other researchers to notice it and pay attention. Just putting it
> on a web page may be easier, but who's gonna find it there?
Actually no. In physics papers are almost universally read on the the
Arxive, not in journals.
In short no. The journals typically charge $20 to $40 per article. If
that is affordable, then yes.
>>
>> For example, suppose I wish to consult this paper what shall I do ?
>> http://www.springerlink.com/content/b544lk3131704601/
>
> As others have noted, just searching for the title on the web may
> often turn up free copies. (Note that sometimes these might be early
> draft versions with some corrections missing, so a bit of caution is
> advised.) If you're using Google Scholar, remember to click the "all
> versions" link, if available, and consider trying the general web
> search too.
Or go to your nearest university, and use their computers to read the
article. Universities often have group online priviledges.