[Corpora-List] Blind reviewing

[Ken Litkowski]

This discussion has ranged over a wide set of issues, but I think some 
have been overlooked.

Two of the first criteria I apply in reviewing arewhethera paperis 
comprehensible (in English)andwhetheritrepresents a reasonably complete 
study. The first may indeed discriminate against those who do not 
natively speak English; ACL, for one, has taken steps to deal with this. 
The second may be due to the unrelenting annual conference schedule and 
is more problematic.

Two additional issues have been raised about conferences: money to 
attend and travel difficulties. The annual schedule may make it 
difficult to have a reasonable level of completeness in reporting on 
one's work. I don't think Graeme's indication that ACL will "publish" 
conference papers is sufficient to deal with these issues, although 
perhaps his inclusion of "other papers" might. While money and travel 
are important factors, I think some mechanism is needed to deal with 
topics that might take several years to develop. I think this is the 
case with my area of focus, computational lexicology, where issues may 
take not only years, but decades. For example, Martha Evens did 
groundbreaking work on semantic relations within the lexicon back in the 
late 70s, and this topic is still unfolding today. I think we need a 
mechanism whereby one can report reasonable intermediate results, with 
future areas of investigations. I'm sure that others on this list can 
come up with other areas than just the lexicon where this would be the case.

A venue for reporting emerging research might help solve the problems of 
money, travel, discrimination, and incompleteness, as well as provide a 
basis for more collaborative research.

     Ken

-- 
Ken Litkowski                     TEL.: 301-482-0237
CL Research                       EMAIL: ken at clres.com
9208 Gue Road                     Home Page: http://www.clres.com
Damascus, MD 20872-1025 USA       Blog: http://www.clres.com/blog


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