A lengthy post just appeared on Jon Becker’s blog, addressing the issue of access to scholarly information focused most specifically on the format of the AERA annual meeting. I have excerpted a few comments to give you the flavor of the post (not including the author’s commitment not to attend further meetings unless some changes are made). I would encourage reading of the entire post.
I see no evidence of AERA’s commitment to the access principle, and that absence is more pronounced than ever in this era of advanced information and communications technology. AERA is not doing nearly enough to to advance and improve access to research and scholarship in education. Consider just the issues around publishing and annual meetings.
… so long as attendees expect to attend and hear 15-minute presentations about the paper, there’s not great incentive to read the papers ahead of time. What if you did away with presentations entirely and enforced the paper uploading expectations? What if you “flipped” the conference and had presenters create short video presentations to be uploaded and hosted by AERA in advance of the conference?
While I have attended this conference and purchased the AERA journals since 1975 or so, I have no specific reason to defend the approach taken by this or any other professional organization. It is expensive to attend conferences and belong to professional organizations. Yet AERA is far less expense than other organizations to which I have belonged (APA, ISTE). Professional organizations have some obligation to the public (I suppose), but the first responsibility of the organization is to members. Actually, I am guessing the first obligation is to self preservation. Hence, the organization must generate sufficient revenue to meet the needs of the organization. These needs may include bringing in costly speakers, “publishing” scholarly journals, maintaining a paid staff responsible for the day to day operations of the organization, hosting a national meeting, etc. Paying for information (at the conference and in your local library) generates revenue that helps meet the revenue needs of the organization. The organization generates revenue through dues, conference fees, journal subscriptions, and donations. You can guess where I am going with this – cut a few costs or increase some fees. Controlling access to information is one way to generate revenue. Perhaps the membership would be willing to double their dues or donate some money to the organization. Perhaps the invited speakers could be eliminated. Perhaps officers would be willing to serve at their own expense. Hmm….
Regarding access to convention content, here are my thoughts. I am not a fan of the concept of flipping. I want to listen to and review quality presentations. I have not found open discussions of much value and I do not value presenters who have too much time to work with and like to engage the audience in talking among themselves. I want to be in control of how I spend my time at a professional meeting. I value the opinion of individuals I have known over the years and we will have plenty of time to get together and discuss our projects outside of the formal sessions.
Not all presentations are of the “lecture type” so conference planning committees do offer posters and round tables as alternatives to encourage more give and take. Skip the 15 minute presentations if you prefer these other formats. Often the SIGs determine the format they prefer for the sessions they control. Contact your SIG officers to argue that SIG time be used in a different way. Working at the SIG level may be the most practical way to encourage that a different format be used more frequently.
I offered these comments just to make the point that not everyone thinks the flipped idea makes sense. However, I am guessing there are some more general issues that the author failed to consider.
Would people really attend the “expensive” meetings if they could review the formal presentations ahead of time? Would they attend the sessions even if they attended the meetings? It may be access to a carefully crafted presentation that is most helpful to other researchers.
Do presenters want to offer their presentations in a carefully crafted form? I find it very difficult to obtain “complete” versions of presentations now. Most are not available at all. PowerPoint slides do not and probably should not be detailed. I would prefer a well written document, but most presenters seem to reserve the effort required to generate such a document for “real publications”. Just how would the “you must submit a complete paper” actually be enforced? Perhaps the complete paper would have to be application to present. Any volunteers to review?
So, as is often the case, simple analyses miss many important factors. “The organization” was only the bad guy in the 60s.
