Hacker News Reader

Comment by javert | Hacker News Reader

I felt a little uneasy reading this in the article. I write CS conference papers that are all in the same area, so obviously, some of the background information (which is a pretty small part of the overall paper) is basically copied from paper to paper. And that part is the most polished.

I don't feel uneasy because I'm doing anything remotely unethical---I'm not. I feel uneasy because it sounded a bit like the description in this article was over-broadly defining self-plagarism.

View on HN

Is this an issue with conferences? My guess is that conferences would prefer to have interesting topics, and probably wouldn't care as much if the material was partially recycled. I have known people who presented early results of a study at one conference, and the final results at another. They were upfront about it, so it wasn't unethical, but I guess you could accuse them of resume padding. Personally, I would prefer a bunch of really interesting presentations at a conference with some recycled material, rather than a bunch of boring presentations that are all original (although if you attend a lot of conferences with the same people, you might prefer the latter I guess).

The conferences I submit to don't care if some of the background material (which is sort of boilerplate---but it is nonetheless necessary to state your assumptions) is similar across papers. Really, you couldn't do it any other way.

I will say that academic (i.e., scientific) conferences should never include "recycled" or "old but interesting" material. There has to be some new research results. Otherwise, it's not science. The point of these conferences is not to entertain, it's to push forward the scope of knowledge.

I really don't view this as resume padding. Think of it in terms of the agile methodology - you don't want to spend a year of your life working on an idea that the rest of your community thinks is irrelevant or has a major flaw. So you publish your preliminary findings in a workshop, garner feedback, and then publish the full work later on in a conference. Seems like a sensible approach to me.

I agree, that is the smart approach.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com