🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1ial6nINNk7j@agate.berkeley.edu> lazzaro@boom.CS.Berkeley.EDU (John Lazzaro) writes:
>Does someone lose priority on a research idea presented in a technical
>report, if it turns out they are unable or unwilling to publish in a
>journal or conference?

If person A predates person B with an idea, no amount of publishing by
person B is going to change that fact.  On the other hand, B may have
much more influence on the field if B publishes and A doesn't.  That's
just the way it goes, & person A has to be aware of that possibility.

Let's face it, people simply are not going to comb through tens of
thousands of technical reports (or at least titles) per year from all
the organizations that do research in a given field in the hopes of
finding the very first mention of an idea.  Most people will resort to
something like the Science Citation Index -- which doesn't list tech.
reports.

In article <C0E059.J03.2@cs.cmu.edu> nivek@cs.cmu.edu writes:
>Wallace et al, First Results in Robot Road Following" 
>Proceedings International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence,
>(IJCAI), Los Angeles, CA 1985
>
>This should be available in most university libraries.

Getting back to my original point, this is what I would have hoped a
good reviewer would do!  To be honest, if I were reviewing a paper, I
probably would not strike references to tech. reports, but I would
expect the *author* to supply me with copies on request.  I'm still
not keen on using them as primary sources.
-- 
	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Christopher Ian Connolly			connolly@cs.umass.edu
Laboratory for Perceptual Robotics		wa2ifi
University of Massachusetts at Amherst		Amherst, MA 01003

In article <58285@dime.cs.umass.edu> connolly@piglet.cs.umass.edu (Christopher Ian Connolly) writes:
>
>Let's face it, people simply are not going to comb through tens of
>thousands of technical reports (or at least titles) per year from all
>the organizations that do research in a given field in the hopes of
>finding the very first mention of an idea.
>

I agree, but when the author of the TR ("A") sends author "B" a copy
of the TR and says "please reference my work in future papers," does
"B" has an obligation to abide by these wishes? Moreso than if an
author "C" approaches "B" and says "we thought about this in our lab
years ago, and have documentation to prove it, but we thought it was
not worth publishing in any format; please reference us with an
(unpublished observation) footnote" ?

These things actually happen, I'm not making them up ... its all part
of the slippery slope of intellectual priority (and for patentable
technologies, intellectual property). And with electronic TR's on FTP
sites, the waters muddy even more.

In article <58285@dime.cs.umass.edu> connolly@piglet.cs.umass.edu (Christopher Ian Connolly) writes:
>
> I'm ... not keen on using [tech reports] as primary sources.

How about books?  They have the same problems: no peer review, and the
library has to buy them.  In fact, since libraries can have agreements
to regularly obtain tech reports, and since the tech reports I am most
often interested in come from that set of universities, it has been my
experience that the library is more likely to have a tech reports than
books that I want.  So should I stop referring to books?

- John
--
hagerman@ece.cmu.edu

In article <1icosrINN86c@agate.berkeley.edu> lazzaro@boom.CS.Berkeley.EDU (John Lazzaro) writes:
>I agree, but when the author of the TR ("A") sends author "B" a copy
>of the TR and says "please reference my work in future papers," does
>"B" has an obligation to abide by these wishes?

I'd be inclined to respect A's wishes, but I'd prefer to back it up if
possible with an appropriate journal or conference paper.  Mind you,
I'm not saying I'd *never* cite a tech. report -- I just try to avoid
doing so whenever possible.  If it's unavoidable, the sensible thing
seems (to me) to be prepared to supply the tech report on demand
(i.e., the onus is on me to produce a copy, not the reader).

In article <HAGERMAN.93Jan6123758@rx7.ece.cmu.edu> hagerman@ece.cmu.edu (John Hagerman) writes:
>In article <58285@dime.cs.umass.edu> connolly@piglet.cs.umass.edu (Christopher Ian Connolly) writes:
>>
>> I'm ... not keen on using [tech reports] as primary sources.
>
>How about books?  

But books normally aren't primary sources!  Most are secondary
sources; good for well-established results that originally appeared in
journals or conferences, or classical results in say, mathematics.
Then there are books which are collections from workshops or
conferences.  In either case, the material appearing in a book usually
*has* been peer-reviewed at some point.

					-CC
-- 
	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Christopher Ian Connolly			connolly@cs.umass.edu
Laboratory for Perceptual Robotics		wa2ifi
University of Massachusetts at Amherst		Amherst, MA 01003