Pains and Gains of Peer Reviewing in Software Engineering

A young software engineering researcher is invited to be an associate editor (AE) of a major journal in our field. The researcher is very excited. By this point, she has amassed a nice career track-record. She has also been recognized via a number of invitations to serve on our conferences' program committees. But this somehow feels different and more important: there are multiple conferences each year, and all of them have PCs staffed with dozens of members (not uncommonly over 100 in recent years), while there are comparatively fewer journals and, at any point in time, the sizes of their editorial boards are a fraction of a typical conference PC. This is a major additional sign of recognition of the young researcher's expertise and stature in the community. So, the researcher quickly and enthusiastically accepts the invitation.

Google Dataset Search and DOI for data in the ESA Space Science Archives

<p>The ESAC Science Data Centre (ESDC) is in the process of registering Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) for datasets or group of datasets accessible across the ESA Space Science Archives managed by ESDC. These DOIs are persistent URL that point to DOI landing pages setup and managed by ESDC, actually located at https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/esdc/doi</p> <p>In the heliophysics domain, the first step has been to register DOIs related to the datasets measured by experiments onboard ESA heliophysics spacecraft. Around 60 experiments are flying or have been flown so far onboard ESA heliophysics missions. At the moment, 47 DOI have been registered with CrossRef pointing to DOI landing pages for each experiment onboard SOHO, Proba-2, Cluster, Double Star, Ulysses and ISS-Solaces and are publicly accessible at https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/esdc/doi/heliophysics. Discussions are on-going with editors of major journal to promote and acknowledge the use of data from any of these experiments by citing these DOIs. Eventually, this would improve the traceability of the usage of datasets from these experiments.</p> <p>Additionally, a JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) script has been added to these DOI landing pages to make them discoverable through Google Dataset Search (GDS). GDS is a new search engine that helps users to find datasets online. Twenty five millions datasets were already indexed and searchable when this service was launched in early 2020, after a beta version released in late 2018. Thanks to a close interaction with the PI teams, DOIs for ESA heliophysics experiments are now easily discoverable through GDS and not only by looking for a particular experiment name. The use of structured metadata, based on schema.org, has enabled the search through physical processes investigated by these experiments, the type of experiments, the time coverage, the PI names or their affiliation… Various examples will be provided while the next steps of development will be outlined.</p>

Do we need more AHP/ANP studies?

Recently, a paper submitted to a major journal was rejected by the editor with the indication that the AHP method was very well known so “another AHP study” was not needed for the time being. Being a scholar publishing also in areas beyond AHP/ANP, I was quite surprised by the argument. I have never seen a paper being rejected with the argument that “Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) is a well known method so we do not need “another SEM study.”

SEX RATIOS, POLYGYNY, AND THE VALUE OF WOMEN IN MARRIAGE––A BECKERIAN APPROACH

Gary Becker's theories of marriage were mentioned as one of the reasons why he was awarded the Nobel prize in economics in 1992 and were emphasized by Becker: his first article on the family published in a major journal (Becker 1973) is a theory of marriage and the chapters on marriage in his influential Treatise on the Family (Becker 1981, 1991) come first. Becker's theoretical models of marriage all view marriages as small non-profit firms engaged in household production, thereby featuring one of the basic tenets of the New Home Economics that Becker pioneered with Jacob Mincer while both were at Columbia University in the 1960s (see Becker 1960, 1965; Mincer 1962, 1963).

Phytotaxa 100: The rise of a major journal in systematic and taxonomic botany

Today, the 23rd of May, is the 305th birthday of Carl Linnaeus—father of plant taxonomy and founder of the modern scheme of binomial nomenclature. To join international celebrations of his birthday, we publish Phytotaxa 100, at the same time marking an important milestone in the history of this journal of botanical taxonomy. It is timely that we review its development in the past, especially against the objectives that we set for Phytotaxa (Christenhusz et al. 2009, 2011a), and to assess its current position among journals of systematic botany.

TWO RECENT CONCERTOS BY GEORGE TSONTAKIS

Music's ability to animate a range of expressive nuances between the tangible and the intangible, and to play many different roles in spiritual life, are but two reasons why artists with mystical inclinations often choose it over other media. The composer George Tsontakis (born 1951 in Astoria, New York, of Cretan origins) writes music that frequently explores mystical themes both directly and more obliquely. The goal of this – the first major journal article on his work – is to touch upon important attributes of that language and its development by comparing two recent works, both of which have been released in première recordings in the last year. Violin Concerto No. 2 (2003) and Man of Sorrows (2005), written within a two-year period, both belong to the concerto genre. (Although it does not bear the word ‘concerto’ in its title, Man of Sorrows is a large-scale work for piano soloist and orchestra). Despite their remarkable differences, both works represent a recent ‘crystallization’ of Tsontakis's musical language, as shown in the outstanding impact that they have made in the international sphere, and in their ability to appeal to both cognoscenti and lay people alike.

The Art of Governance: Analyzing Management and Administration

The Art of Governance: Analyzing Management and Administration, Patricia W. Ingraham and Laurence E. Lynn, Jr., eds., Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2004, pp. 238.What is “governance”? Despite a huge literature, a major journal, and numerous teaching programmes and courses ostensibly dealing with the subject, it is a concept that still inspires much confusion. Many students of political science, among others, see the term as being simply a synonym of “governing,” used to describe what governments actually “do,” or as just a new name for the traditional subject matter of established fields such as public administration and public management, offering little in the way of value-added to those more traditional terms and academic fields. Others, of course, argue that “governance” represents a fundamental new way of “governing,” specifically a much less top-down and hierarchical form than is traditionally associated with studies of public administration, and hence a subject worthy of additional attention and the coinage of neologisms.