Jekyll2024-01-30T00:38:53+00:00http://gustavopinto.org//feed.xmlGustavo PintoSoft Eng Professor and ResearcherGustavo Pintogpinto@ufpa.brHow to find a good venue to submit your research paper2020-05-17T00:00:00+00:002020-05-17T00:00:00+00:00http://gustavopinto.org//blog/how-to-find-a-good-venue-to-submit-your-research-paper<p>Some days ago I made an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtGbp2HwmKA&t=3s">YouTube live</a> about this topic (in PT-BR, sorry). This blog post is a text version of that video.</p>
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<p>Perhaps one essential part of the scientific endeavor is to communicate what you found in your research study to your academic peers. This communication starts when a researcher submits a paper to an academic venue (such as, a conference or a journal). If the paper is accepted, the paper will be published in the conference/journal proceedings, and then could be accessed by anyone interested in the research topic of the paper.</p>
<p>Deciding which venue you will submit your is critical since some venues might have better visibility and reach than others. Actually, although some venues might have a fancy name, they might not have a good reputation. For instance, some venues publish roughly any kind of work (regardless of the quality of the work), if they can charge you money. Young scholars should build their reputation by staying away from bad venues. But how could you distinguish the good from the bad venue?</p>
<p>In this blog post, I’m assuming that the reader is already familiar with paper writing activities, and may already have a paper in good shape for an eventual submission. The question is: how to find the right place to submit your work?</p>
<p>When deciding where to submit your paper, you could sometimes rely on your advisor or your colleagues that participated in the research. Since they might be more senior than you, they might have in mind some good conferences/journals in which you could submit your research work. The list of conferences/journals often comes from their own experience in conducting (and submitting) scientific work. As a junior member of the time, sometimes it’s hard to disagree with the suggestions that your colleagues made, mainly because you might not have other ideas (or perhaps you don’t know if the journal you have in mind is indeed a good one). As a consequence, you may inherit the same taste for submitting papers of your mentors and colleagues.</p>
<p>Although this is a popular way to build your understanding of the research paper submitting process, I’d like to propose an alternative view.</p>
<p>As a young scholar, the chances are that you have on your desk a couple of research papers that are very important to your investigation. Sometimes you have just one, yet fundamental, research paper on your desk. The chances are that you already have read these papers many, many times. You know the method, the results, and every other detail of these papers. If that’s correct, here are some questions for you:</p>
<ul>
<li>Where was this research paper published? (take note)</li>
<li>Where were the cited papers published? (take notes)</li>
<li>Who is/are the senior author(s) of the research paper? Visit her(their) webpage and see where she publishes her other research work? (take notes)</li>
<li>Do the same for the cited papers (take notes)</li>
</ul>
<p>If the paper on your desk is relevant for your research, it is likely to be published in a good venue. For instance, if your advisor sent this paper to you, it’s because your advisor knew that paper is a good one. If you found this paper by your own, your search criteria might have excluded many other similar works. If you found this paper by accident, go back do the first step. Assuming the paper in your desk was indeed published in a proper venue, the papers it cites might be of good quality as well. Otherwise, how could that paper be a good one, if it’s not standing on the shoulders of giants?</p>
<p>When doing the proposed exercise, look for some patterns. For instance, although you have been reading and visiting many different research papers published by various researchers in different years, note the most common venues in which these works are published. Bad academic venues can absolutely be found and cited, but only excellent academic venues are cited frequently. Similarly, if the senior author of that research paper is an authority in your field (for instance, she has a robust research contribution over two or more decades), the chances are that she also publishes her research in good venues. Yes, even well-known academics may have one or other publications in obscure journals. Still, the majority of her contributions should be made in good academic venues (and not the opposite).</p>
<p>The outcome of the proposed exercise is a list of the 5–10 most frequent academic conferences/journals that you might have found. This list might be a good proxy of the good venues in your research area. Obviously, this list is not definitive, but it may help you to get started. During your exercise, you definitely have encountered dozes of academic venues, but I suspect that they don’t appear that often (only once in a while). If that journal that keeps inviting you to submit your work is nowhere in the list, you perhaps don’t need to bother with it.</p>
<p>Note that in this blog post, we did not mention anything about rankings. Yes, ranking can be handy here and there. But rankings have a significant shortcoming: they use quantitative metrics to evaluate research. As any quantitative metric, research metrics can be manipulated and inflated. But this is a topic for another blog post.</p>Gustavo Pintogpinto@ufpa.brSome days ago I made an YouTube live about this topic (in PT-BR, sorry). This blog post is a text version of that video.How to deal with rejections2020-05-16T00:00:00+00:002020-05-16T00:00:00+00:00http://gustavopinto.org//blog/how-to-deal-with-rejections<p>Some days ago I made an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQuiA_FoKHw">YouTube live</a> about how to deal with rejections (in PT-BR, sorry). This blog post is a text version of that video.</p>
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<p>A critical thing about rejections is that they are part of the academic process. The chances are that every researcher you may know has already received one (perhaps many) rejection letters. Despite their well-known presence, we don’t talk much about rejections. Different than, say, a soccer game, in which we know who owns and who loses the match, in the academic game, we only know about the ones that have the paper accepted, the grants funded, the awards received, etc.</p>
<p>This view is only partial, though. More importantly, it creates the illusion that successful researchers (for instance, the ones that are invited to give talks, the ones that made the most fundamental contributions in your field, the ones who the names are often found in the academic literature) are the ones that never (or very infrequently) face a rejection. This is hardly to be the case.</p>
<p>Nowadays, the competition to get a paper published or to receive a grant is so fierce that, for any excellent conference or journal, authors are more likely to have a paper rejected than a paper accepted (regardless if the manuscript is good or bad). In the Software Engineering field, which I know a bit more about, the acceptance rate is often around 25%–30%. This means that sometimes the only difference between an accepted paper and a rejected paper is that we don’t talk about the rejected one. And since we don’t talk about rejections, they become harder to digest.</p>
<p>Knowing these problems, some researchers started to advertise their own rejected work. For instance, <a href="https://jessicavitak.com/">Jessica Vitak</a> created the idea of “CV of failures” (not sure if she created, but her CV was the first one I found). Opposed to traditional CVs, in a CV of failures you highlight the things that you did not achieve. That is, a paper not published, a grant not received, a job not offered, etc. I got inspired by her CV of failure, and I also <a href="/cv-of-failures">created mine</a>. By doing so, I think it became more natural for me to talk about rejections. I can also make fun of it. While others are celebrating that they have a paper accepted in a given conference (something very common on my Twitter feed), I can also celebrate that <a href="https://twitter.com/gustavopinto/status/1003685173924388864">it’s time to update my CV of failure</a>.</p>
<p>This CV of failure is straightforward, though; it only lists several things that I did not achieve. Moving one step further, it may be interesting to provide more context about the rejected work. My former Ph.D. advisor <a href="https://fernandocastor.github.io/general/2016/10/11/long-hard-road.html">wrote a fantastic blog post</a> in which he distilled the entire process of having a paper accepted (which was a journey paved with many of rejections). Even when we thought that the paper was 99% accepted (after the second round of reviews in a journal in which <em>two</em> of the reviewers had already accepted the work), the paper was rejected. I remember that this rejection came close to Christmas Eve, in which I was alone (with this rejection letter).</p>
<p>Sometimes having a paper rejected hurts. Sometimes the notification arrives in a moment that we are not feeling well (or perhaps in the middle of a pandemic). Sometimes a rejection may also limit our professional future (it may be intimidating to apply for that faculty position while your papers are not yet published). I remember when I was doing my Ph.D. that I was at the end of the third year/starting the fourth year, and I didn’t have any publications. How could I graduate if I have any publications? I did have some drafts, but the drafts might not impress the committee (even if the difference between the draft and a paper is just the acceptance letter). “How could I follow an academic career if I don’t have papers accepted?”, I thought.</p>
<p>To discuss a bit more about these uncertainties, in the video, I made a quick pass in this <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1745691619898848">research paper</a>, which I cannot recommend enough. As the name suggests, this paper is a summary of a panel about “Repeated Rejection, Impostor Syndrome, and Burnout” that happened in a Psychology conference. The paper reports stories about researchers that have been dealing with this subject over the years, as well as coping strategies. One of the excerpts that I found helpful is:</p>
<p>“There is value is knowing that other academics get rejected, experience impostor syndrome, and feel burned out. There is value in simply knowing that <strong>you are not alone</strong>.”</p>
<p>That is, since other researchers rarely talk about rejections, we might believe that only our work is rejected. One of the researchers that share her rejections mentioned that she submitted 45 unique manuscripts a total of 160 times, and approximately 75 of them were desk rejected. She also mentioned that some of her researcher papers took seven years to be published, and many research papers were published in the 5th or 6th attempts. Nevertheless, she also mentioned that these papers are the ones that she likes the most. I could relate here. The paper that my former advisor blogged about is also one that I like a lot.</p>
<p>Another fascinating observation from this paper is that some researchers take some days (sometimes weeks) away, after receiving a harsh rejection. According to them, it is crucial to recharge a bit and understand that “we are running a marathon in the forest and not a sprint from tree to tree”. Thus, self-care is critical to stay in research.</p>Gustavo Pintogpinto@ufpa.brSome days ago I made an YouTube live about how to deal with rejections (in PT-BR, sorry). This blog post is a text version of that video.How to start doing research2020-05-06T00:00:00+00:002020-05-06T00:00:00+00:00http://gustavopinto.org//blog/How-to-start-doing-research<p><a href="https://gumroad.com/l/good-research-habits">I’m selling a book about good habits that young scholars could foster while finding their path in academia, for only $ 5.</a></p>
<p><a href="http://gustavopinto.org/books/good-rearch-habits/">100% of the sales will go to a hospital fighting COVID-19.</a></p>
<p><a href="https://bit.ly/3bJM0UD">There is a sample of the book, including the chapter that describes the first habit.</a></p>
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<p>Let’s start from the very beginning. It would be tough to make meaningful contributions in research if you do not acquire the solid foundations of your field. To learn the fundamentals, you should have, on the top of your head, the books that are the most important ones related to your subject under investigation. After understanding the foundations (explained in the books), you can expand your horizons to understand state of the art (illustrated in the research papers). However, it is difficult for one to be regularly up to date with the state of the art if you have trouble reading in English.</p>
<h3 id="learn-english">Learn English</h3>
<p>It might be strange for a native English speaker to read in a book that one should learn English to be productive in research. However, research is a universal tool that could be applied toward the solution of many problems in any field of endeavor, in any discipline. The findings observed in research studies are often reported in English. In fact, the most competitive and recognizable journals that publish the finest peer-reviewed research do so in English.</p>
<p>Some journals indeed publish research works in other languages, for instance, Portuguese. However, these journals have a limited reach since other readers that don’t read in Portuguese might have a hard time trying to understand your work, regardless of how exciting and timely the work is. If you want to cover a broad population of stakeholders interested in reading your research work, you should learn how to write in English. Similarly, if you want to understand and contribute to the next hot topic in your field, you should also be comfortable reading in English. Otherwise, you would also be limited to the small proportion of literature that is available on your first language.</p>
<p>As a professor in a public university in an impoverished region in Brazil, I also understand that learning English is sometimes a privilege for many low-income students. However, thanks to the internet, there is currently an excellent number of apps, YouTube channels, Podcasts, mailing lists, instructors on Twitter, etc., that help others by providing English lessons for free. Although I cannot guarantee the quality of their content, I believe that they are better than nothing. Note that the point is not to become fluent in English in ten days. Instead, I think the point is to become comfortable reading and writing in English (with little to no outside help). Your English does not need to be perfect. Indeed, my English is far from perfect. Your goal is to be able to communicate.</p>
<h3 id="learn-research-methods">Learn Research Methods</h3>
<p>The next step is to learn the research methods. A research method should be systematic; that is, it should act according to a fixed plan. Once one establishes the research method, there should be no deviation in the plan throughout the research work. Otherwise, the whole work could be threatened. Research method employs process and/or techniques that allow researchers:</p>
<ul>
<li>To collect and organize data;</li>
<li>To do some analysis over the data collected.</li>
<li>To, eventually, uncover new findings or create a better understanding about a topic;</li>
</ul>
<p>Although there are <em>many</em> research methods, we can roughly group them into three axes: qualitative research methods, quantitative research methods, and mixed research methods.</p>
<p>Qualitative research assists researchers to gain a better understanding of complex concepts, social interactions, or cultural phenomena. This type of research is useful in answering questions about <em>how</em> or <em>why</em> things have happened. The primary outcomes of qualitative research are interpretations of events and actions. Some qualitative research methods include: interviews, observations, focus groups, etc.</p>
<p>Quantitative research, on the other hand, assists researchers to uncover patterns or relationships in data. The data collected could then be measured and categorized. Statistical analysis are often employed in such numerical data. This type of research could help in answering questions about <em>how many</em>, <em>how often</em>, <em>to what extent</em>, etc. Some quantitative research methods include: experiments, questionnaires, etc.</p>
<p>Mixed research methods happen when researchers employ both qualitative and quantitative research. By combining different research methods, it is possible to explore a subject in both <em>breadth</em> (using quantitative methods) and <em>depth</em> (using qualitative methods).</p>
<p>It is not, however, the intention of this chapter to give the reader a holistic understanding of each research method, but, instead, to describe their goals and highlight their importance. The reader should dig deeper into the research method that is more suitable for the problem under analysis. Take your time and read the books with care and attention; it will pay off in the long run. The key takeaway here is the following: the essential research methods are already established; they are very unlikely to change. Once the reader becomes familiar with one of them, it becomes part of your research arsenal. Keep using it till mastering it. No reviewer will complain that you are using a research method from the 80s or 70s. In fact, it is a good idea to rely on a well-established research method. Go to the library and learn the basics.</p>
<h3 id="learn-the-state-of-the-art">Learn the State of the Art</h3>
<p>While research methods are the foundation of research, the state of the art is the highest level of a scientific field achieved at a particular time. While research methods are solid as a rock, the state of the art is liquid like water. Since science progresses at a steady pace, the state of the art of today is not the same state of the art of last year, last month, or even yesterday. To keep regularly acquainted with the state of the art, researchers have (1) to learn how to find it and, obviously, (2) to use their English skills to digest them. As briefly aforementioned, do not expect that the state of the art will be available in your first language. Yes, it can be if (1) you are lucky or (2) if you wait months or years.</p>
<p>Now that we know what is the state of the art, the question is: how to find it? I cannot suggest the reader go to the library to get acquainted with the start of the art. If it is in a book, it is because its knowledge was solid enough. In principle, the state of the art shed light some light in the dark. It takes years of regular contributions to fully understand and clarify a research topic to (eventually) be summarized in a book. So, no, don’t go to the library to learn the state of the art.</p>
<p>I mean, don’t go to the <em>physical</em> library. In this case, go to the <em>digital</em> library. I believe most fields have their digital library, but I would be naive if I try to refer to them here (there are just too many digital libraries). Instead, I would suggest a first look at Google Scholar. If you don’t know it yet, take some time to play with it using the keywords you know the most. See if you know some of the results (for instance, the title of the paper, the name of the authors, the name of the conference/journal). If you don’t, play a bit more. Use different keywords, take notes, improve, and keep searching.</p>
<p>After becoming comfortable with Google Scholar, look for the specific digital libraries on your field. There should be many. There should also be an empty field waiting for your search term. Do the search in both Google Scholar and on your specific digital library. Sort by date. Compare the results. Look for the patterns. Who are the most common authors? Look at the author’s webpage. Read their latest publications. What are the most common journals? Look at the journal’s webpage. What are the newest publications in that journal? Read them all. Create your own research method for understanding the state of the art. Improve as you iterate.</p>Gustavo Pintogpinto@ufpa.brI’m selling a book about good habits that young scholars could foster while finding their path in academia, for only $ 5.How to write a short book in 20 hours2020-04-28T00:00:00+00:002020-04-28T00:00:00+00:00http://gustavopinto.org//blog/How-to-write-a-short-book-in-20-hours<p><a href="https://gumroad.com/l/good-research-habits">I’m selling a book about good habits that young scholars could foster while finding their path in academia, for only $ 5.</a></p>
<p><a href="http://gustavopinto.org/books/good-rearch-habits/">100% of the sales will go to a hospital fighting COVID-19.</a></p>
<p><a href="https://bit.ly/3bJM0UD">There is a sample of the book, including the chapter that describes the first habit.</a></p>
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<p><a href="https://medium.com/@gustavopinto/1-5-good-habits-for-young-scholars-9d11c8ca2410">I wrote a short book in 20 hours.</a></p>
<p>Is this the best book I could write? No.</p>
<p>It this book really well-written? No.</p>
<p>Are you proud of this book? Definitely yes.</p>
<h2 id="some-background">Some background</h2>
<p>I am in the middle of a pandemic that is only getting worse. I have two small kids at home that require a lot of me. I only have the evenings free when they are already sleeping. I wrote for four evenings, about 2–4 hours every evening. I started writing on Thursday and finished on Sunday. Also, on Sunday I made the cover. On Monday morning, I started selling. I sell eight copies in the first day ($ 5 each).</p>
<h2 id="why-i-wrote-this-book">Why I wrote this book?</h2>
<p>Many reasons motivated me to write this book.</p>
<p>First of all, I have been thinking about writing a book for many years. I actually already started to write one book in the past, but I gave up not much later. <a href="https://medium.com/@gustavopinto/new-book-demystifying-open-source-licensing-52b977091718">For those that follow me on twitter, they may know that I am writing another book on open source licensing.</a> But I thought I need another book to be ready sooner.</p>
<p>Second, because I am in the middle of a pandemic, and I am feeling incapable of doing anything useful. I have already canceled some research works because neither my students nor I can commit to them anymore (<a href="https://medium.com/@gustavopinto/got-tenure-what-does-it-mean-e0afa94e1bc6">yes, I know I’m privileged</a>). Many relatives, friends, and colleagues are suffering from this pandemic, and I can barely do anything to help them. I like my work, but I don’t see my work being anyhow useful to help them overcome this immediate situation. Nevertheless, I’m seeing many colleagues who are finding a way to help others, for instance, <a href="http://ccsl.ufpa.br/covid-19/">by creating tools that could increase the pandemic awareness</a>. I eventually made some donations here and there, but, unfortunately, I cannot commit to these regular donations next month without compromising my family budget. Then I had the idea of writing a book and donating 100% of the sales to help COVID-19. My little experience <a href="https://medium.com/@gustavopinto/new-book-demystifying-open-source-licensing-52b977091718">pre-selling the other book</a> opened my eyes that it’s possible to sell books on Twitter.</p>
<p>Third, having this plan in mind, the last point was to decide what I could write about (and very quickly). It did not take much to realize that I could write about <a href="https://speakerdeck.com/gustavopinto/caminhos-e-desafios-para-a-pesquisa-em-computacao-ou-como-se-manter-produtivo-na-regiao-norte">one of the talks that I gave in the past</a>. First because I believe the talk was well-received (both in-person and <a href="https://twitter.com/gustavopinto/status/1202323018762117120?s=20">on-line</a>). Second, because I was already thinking about putting the ideas of that talk in a blog post. However, I knew it would require me many hours to do it, so I was keeping postponing. By converting this blog post in a book motivated me to make it happen. And really fast.</p>
<h2 id="how-did-i-write-it">How did I write it?</h2>
<p>As I mentioned, I did not have much time to write this book. I decided to write the book on Thursday, April 23rd, and I was willing to compromise to make it available on Monday, 27th.</p>
<p>My first step was to find a book template. In my <a href="https://medium.com/@gustavopinto/new-book-demystifying-open-source-licensing-52b977091718">other book</a>, I have already spent some good hours fighting with a template (and I still don’t like my current template). To write the other book, I’m using asciidoctor, a framework that exports documents to many writing formats. To save some hours, for this book, I decided to use LaTeX instead. I’m reasonably familiar with LaTeX, so I would not wast any time configuring it, running it, etc. I also knew there are some excellent LaTeX templates out there, so it was not hard to find a one I liked.</p>
<p>Since this book was about a talk I gave in the past, I have the structure already designed in my mind. I used the same structure of the talk to structure the book. On the first evening, I wrote the preface, and the first two chapters (around 2.5k words). The preface I rewrote in the end, but I did not make substantial changes in the first two chapters after my first pass. I kept the same progress over Friday and Saturday (about 2k words per day). The book was 90% on Saturday. On Sunday, I made an overall pass, trying to fixing some typos and strange wordings. Also, on Sunday, I made the cover (using canva.com), and I wrote <a href="https://medium.com/@gustavopinto/1-5-good-habits-for-young-scholars-9d11c8ca2410">a blog post to share the book on social networks</a>. I already shared this blog post on hackernews and reddit on Sunday evening. On Monday morning, I wrote some tweets to release the book to the public. I made eight sales on the first day on Twitter and no sales through the other mediums.</p>
<h2 id="more-than-20-hours">More than 20 hours</h2>
<p>Although the title of this blog post is correct, upon reflection, I spent many more hours working on this book.</p>
<p>First, because I probably spent 20 hours or so designing and creating the talk. When thinking about the talk, I took several notes, made some sketches, and also did some research. After that, I spent some good hours creating the talk on Keynote. Till minutes before the talk, I was making changes in the slides. I also spent 2–3 hours rehearsing the talk, which gave me additional ideas. When writing this book, I took for granted the time I spent thinking about and creating the talk.</p>
<p>Second, because I also took for granted what I learned in the past. For instance, I did not have to do much research on the topic (it was fresh on my mind), and I did not need to master the tools used (it took 10 minutes to have a book template and about 30 minutes to have a cover).</p>
<p>It would be a different story I had to write about a subject that I am not super comfortable with.</p>
<p>Finally, it’s also important to notice that, as a researcher, a good proportion of my job is devoted to writing. I have been writing a lot over the last 10 years lot, so I’m used to technical writing. I’m not a fluent writer (I am not fluent in English either), but writing is not a big issue to me.</p>Gustavo Pintogpinto@ufpa.brA short book1+5 Good Habits for Young Scholars2020-04-26T00:00:00+00:002020-04-26T00:00:00+00:00http://gustavopinto.org//blog/Good-Habits-for-Young-Scholars<p><a href="http://gum.co/good-research-habits">I’m selling about good habits that young scholars could foster while finding their path in academia, for only $ 5</a>. 100% of the sales will go to a hospital fighting COVID-19. Read on to know more.</p>
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<p>Academia could be a wonderful place. By seeking the truth, researchers are exposed to several research challenges, and their discoveries could shape the way we think, work, and live. However, academia can also be a tough place to work. Graduate students are six times more likely to be depressed than the general population. The academic job market is extremely competitive.
If you happen to think that academia is for you, it is better to foster some good habits. </p>
<p>In this book that <a href="http://gum.co/good-research-habits">I’m selling for only $ 5</a>, I describe 1+5 habits that I cultivate and follow over the last few years. By sharing this habits, I believe I could help other young scholars to find their path in academia, as I found mine. The 1+5 habits are the following:</p>
<ul>
<li>Do your homework;</li>
<li>Know your institution;</li>
<li>Collaborate;</li>
<li>Procrastinate on Twitter;</li>
<li>Stay health;</li>
<li>Have fun.</li>
</ul>
<p><a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/qoy0t21l4kxazo2/sample.pdf?dl=0">There is a sample of the book, including the chapter that describes the first habit.</a></p>
<p>A natural question that the reader would ask is: why you mention 1+5 habits instead of just six habits? Well, because I believe the first one is not a habit, but an obligation. If you don’t do your homework, you can hardly move forward. Therefore, the other habits do not make much sense. Simple like this.</p>
<h2 id="100-of-the-sales-to-combatcovid-19">100% of the sales to combat COVID-19</h2>
<p>For the first 90 days, I will donate 100% of the sales to UFPA hospitals that are in the front line fighting COVID-19 (excluding taxes and fees). I will make everything transparent in <a href="http://www.gustavopinto.org/books/good-rearch-habits/">this website</a>.</p>
<h2 id="limitations">Limitations</h2>
<p>In research works, we always have many limitations. This book is no different.</p>
<p>First, one avid reader would quickly realize that the writer of this book is a young researcher himself, so his habits might be limited due to his little experience in conducting research projects. I wholeheartedly concur. Therefore, this book may be more attractive to really young scholars, such as undergraduate and graduate students.</p>
<p>Second, I cannot claim that the ideas that I discuss in this document are anything new. On the contrary, many have been discussed since the early days of research and documented in many books by many authors in many research fields. Perhaps, the main benefit of this book is to have these ideas summarized in a single place.</p>
<p>Third, as a software engineering professor and researcher, my views are shaped based on my interactions with this community. Although I believe that some researchers in other areas could see some value here and there, it is not clear to me how my “1+5 habits” would generalize to other research fields.</p>
<p>Finally, this book is based on my own experience and views. It does not reflect the opinions of my employer, etc.</p>
<h2 id="about-theauthor">About the author</h2>
<p>Gustavo Pinto is a software engineering researcher and professor at the Federal University of Pará, Brazil. Gustavo Pinto is a young scholar himself. He got his Ph.D. from the Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil, in 2015. Since them, he became a fairly active researcher in his research community, which could be noticed by his 60+ papers published, 1,000+ citations, and five awards. Know more online at <a href="http://www.gustavopinto.org">www.gustavopinto.org</a> or follow him on Twitter (<a href="http://www.twitter.com/gustavopinto">@gustavopinto</a>).</p>Gustavo Pintogpinto@ufpa.brPromoting a bookWhy the MIT licensed is 18x more used then GPL-3?2020-04-20T00:00:00+00:002020-04-20T00:00:00+00:00http://gustavopinto.org//blog/Why-the-MIT-licensed-is-18x-more-used-then-GPL-3<p><a href="http://gum.co/demystifying-oss-licensing">I am writing a book to make open source licensing easier to understand!</a>
<script src="https://gumroad.com/js/gumroad.js"></script>
<a class="gumroad-button" href="https://gum.co/demystifying-oss-licensing" target="_blank">I want this!</a></p>
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<p>There are dozens or even hundreds of open source licenses available out there. More generally speaking, these licenses can be grouped in two groups: permissive licenses and restrictive licenses. On the permissive group, perhaps the MIT license is one of the most common one. On the other group, GPL is one of the most important restrictive licenses.</p>
<p>Which one is the most common used in open source projects?</p>
<p>Although the question is easy to pose, it is not necessarily easy to answer, mainly because the multiple threats hidden when analyzing license usage in open source projects.</p>
<p>First because there is not a single coding hosting website that hosts all open source projects. Although GitHub is one of the most common alternatives, many open source projects are hosted in the community git repository, in other repositories such as the Debian package archive, and GNU Project FTP archive, etc.</p>
<p>Second, because in order to understand open source license usage in scale, we should rely on tools that infer the license used. This process is not always precise because developers often state open source licenses in different ways. For example, while some developers declare their licenses as a comment in the header of every source code file, other developers just cite the license used for the whole project within the README file. Moreover, some developers copy and paste the full text of the license, whereas other developers might only mention the name of the license.</p>
<p>Given these limitation, we could still try to infer the open source license usage in practice by, for instance, using GitHub data stored on Libraries.io (an service that curates metadata from open source projects hosted in several package managers). Libraries.io provides data available on Zenodo. Using this data, we inferred license usage as one could be see next.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Using <a href="https://twitter.com/librariesio?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@librariesio</a> data to investigate the most common open source licenses used in practice.<br /><br />Permissive licenses (MIT, Apache, BSD) are by far the most used ones. <br /><br />Want to know why and the implications behind this? Consider supporting this book ~> <a href="https://t.co/WBQzzxP1oK">https://t.co/WBQzzxP1oK</a> <a href="https://t.co/nkozzNw643">pic.twitter.com/nkozzNw643</a></p>— Gustavo Pinto (@gustavopinto) <a href="https://twitter.com/gustavopinto/status/1251939815488135173?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 19, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async="" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<p>As one could see, permissive licenses are by far the most used one. Indeed, MIT is the most used license, appearing in more than 812k open source projects. Apache 2.0 comes next, appearing in 465k projects. BSD-3, also a permissive license, appears next, licensing 71k projects. These three licenses (MIT, Apache 2.0, and BSD-3) are used in about 70% of the overall open source license usage. On the other spectrum of this figure, one could see that the GPL family of licenses (GPL-2, GPL-3, AGPL-3, LGPL-3) comprehends around only 5% of the overall license usage.</p>
<h2 id="why-is-this-happening">Why is this happening?</h2>
<p>According to a 2016 survey with about 3,400 participants, it is estimated that 67% of the surveyed companies actively encourage developers to engage in and contribute to open source software. This shows a clear commercial interest in open source projects. However, some researchers also believe that GPL is not the most appropriated choice for a business that relies on open source.</p>
<p>Even though software licensed under GPL can be used (and even modified) in corporate environments, software companies should be aware of the characteristics of GPL. In particular, the key feature of GPL is that it restricts the terms of distribution of derived works. If any software company incorporates any source code licensed under GPL, the company must license the software products it sells that use GPL code under GPL as well.</p>
<p>GPL, created by the Free Software Foundation (FSF), is the principal copyleft license. The GPL license has the ultimate goal of making software 100% free for everyone. This decision of going 100% free is actually a challenge for business that may not always could support providing 100% of their code to the public (for instance, have you ever seen the actual Google implementation of its search engine?). As a consequence, some business might be not comfortable in using a license that is very aligned with such goals.</p>
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<p>Do you want to know more about open source licensing and some hidden problems behind it? Please consider supporting my book on <a href="https://gumroad.com/l/demystifying-oss-licensing">Demystifying Open Source Licensing</a>, to be self-published in late July 2020.</p>Gustavo Pintogpinto@ufpa.brI am writing a book to make open source licensing easier to understand! I want this!What can go wrong when one misuses open source licenses?2020-04-14T00:00:00+00:002020-04-14T00:00:00+00:00http://gustavopinto.org//blog/what-can-go-wrong-when-one-misuses-open-source-licenses<p><a href="http://gum.co/demystifying-oss-licensing">I am writing a book to make open source licensing easier to understand!</a>
<script src="https://gumroad.com/js/gumroad.js"></script>
<a class="gumroad-button" href="https://gum.co/demystifying-oss-licensing" target="_blank">I want this!</a></p>
<p>Open source licenses create a legal framework that play key role on the widespread adoption of open source projects. Any open source project must be released under one (or more) open source license. Without a license, any source code available on the internet could not be openly (re)distributed.</p>
<p>As a natural consequence, open source licenses is one of the most important non-executable piece of any open source software project. Open source licenses not only drive how one can use an OSS but also ensure to what extent others can reuse it.</p>
<p>However, due to its non-technical nature, developers often misuse or misunderstand open source licenses. I believe there are at least <em>three</em> reasons that may justify this fact.</p>
<p>First, the vocabulary used in open source licenses are not part of the developers daily vocabulary, so it may require developers to gain additional knowledge to understand software licensing.</p>
<p>Second, there are hundreds of open source licenses readily available for developers use. Indeed, many of these licenses are quite similar, differing by just one or two minor changes in the license text. Since developers are always busy, they might have very limited time to catch and understand these corner cases.</p>
<p>Third, many of the text books about open source licensing devote a good proportion of the document to explain the concepts, ideas, and differences between the existing open source licenses. However, developers might also have a hard time relating how these abstractions could make any sense in their daily activities.</p>
<p>In this book I argue that the lack of a clear understanding of software licensing could challenge the existence of any open source software project.</p>
<p>Let me give the reader one example.</p>
<p>In 2018, one of the core maintainers of the <a href="https://github.com/lerna/lerna/">Lerna</a> project decided to change a bit the license. The maintainer made a <a href="https://github.com/lerna/lerna/pull/1616">pull request</a> that changed the used MIT license to include <em>restrictive</em> and <em>retroactive</em> clauses to users of the Lerna project. With this pull-request, tech companies such as Microsoft, Amazon, Dell, Xerox, Canon, LinkedIn, and few other were not allowed to use Lerna to support their software development activities anymore. The maintainer went further and described that the motivation to perform this change was because these tech companies were collaborating with the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”). On his views, “these companies care only about the millions of dollars that ICE is paying them and are willing to ignore all the horrible things that ICE does.” Although one might think that there are good intentions behind these changes, there are also two problems hidden on it.</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>First, by restricting the use of the software to certain groups of users, the Lerna would actually be discriminating them. However, non-discrimination is a core value of open source. According to the fifth clause of the <a href="https://opensource.org/osd-annotated">Open Source Definition</a>, the “license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons”.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Second, there is no such thing such as a retroactive license change. Yes, you can change the license, but it would only work for new users, using the new release of your open source software. You cannot change a license expecting the existing users would be affected. These existing users could keep using the old version of your software (with the previous license), and this is just fine.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>This single pull-request had several repercussions.</p>
<p>Eric Raymond, the author of the famous “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” and one of the creators of the Open Source Initiative, also shared <a href="http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8106">his views</a> about this problem. He said that “The Lerna project’s choice is, moreover, destructive of one of the deep norms that keeps the open-source community functional – keeping politics separated from our work”. Open source developers, when not coding, are free do to whatever they want. It does not matter for the code if the developer supports ICE or a far right wing party. By mixing politics with open source, through the (mis)use of its license, the whole chain of users of the Lerna project was impacted.</p>
<p>Long story short: the pull-request was reverted, the maintainer was banned from the project, and the open source community around Lerna was hurted. All of this due to 22 lines added in the license file.</p>
<p>1st Lessons learned: It’s possible to change a license, but these changes should not discriminate any person or group or field of endeavor. Moreover, it is not possible to change a license retroactively.</p>
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<p>Do you want to know more about open source licensing and some hidden problems behind it? Please consider supporting my book on <a href="https://gumroad.com/l/demystifying-oss-licensing">Demystifying Open Source Licensing</a>, to be self-published in late July 2020.</p>Gustavo Pintogpinto@ufpa.brI am writing a book to make open source licensing easier to understand! I want this!New Book: Demystifying Open Source Licensing2020-04-13T00:00:00+00:002020-04-13T00:00:00+00:00http://gustavopinto.org//blog/new-book-demystifying-open-source-licensing<p><a href="https://gum.co/demystifying-oss-licensing">I am writing a book to make open source licensing easier to understand!</a> </p>
<p>As an open source user and software engineering researcher, I have been amazed about how tricky this topic is and how easy things can go wrong.
If you are a developer, you should definitively understand a bit more about open source licenses. Why is it important to study open source licenses in 2020? Some questions to think:</p>
<ul>
<li>Do you know why Google banned the use of the AGPL license on any of its open source projects?</li>
<li>Do you know why GPL 2.0 license, one of the purest copyleft licenses around, has more than halved in usage in the last 10 years?</li>
<li>Do you know why it took about one year to change a license in the Eclipse project?</li>
<li>Do you know that one of the core maintainers of Lerna project was removed from the core team due to license misuses?</li>
<li>Do you know that you should run away from open source projects that don’t have any license?</li>
</ul>
<p>Software licensing is a complex subject, which often requires expertise from other other areas far away from the software development arena. Indeed, most books regarding software licensing are also written by lawyers, which is not a problem itself, but the terms employed may hinder the understand of the software development community (I had a hard time understanding these books). Another problem is that developers may not always see any concrete implication of an eventual license misuse. </p>
<p>The goal of this book is two-fold: First, we intend to make this complex license stuff simpler. Second, the book should highlight concrete examples of license problems (so developers could easily relate to their activities). </p>
<p>By doing this, we expect that developers could better understand the importance of open source licenses and the context in which they could use or not one given software library (because of license concerns). </p>
<p>The book is intended to be short (~100 pages) and will be ready around June, but it is open for pre-orders, for only $ 10.</p>
<p>##For whom this book is for:</p>
<ul>
<li>If you are are developer and have to use open source software on daily basis, <strong>this book is for you!</strong></li>
<li>If you are project maintainer and still struggle to understand what license you should use, <strong>this book is for you!</strong></li>
<li>If you are a researcher interested in studying open source licensing issues, <strong>this book is for you!</strong></li>
<li>If you care about open source, but don’t really understand open source licensing, <strong>this book is for you!</strong></li>
</ul>
<h2 id="got-interested">Got interested?</h2>
<p>If this interests you, it would mean a lot if you pre-order your copy, online at https://gum.co/demystifying-oss-licensing You will receive the final book in your inbox as soon as it’s ready. If open source is not your thing, you could also help by sharing this blog post with your friends 🙏🏻</p>
<p><strong>Important note:</strong> If you happen to not like the book, just reply to the download email within 30 days, and you’ll get a full refund. No question asked.</p>
<p>Finally, I will keep sharing my progress in writing this book on <a href="http://twitter.com/gustavopinto">twitter</a>.</p>
<p>Follow on if you want to be updated! </p>Gustavo Pintogpinto@ufpa.brI am writing a book to make open source licensing easier to understand! Lack of focus in Academia2020-04-11T00:00:00+00:002020-04-11T00:00:00+00:00http://gustavopinto.org//blog/lack-of-focus-in-academia<p>Academia is an interesting place. After a lot of training during your undergrad and grad studies, you are thrown in a pool and are asked to swim to find your own research agenda. Find unique and relevant questions that no one else has contribute before. Work tirelessly to answer them. Become an expert on a this very narrow field.</p>
<p>This picture is often times reinforced by the tenure track process of many research intensive institutions. That is, to get your tenure, you are expected to become a world-wide leader on your research area. As a consequence, researchers working towards their tenure should have at least two things in mind: first, they should choose wisely the research area in which they intend to do a contribution (something fun and interesting that could make their eyes open for some years) and, second, they should have the discipline to commit their work to this subject, while not placing too much effort on stuff that (although interesting) may not concretely contribute to their tenure assessment.</p>
<p>That is: although you have the freedom to explore uncharted research territories, you should not explore several different research topics. In other words, you should not go in-breadth; you should go in-depth.</p>
<p>Later on I will describe my experience going in-breadth, but for now let’s consider going in-depth.</p>
<p>I think going in-depth is harder, but also more valuable. Going in-depth requires vision and discipline. Vision is important to understand what are the unique and relevant problems that worth to be addressed. Vision also requires experience. Without experience, many low dead ends might be seen as promising research opportunities. However, discipline might be as important as, or even more important than, vision because, without discipline, one could easily change focus to contribute to something else. Discipline to commit to a far-reaching goal is perhaps one of the greatest skills a researcher might have. Notwithstanding, we all praise the efforts of those that have substantially contributed to a field over many years (or even many decades). It is hard to compromise and keep putting effort on a long term goal. On the other hand, it is easy to lose focus.</p>
<p>Thinking a bit about my recent career as a research, I definitively went in-breadth instead of in-depth. This became even clearer after I recorded this 50s video about my research and shared on Twitter.</p>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">I’m not part of <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/icse21?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#icse21</a> OC but I liked this idea, and I’m sharing my research in 30s (or a bit more). <a href="https://t.co/o34qKy5iQn">https://t.co/o34qKy5iQn</a> <a href="https://t.co/UxzG2pcr9T">pic.twitter.com/UxzG2pcr9T</a></p>— Gustavo Pinto (@gustavopinto) <a href="https://twitter.com/gustavopinto/status/1249010040314507264?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 11, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async="" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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<p>In the video I mentioned that I work on some technical aspects of software, but I also have some interests on social aspects of software. Nice, but… isn’t it what software engineering is all about? Instead of talking about my very narrowed research field, I talked about software engineering in general. Not sure what Twitter folks got from this video, but definitely it was not a concrete research agenda. I have a really serious lack of focus.</p>
<p>Obviously, this lack of focus is not something new to me. When meeting new colleagues at conferences, I often have a hard time trying to explain what I do. My views about what constitutes an important research problem is also very limited, because I concentrate a lot of effort on the surface of several different problems, instead of digging deeper and deeper.</p>
<p>Import to mention that this lack of focus, however, did not impact on my tenure evaluation. As I mentioned in another blog post, the tenure track process in Brazil is much lighter than the tenure track process in other countries. Although this did not place a tool on my permanence in academia, this is perhaps a good time to revisit this choice.</p>
<p>In this blog post, however, I want to reflect why I chose to have this in-breadth research agenda. First of all, I did not choose going in-breadth. It was the condition that I found for keeping doing research. Let me explain.</p>
<p>After I graduated, I spent a year working at IFPA. Afterwards I moved to UFPA, which I’m now on my third year of professoring. However, my first master student arrived only on my second year at UFPA. Moreover, only in 2020 that I started to supervise my first doctoral student. As a consequence, during these years, most of the work I did was on collaboration with other professors and (eventually) their students.</p>
<p>Although I didn’t have students, I wanted to keep publishing. If someone invited me to participate in a research project, I pretty much accepted even before knowing what the research project was about. Following this strategy for 3 — 5 years, and then my research portfolio becomes a scattered picture of several different research agendas. Obviously, I also did many research works that were driven by my own interests, but in these cases I had to embrace all steps of the research process (which is hard to keep making process in the long term, when you have many other obligations fighting for your attention).</p>
<p>The point is: after going in-breadth for some years, I am now struggling to have an unique research topic. This is now becoming an important thing because I’m finally starting to foster my own research group (yes, it took some time…), and it makes sense to me to focus on fewer things.</p>
<p>However, due to my lack of clear research agenda, my students are working on several different topics. This brings many challenges, for instance: 1) I am not aware of the related work of many of these different research topics, then I often don’t know if what the student is doing is indeed novel, 2) I have a hard time trying to help students that are not making progress, because I’m not familiar with the low level implementation details, 3) students can hardly help each other, because their subjects are very different, 4) it is harder to contribute towards a bigger goal.</p>
<p>Since it took 3–5 years to build this scattered research agenda, it would be naive to expect any drastic change in the next few months. Instead, my plan is to gradually focus on this unique research agenda (which so far is not clear to me). Needless to say, it would require a lot of discipline to make this happen.</p>Gustavo Pintogpinto@ufpa.brToo many things to doGot tenure; What does it mean?2020-04-04T00:00:00+00:002020-04-04T00:00:00+00:00http://gustavopinto.org//blog/got-tenure-what-does-it-mean<p>As of April the 4th, 2020, I am a tenured professor at UFPA, Brazil.</p>
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<p>Brief disclaimer: the tenure track process in Brazil is very lightweight when compared to the tenure track in US or in Europe. Although we are evaluated in terms of teaching, research, and service, I think teaching is what really counts for tenure here. I think I would still be granted tenure even if I haven’t published any paper or haven’t made any service to the university or to the research community. If this is good or bad I’ll leave for another blog post. What really matters now is what changes it would bring to the table.</p>
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<p>I knew about my promotion since the end of 2019, and since then I have been thinking what does this tenured position <em>really</em> mean. Am I supposed to change anything on my work? If so, what do I need to change? What does it mean to have a tenure?</p>
<p>First I thought that tenure has to do with <em>freedom</em>. Freedom to explore any research area that I may find interesting, without worrying too much about whether it would lead to a paper published in a top notch journal. I also though about that tenure has to do with <em>responsibility</em> to focus on hard problems (instead of problems that could lead to immediate publications). I also thought about <em>commitment</em> to do the best work that I could do.</p>
<p>The interesting point here is that all these thoughts are related to work (and the kind of work that I do).</p>
<p>However, I happen to receive my tenure letter during the perhaps worst health and financial crisis since World War II. I happen to receive my tenure when billions of people are staying in home fighting for their lives. While staying at home, many of them were unable to make any money; while many of them are being fired from their jobs; while many of them are struggling to stay rational and healthy without income; while many of them are having a hard time to find a way to pay their thousands-of-dollars health insurance bills. I happen to receive my letter of permanent appointment when some long term industries worldwide are collapsing overnight.</p>
<p>At this moment, for me, receiving tenure means just one thing: <em>privilege</em>.</p>
<p>Yes, I do have the privilege of staying in home knowing that my pay check will arrive next month. I have the privilege of knowing that <a href="https://medium.com/@gustavopinto/its-ok-to-be-unproductive-during-covid-19-7a64406328db">it’s OK to be unproductive during the crisis</a>. Despite of that, I also have the privilege of knowing that it’s very unlikely that I’ll be fired.</p>
<p>Knowing that I am privileged, I should also acknowledge that whatever success I am achieve is not solely due to my own efforts, but also due to a system that supports me. For instance, I don’t need to worry about pay checks. I don’t need to worry about moving to another place in the middle of a pandemic because my contract is about to finish. Any other researcher under time-bound contracts may have much more worries than I do; then, they may struggle to perform at their best because of it.</p>
<p>The point is: what do I do with this privilege I have been given?</p>
<p>I have been thinking about this tenure privilege for a while. It makes little sense to me to keep working as usual, as if nothing had happened. I already wrote in the past about the <a href="https://medium.com/@gustavopinto/changing-roles-in-the-academic-system-6c1470672054">roles in the academic system</a>, and that my current role is to <em>teach others to do research</em>. I still agree. However, by broadening this a bit, I could see that my role as a tenured professor is to use this position not only to teach other, but to <strong>empower others</strong>. Important to mention that this can only be done by the discipline of <strong>focusing on harder problems</strong>.</p>
<p>There are many ways in which we could <strong>empower others</strong>. Students are our seeds, and they will grow longer and faster if we understand how to help them.
How about becoming closer to them? For instance, during teaching activities, how about running a retrospective (similar to those used in agile methods) once or twice? By providing a space for students to reflect on and discuss what worked well (and what did not), we all can improve. We would also be seen as someone available (professors are always busy).
When advising, we could think about spending more time with students. How about having lunch together? Or how about start bringing food to the weekly seminar? By making yourself available to discuss random thoughts with students, we could also understand what are their real needs and challenges. And it will be even more fun.</p>
<p>Outreach activities are also very important to empower others. For instance, consider giving a talk to high school students once in a while. At their ages, many of them may be already thinking what career to follow. Moreover, it would be a terrific exercise for you to understand how to convince novice students that your research agenda is important. Similarly, consider also giving a talk to practitioners, and explain to them how your research could improve their work. If your work is not yet applied, consider extending your research agenda so that you could give a talk to practitioners by next year. There are many other outreach activities, such as teaching teenagers how to code or XXX. However, given the current lockdown situation, it may not be safe to run them now. Instead, how about doing a live about your work on youtube?</p>
<p>These activities may not help you in your next research paper. In fact, they would take a lot of time that you could devote to papers and grants. But this way you could potentially inspire someone (e.g., to pursue a career in research or to encourage other to use your research). Inspiring > publishing.</p>
<p>Needless to say that by doing so, we may not have the same time or energy to pursue our research agenda on its fullest sense. My personal take here is: instead of trying to do any research work that I find interesting, I should try to understand what is the <strong>harder problem</strong> I have at my table, and try my best to focus only on research works that could contribute to this big problem. As a consequence, by working more and more on one hard problem, it would become easier to talk about it, even for non-technical communities. It’s fair to mention that I still don’t know what is this big problem.</p>
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<p>All of this is easier said than done. In fact, it requires a lot of discipline to move from the writing-intense mode to the thinking-intense mode (e.g., thinking on how to distill this problem so that students could easily understand, thinking on how my work could improve practice, thinking on the hard and relevant research problems, etc). Moreover, this shift also has a shortcoming: since most of the work that I do is in collaboration with other researchers (then on several different subjects), by concentrating on one (or few) big problems, I also will have to say <em>no</em> frequently.</p>Gustavo Pintogpinto@ufpa.brAs of April the 4th, 2020, I am a tenured professor at UFPA, Brazil.