I'm regularly amazed by the titles of articles in computer science. And I'm regularly troubled by the fact that those titles actually reflect the content of those articles. The kind of titles I'm talking about are those advertising the
novelty of the thing described in the article.
I think that we all agree on this: in computer science
novelty is not a value as such. That some construction is
new does not make it worth publishing. So, why do we continuously see titles such as:
- Project Uranus: A novel approach to automatic essay grading
- TEA-IT: A new kind of teaching programming
- Ethnic-computing: A novel approach to computer science
- ESSO: A new way to visualize algorithms
If one would substitute
novel with what is actually
good or
progressive or
positive or even
interesting about those new things then the titles would make sense. I am actually becoming convinced that
novel in the title of an article means that there's nothing worth reading. Title is, after all, that part of the article that tells you what the article is about. So if there were something worthwhile in the article then the title would say that, wouldn't it?
3 comments:
And one other small thing, like we discussed today:
There's even a distinction that has to be made between (a) things that are novel to everyone and (b) things that are just novel to the author (because they hadn't reviewed the literature properly).
So taking this distinction into consideration, some of the titles that you listed would actually be:
* Project Uranus: An approach to automatic essay grading that is new to me
* SH/IT: Teaching programming in a way that I've never taught it before
* Ethnic-computing: A novel approach to computer science, at least it's novel to me
* ESSO: Visualizing algorithms in a way that I haven't seen anyone else doing it (bearing in mind that I don't get out much)
And just one more thing: Have you noticed that the word 'innovation' is being used as a synonym for 'novelty.' To me it seems that people in our field are beginning to believe in innovation for the sake of innovation. However, for me, 'innovation' connotes something more than "something that is new to me." It connotes something actually new and progressive, something that works, and something that serves a purpose. Consider the following statements:
I created an innovative (novel) tool -- At least, I don't know anyone else who has created one.
I created an innovative tool -- It's just too bad that it doesn't work.
I created an innovative tool -- I just don't know what it's for.
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Wouldn't it be weird, for example, to call an inventor who never actually made anything that worked, "an innovator."
Innovation for innovation's sake -- doesn't it seem even seem a little DADA. Where do I sign?
There again, there might be some things, especially in theoretical computer science, that might be best characterized as "novel". What if Turing had named his 1936 article "A novel approach to automatic computation"?
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