The best jobs in the world

A site called “The Best Degrees” has just published a list of the best-paying college degrees [1]. (Caveat: I did not know that site before being led to it by a blog post [2], and cannot vouch for its methods of arriving at results.) They base their analysis on the study of reports from the US Department of Labor, in in particular their  “Occupational Outlook Handbook” and their wage data.

In the list we note:

• #2 best degree: PhD in computer science.
• #3: bachelor’s degree in software engineering.
• #6: bachelor’s degree in computer science.
• #7: bachelor’s degree in databases.
• #9: bachelor’s degree in computer networks.

So: half of the first ten most pay-wise productive degrees in the US are directly in our discipline!

I know of no comparable study for Europe; my informal expectation is that the situation is comparable, with the possible exception of the #2 rating for “PhD in computer science” (as European industry is still all too often scared of hiring PhDs for fear that they will be eggheads not attuned to the reality of business).

The message is clear: if prospective students, those at least for whom salary is a key determinant, knew the reality and not just the image, we would be flooded with hordes of applicants begging us to take them in.

References

[1] The top 51 degrees based on job prospects, available here.

[2] Timothy Lethbridge: Top degrees: Computer Science PhD and Software Engineering Bachelors, blog post available here.

On a post by J.Wing on reviews in Computer Science

A nice and timely post: Yes, Computer Scientists Are Hypercritical.

And also the paper cited by the first commenter (John Douceur) is a nice one and proves that it is possible to improve the refereeing process for conferences.

Even if I am convinced we should follow Lance Fortnow’s invitation and grow up.

His viewpoint is 2 years old by now, but it seems to me not so much has changed…

We are still defining whether a piece of research is good or not guided by resource constraints of conferences. If a piece of research doesn’t fit in within the available space and time resources it’s rejected.

Are we sure we are doing the good of our discipline by using as research quality yardsticks such odd criteria and processes?

Slightly (very slightly!) some consciousness is emerging here. See e.g.

“Everyone in software engineering knows (and recent PC chairs have admitted) that getting a paper accepted at the International Conference on Software Engineering is in part a lottery” (from the Bertrand Meyer’s post The Modes and Uses of Scientific Publication).

I hope we shall soon be able to grow up…

Informatics Europe New Website

Informatics Europe is proud to introduce its  new website. After several months in a project of complete redesign and development, the new Informatics Europe website is now online.

Along with a vibrant new look, the site features enhanced tools, a password protected area for sharing information restricted to the members of the association and two brand new online services:

• The Research & Education Directory
•  The Informatics Jobs Service

The R&E Directory of Informatics Europe includes a database of academic institutions conducting Research and offering Education in Informatics in Europe and neighboring areas and provides access to more detailed information presented by the institutions.

The Informatics Jobs Service is a specialized forum for the advertisement of scientific positions (e.g.: scientific researcher, post-doc, professor, etc) in Informatics, Computing, Computer Science, Information Science, Information Technology or other closely related fields. The service is completely free of charge to members of Informatics Europe, all members are entitled unlimited job advertisements posting. As an special introductory offer, only in the first year, the service is also free to non-members of the association.

The website has a clear and well-structured layout with appropriate drop-down menus that lead to different sections. It is based on an open source Content Management System, allowing for its contents to be updated dynamically. Latest entries in the Informatics Europe blog are now visible through the new website, while sharing tools and links to social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. are also now integrated.

All the information present on the old website is still accessible on the new one, but arranged in a more intuitive way. You can still find all the details about:

• the ECSS conferences series
• the membership and how to become a member
• the list of members
• the Informatics Europe reports
• the Department Evaluation initiative
• the Curriculum Best Practices Award
• the Computer Science Event List

As it is difficult to describe in a few lines everything that you can find in our new website, we warmly invite you to explore it.

The project of design and development of the new Informatics Europe website was conceptualized and executed by the group makebelieve from Athens, Greece, managed by Cristina Pereira, Secretary General of Informatics Europe, and technically directed by Enrico Nardelli, Board Member of Informatics Europe.

We look forward to receiving your comments and suggestions about the new website.

Scopus’s view of computer science research

In the Informatics Europe report on researcher evaluation for computer science [1], we noted how awful the ISI Web of Knowledge was for computer science.We keep receiving notes of thanks from academics in various countries telling us that they use the article as a defense against misinformed colleagues from other disciplines wanting to apply ISI citations to the evaluation of computer scientists.

The report did not discuss ISI’scompetitor, Elsevier’s Scopus. Today I received a publicity from Scopus, which invited me to check the “top 25 hottest  articles in computer science”; I was curious to see how they see the field.

The result is copy-pasted below. It is pathetic. The only really relevant references, out of 25, are five survey articles on wireless networks (only two of which seem to focus on  CS issues: security and algorithms). To this we might add a couple of references on cloud computing that address CS issues such as security. The rest is about sociology ( “Social anxiety and technology: Face-to-face communication versus technological communication among teens” — great title, though!) and business (“The critical success factors for ERP implementation”).

If this is what was “hottest” in computer science between January and March 2011, most of us are in the wrong business.

This kind of thing makes for a good laugh. Things become less funny when we think of the consequences. Yes, some computer science researchers will be evaluated based on this kind of absurdity. What can we do?

Reference

[1] Bertrand Meyer, Christine Choppy , Jørgen Staunstrup and Jan van Leeuwen: Research Evaluation in Computer Science, Communications of the ACM article and Informatics Europe report, accessible from here.

[2] Scopus (SciVerse): Top 25 Hottest Articles in Computer Science (retrieved 28 July 2011), available at top25.sciencedirect.com/subject/computer-science/7/.

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Text below from Scopus/SciVerse (reference [2] above)

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Computer Science

January to March 2011

RSS   Blog This!   Print   Show condensed

1.	Synthesis of multifractional Gaussian noises based on variable-order fractional operators • Article Signal Processing, Volume 91, Issue 7, July 2011, Pages 1645-1650 Sheng, H.; Sun, H.; Chen, Y.; Qiu, T.

2.	Robust FIR equalization for time-varying communication channels with intermittent observations via an LMI approach • Article Signal Processing, Volume 91, Issue 7, July 2011, Pages 1651-1658 Zhang, H.; Shi, Y.; Saadat Mehr, A.; Huang, H.

3.	Personality and motivations associated with Facebook use • Article Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 25, Issue 2, March 2009, Pages 578-586 Ross, C.; Orr, E.S.; Sisic, M.; Arseneault, J.M.; Simmering, M.G.; Orr, R.R. Cited by SciVerse Scopus (19)

4.	Social network use and personality • Article Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 26, Issue 6, November 2010, Pages 1289-1295 Amichai-Hamburger, Y.; Vinitzky, G. Cited by SciVerse Scopus (1)

5.	Facebook(R) and academic performance • Article Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 26, Issue 6, November 2010, Pages 1237-1245 Kirschner, P.A.; Karpinski, A.C. Cited by SciVerse Scopus (2)

6.	Cloud computing and emerging IT platforms: Vision, hype, and reality for delivering computing as the 5th utility • Article Future Generation Computer Systems, Volume 25, Issue 6, June 2009, Pages 599-616 Buyya, R.; Yeo, C.S.; Venugopal, S.; Broberg, J.; Brandic, I. Cited by SciVerse Scopus (193)

7.	Cloud computing – The business perspective • Article Decision Support Systems, Volume 51, Issue 1, April 2011, Pages 176-189 Marston, S.; Li, Z.; Bandyopadhyay, S.; Zhang, J.; Ghalsasi, A.

8.	Wireless sensor networks: a survey • Article Computer Networks, Volume 38, Issue 4, March 2002, Pages 393-422 Akyildiz, I.F.; Su, W.; Sankarasubramaniam, Y.; Cayirci, E. Cited by SciVerse Scopus (3949)

9.	Students’and teachers’use of Facebook • Review article Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 27, Issue 2, March 2011, Pages 662-676 Hew, K.F.

10.	Identity construction on Facebook: Digital empowerment in anchored relationships • Article Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 24, Issue 5, September 2008, Pages 1816-1836 Zhao, S.; Grasmuck, S.; Martin, J. Cited by SciVerse Scopus (25)

11.	Wireless sensor network survey • Article Computer Networks, Volume 52, Issue 12, August 2008, Pages 2292-2330 Yick, J.; Mukherjee, B.; Ghosal, D. Cited by SciVerse Scopus (314)

12.	All about me: Disclosure in online social networking profiles: The case of FACEBOOK • Article Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 26, Issue 3, May 2010, Pages 406-418 Nosko, A.; Wood, E.; Molema, S. Cited by SciVerse Scopus (3)

13.	Internet social network communities: Risk taking, trust, and privacy concerns • Article Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 25, Issue 1, January 2009, Pages 153-160 Fogel, J.; Nehmad, E. Cited by SciVerse Scopus (37)

14.	A survey on security issues in service delivery models of cloud computing • Review article Journal of Network and Computer Applications, Volume 34, Issue 1, January 2011, Pages 1-11 Subashini, S.; Kavitha, V. Cited by SciVerse Scopus (2)

15.	Social anxiety and technology: Face-to-face communication versus technological communication among teens • Article Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 25, Issue 6, November 2009, Pages 1367-1372 Pierce, T. Cited by SciVerse Scopus (8)

16.	A survey on clustering algorithms for wireless sensor networks • Article Computer Communications, Volume 30, Issue 14-15, October 2007, Pages 2826-2841 Abbasi, A.A.; Younis, M. Cited by SciVerse Scopus (175)

17.	Online social networks: Why do students use facebook? • Article Computers in Human Behavior, August 2010 Cheung, C.M.K.; Chiu, P.Y.; Lee, M.K.O.

18.	The Internet of Things: A survey • Article Computer Networks, Volume 54, Issue 15, October 2010, Pages 2787-2805 Atzori, L.; Iera, A.; Morabito, G. Cited by SciVerse Scopus (12)

19.	Why people use social networking sites: An empirical study integrating network externalities and motivation theory • Article Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 27, Issue 3, May 2011, Pages 1152-1161 Lin, K.Y.; Lu, H.P.

20.	Who interacts on the Web?: The intersection of users@? personality and social media use • Article Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 26, Issue 2, March 2010, Pages 247-253 Correa, T.; Hinsley, A.W.; de Zuniga, H.G. Cited by SciVerse Scopus (14)

21.	The critical success factors for ERP implementation: an organizational fit perspective • Article Information & Management, Volume 40, Issue 1, October 2002, Pages 25-40 Hong, K.-K.; Kim, Y.-G. Cited by SciVerse Scopus (258)

22.	Multi-criteria decision making approaches for supplier evaluation and selection: A literature review • Article European Journal of Operational Research, Volume 202, Issue 1, April 2010, Pages 16-24 Ho, W.; Xu, X.; Dey, P.K. Cited by SciVerse Scopus (19)

23.	Addressing cloud computing security issues • Article Future Generation Computer Systems, December 2010 Zissis, D.; Lekkas, D.

24.	Understanding knowledge sharing in virtual communities: An integration of social capital and social cognitive theories • Article Decision Support Systems, Volume 42, Issue 3, December 2006, Pages 1872-1888 Chiu, C.M.; Hsu, M.H.; Wang, E.T.G. Cited by SciVerse Scopus (117)

25.	NeXt generation/dynamic spectrum access/cognitive radio wireless networks: A survey • Article Computer Networks, Volume 50, Issue 13, September 2006, Pages 2127-2159 Akyildiz, I.F.; Lee, W.Y.; Vuran, M.C.; Mohanty, S. Cited by SciVerse Scopus (1036)

ECSS 2011 – Milan!

Computer Science’s ‘Sputnik Moment’?

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/06/15/computer-sciences-sputnik-moment.

Refereeing etc.

The following talk
http://lazowska.cs.washington.edu/naughtonicde.pdf
is intended for the database community but touches on many issues that recur in discussions at ECSS and elsewhere, and are of interest to all CS researchers.

Australia drops journal ranking (original post by Christine Choppy)

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/end-of-an-era-journal-rankings-dropped/story-e6frgcjx-1226065864847

ECSS 2010: Prague!

After the great success of ECSS 2009 in Paris, the dates for the European Computer Science Summit 2010 have been announced: Oct 11-13, with Oct. 11 devoted to the department chair workshop and Oct. 12-13 to the conference proper. Mark your calendars now!

Most exciting, ECSS is moving to the Eastern part of the continent for the first time: the conference will take place in Prague, one of the most beautiful cities in the world, hosted by the Czech Technical University with participation from Charles University which will invite us to its historic Carolinum building for the conference dinner.

The program chair is Gerti Kappel from TU Vienna and the conference co-chairs are Pavel Tvrdik from the Czech Technical University and I. Jørgen Staunstrup from the IT University of Denmark will chair the Department Chair Workshop. More workshops are planned, in particular one on how best to prepare for European research funding.

The first keynote speaker has already been announced: Moshe Vardi from Rice University, famous not only for his contributions to program analysis but also for his astounding work in reinventing Communications of the ACM as its editor-in-chief since 2007. Many more speakers and events will be announced in the coming months.

Welcome to the Informatics Europe blog

Interested in research and education issues for Europe? This is the place to watch!

To learn more about this blog, see the about page. To learn more about Informatics Europe, see www.informatics-europe.org.