In “dEsigning thE Perfect Auction” (Aug. 2008), Hal R. Varian noted that such auctions have many practical and obvious applications, including in Web advertising, cooperative robotics, digital business ecosystems, digital preservation, and network management. Auctions, by means of complementary community currencies, can also radically shift the way we conceive scientific cooperation. As we advocated in our paper “Selecting Scientific Papers for Publication via Citation Auctions” (IEEE Intelligent Systems, Nov./Dec. 2007), replacing peer review with an auction-based approach would benefit science in general. The better a submitted paper, the more complementary scientific currency its author(s) would likely bid to have it published. If the bid would truly reflect the paper’s quality, the author(s) would be rewarded in this new scientific currency; otherwise, the author(s) would lose the currency.
For all scientists, citations are a form of currency available worldwide, unlike the legal national currencies, which are scarce, especially in the third world. Auctions using citations as currency (“citation auctions”) would encourage scientists to better control the quality of their submissions, since those who are careless risk being dropped from the system. Scientists would also likely be more motivated to prepare worthwhile talks concerning their accepted papers and invite discussion of their results by their peers. Scientists would also likely focus on fewer papers and market them better. Citation auctions could thus greatly improve scientific research, helping it shift from peer review as the reigning selection method toward a continuously improving process of selection based on auctions.
Calculating the value of a work of art or historical document is clearly difficult, and projecting that value into the future is even more difficult. The same holds when trying to calculate the current and possible future value of a scientific work. In a sort of back-to-basics movement, like science in the 18th and
19th centuries, that calculation could now be updated through citation auctions. Peer review would continue, though in a more proper place in the scientific production chain—before selection for publication—rather than as the sole selection step.
This distributed-algorithmic mechanism would provide an interesting theoretical framework for incorporating incentives into algorithmic design, with bidding using an uncertain valuation of a work’s quality, senior scientists helping their younger counterparts enter the scientific system, the marketing of scientific work through recommender systems, the avoidance of citation inflation, the creation of banks of citations, and improved auction mechanisms.
Josep L. de la Rosa and Boleslaw K. szymanski, Troy, NY
We all know about the internationalization of computer applications, making them easily translatable into a variety of languages, dialects, and currencies. But what about the internationalization of the editorial content of Communications?
The recent redesign (beginning July 2008) prompts me to suggest another change to address something that has been niggling at me for years. Communications articles often seem to assume that all readers are in the U.S. An example is the otherwise excellent “Envisioning the Future of Computing Research” by Ed Lazowska (Aug. 2008) in which Lazowska referred to such institutions as “the National Science Foundation” and “the National Academy of Engineering.” A couple of tweaks by an editor would have turned it into “the U.S. National Science Foundation” and “the U.S. National Academy of Engineering,” acknowledging that not all readers think of these bodies as their own national institutions. Lazowska also invited participation in the Computing Community Consortium, which is funded by the U.S. NSF, all of whose
current council members appear to be based in the U.S. It would be useful to know whether the invitation extends to all ACM members or just to those in the U.S.
“Internationalizing” Communications content would allow all readers to quickly evaluate its articles for personal relevance—yet another benefit from the magazine’s redesign.
Jamie andrews, london, ontario, Canada
I must take issue with Eric Roberts’s straw-man argument in his “ Counterpoint” in the “Viewpoint” “Technology Curriculum for the Early 21st Century” (July 2008). In the real world, Microsoft might hire a candidate from Bangalore, then wait for more candidates from Bangalore, even while whining that there are no qualified candidates in the U.S.
All companies look to control costs, especially fixed ones, even at the expense of short-term return, since, projecting into the future, the marginal return is less likely to stay positive for more highly compensated employees. The desire to control fixed costs also contributes to demand for consultant positions, as they are eliminated more easily.
I know from personal experience how different reality is from the picture Roberts painted. I have no problem with companies trying to find the low-est-cost qualified labor but am disgusted by disingenuous moaning about the dearth of native talent.
Wayne Warren, San Antonio, TX
Knuth’s typography I was introduced to Donald E. Knuth’s masterwork The Art of Computer Programming in the late 1980s upon my arrival at college, and while I never fully mastered it, I found it to be a handy tool for accomplishing things that just weren’t possible on the PC-based word
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