Re:Open science: why is it so hard?
by jamii on Wednesday January 11, 2012 @07:48AM
(#3451502)
> If you have to scan random papers to find a solution to a problem you cannot name, I fear for your well-being :-)
The disadvantage to being a generalist is that I don't know the terminology of the field I need to research. Take the texsearch example above. Given a LaTeX string I want to find similar strings from a large corpus so I start by googling things like "code search" and "syntax tree search". After scanning a few dozen papers and following links I find that the magic search term is "approximate string matching" which nets me an overview paper. I scan through the links from that paper and dismiss most of the algorithms as unsuitable for my particular problem until I'm left with a few candidates for prototypes.
Back then I had access through my university. Today I wouldn't be able to read half of those papers. For recent math/CS papers I can usually find a preprint but anything else is a struggle.
The disadvantage to being a generalist is that I don't know the terminology of the field I need to research. Take the texsearch example above. Given a LaTeX string I want to find similar strings from a large corpus so I start by googling things like "code search" and "syntax tree search". After scanning a few dozen papers and following links I find that the magic search term is "approximate string matching" which nets me an overview paper. I scan through the links from that paper and dismiss most of the algorithms as unsuitable for my particular problem until I'm left with a few candidates for prototypes.
Back then I had access through my university. Today I wouldn't be able to read half of those papers. For recent math/CS papers I can usually find a preprint but anything else is a struggle.