Interview with Leslie Pack Kaelbling
CreateChange has just published an interview with Leslie Pack Kaelbling, founder of the Journal of Machine Learning Research (JMLR) and leader of the declaration of independence at Machine Learning. (Thanks to SPARC E-News.) Excerpt:
How have the Internet and digital technologies changed the way academics research and communicate in computer science?
…The thing that is dramatically different is how we figure out what other work is going on. CiteSeer is an online system that indexes computer science literature and finds the citations for online papers. You just type in a name and click. It’s amazing. That’s changed everybody’s life.
What barriers have you faced as you try to effectively communicate in light of this transformation?
When it was first possible to post papers on a Web site, journal publishers started to be worried and shake their fists. In the 1990s, some universities adopted policies to prohibit posting copyrighted papers on the Web, but authors typically ignored them. Scholars want people to read their stuff. We just want people to know about our work.
How did the Journal of Machine Learning Research get started and how has it benefited scholarship?
I was on the editorial board of a journal called Machine Learning, the main journal in the field. The price kept going up and we’d say, “This is ridiculous” – especially because libraries couldn’t afford it. Plus, the journal had an official policy about not putting stuff on the Web. We explained it was counter productive, to no avail. Finally, I got tired and said, “Forget it, let’s publish our own journal.” Two-thirds of the Machine Learning board resigned and started the new journal in 2000….
How has it been received?
By 2004 we had the second highest impact factored journal in all of computer science….
What is the benefit of more open sharing of research?
You know that quotation from Newton: “If I have seen farther, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Knowing what other people have done lets you build on it and not reinvent the wheel. It used to be that six people were working on the same thing at once and didn’t know it. That can still happen, but now as soon as one person writes it up in the literature you can know about it. It’s going to decrease duplication of effort, and free more people to work on things that are truly new and exciting. That’s the biggest impact.
