Source: Think Links

I’ve been reviewing papers lately and I’m beginning to develop a new heuristic: If I follow a link mentioned in the paper and there’s something there that’s reasonable, there’s a good chance the paper is good. Not all the time, of course, but it’s surprisingly good predictor. In particular, I review computer science papers many of which describe frameworks, architectures or systems. The potential reusability of these artifacts is partly premised on the availability of their code. Unfortunately, in some cases there’s nothing on the other end of the link or the link doesn’t make sense.

The moral of the story – include links in your papers and make sure they work.

Filed under: academia