[visionlist] A petition to re-evaluate the reviewing process for the VSS 2011

[Naotsugu Tsuchiya]

For those who attend to VSS (Vision Science Society),

Please see the message from Shin Shimojo below.  If you agree with his
opinion, please sign up for the petition.  I strongly recommend you to read

http://neuro.caltech.edu/publications/VSS_petition_background.pdf

before you make a decision whether you sign it or not.

Regards

Nao Tsuchiya



Dear friends,

I solicit your signature on this petition to the VSS. If you find it
relevant to you and agreeable,
please do so via the link below. Also, I would greatly appreciate if you
spread this as widely as
you can, to the vision/neurosci/cogsci community (in the widest definition).
Many thanks,

SS

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 A petition to re-evaluate the reviewing process for the VSS 2011
As some of you may have found, and as we just discovered, some VSS abstracts
are now being rejected. We have several objections to this new policy and we
hope, if you agree, that you will sign this petition that we will send to
the board of VSS.
Your signature can easily be added at
http://www.petitiononline.com/VSS2011/petition.html
There is another note to explain my personal motivation behind this
petition, at
http://neuro.caltech.edu/publications/VSS_petition_background.pdf

1. Basic objection. Bad policy for the vision science community.
The previous policy was that all but a few abstracts were accepted. This
created an inclusive atmosphere of a community that welcomed all who were
interested in vision science. After all, if a poster is not interesting, we
can walk by it and it causes no harm. Talks have been reviewed selectively
as these slots are limited but posters are much less limited and should
remain open to all. Many of us cannot travel to the conference if the
abstract is not accepted and this is a serious consequence of what, near the
border of acceptance/rejection, must be a random choice.
 2. Criterion objection.
 The criterion given for rejection in many cases is that the abstract was
“out of scope”. We are not sure what the “scope” is. What is the scope,
where is it laid out so we can check before submitting. Who defines this
scope and how can it change to reflect the changing interests of our
community. Is it like obscenity, impossible to define but you know it when
you see it. Or is there a principled definition that we can all agree on. At
the moment, it does not seem to be a public definition and this can only
cause disagreement and confusion and will undoubtedly trigger endless debate
at the VSS business meetings where different groups will argue whether their
new topic is included in the scope of the meeting. Think a moment about
topics such as motion, illusory contour, attention, visual memory,
locomotion, arm-reaching, faces, etc. They were initially criticized as “not
vision,” “periphery to the VSS” or “out of scope”, but then became hottest
front edges where we kept discov
 ering their functional relevance to, and direct links to, lower/middle
level vision. This year, our topics were ‘Outside the scope”, next year it
may be yours. Do we really want to be fighting over this?
 3) Size of meeting.
 If rejections are mechanism to reduce the size of the meeting, the goal
itself needs discussion first. If our community is growing, we should
encourage and welcome the new arrivals, not turn them into disgruntled
émigrés to other disciplines.

Proposal for action.
 1) Reconsider the reviewing process. Reinstate no rejections.
 2) If the VSS decides to continue rejections, provide a clear list of “out
of scope” topics/subtopics beforehand, and have it under public discussion
among the members.

Shinsuke Shimojo
Gertrude Baltimore Professor of Experimental Psychology, Division
of  Biology; Option Representative, Computation and Neural Systems,
California Institute of Technology 139-74, Pasadena, CA 91125.
sshimojo at caltech.edu, http://neuro.caltech.edu

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Shinsuke Shimojo
Gertrude Baltimore Professor of Experimental Psychology, Division
of  Biology; Option Representative, Computation and Neural Systems,
California Institute of Technology 139-74, Pasadena, CA 91125.
sshimojo at caltech.edu, http://neuro.caltech.edu
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-- 
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土谷尚嗣
Nao (Naotsugu) Tsuchiya, Ph.D.

1. PRESTO (Sakigake) fellow, Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST),
Japan
2. Visiting scholar in Laboratory for Adaptive Intelligence, RIKEN, Japan
3. Visitor, Division of Biology, Caltech, USA

homepage: www.emotion.caltech.edu/~naotsu<http://www.emotion.caltech.edu/%7Enaotsu>

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