“Social networks for researchers” in question

Some “Social networks” for researchers use terms and conditions that are in contradiction with the will of sharing and organizing knowledge in a “libre and open-access way”. Although these platforms are potential means of communication in research communities, researchers must be aware of terms of use of these websites. In addition, researchers and institutions must ensure that their research-publication policies are in accordance with these platforms.


Few years ago, a new type of social network appears on the web, “Social networks for researchers/scientists”. For Instance, ResearchGate, Academia and BiomedExperts are originally designed as social portals. Other websites such as Mendeley have progressively introduced social services in their platforms. Utility of these websites have been questioned in diverse blog-posts, Forbes, Blogs.Nature, Presans, MyScienceWork to cite a few.

Personally, I don’t consider that the means of communication provided by these platforms are very useful. I spent very little time on these “social networks”, and prefer to explore collaborative tools for smaller networks (colleagues, collaborators, university, and communities on my research topics).

Beside the potential utility of such platforms, I would like to address in this post potential issues related to terms and conditions of these websites. In my opinion, terms of use of these websites are in contradiction with the will of sharing and organizing knowledge in a “libre and open-access way”, which is not a surprising fact. More important, is the potential conflict between terms of use of these websites and data-handling/publication/copyright policies of research institutions, when such a policy exists.

I illustrate this point with two examples of websites that were recommended to me by colleagues. Note that I do not criticize these platforms for researchers (they present some interesting innovations), but I point out some important aspects for appropriately using them.

First, the content you post on these websites is subject to a licence agreement. For instance, on Academia.edu, the content you post on the website (including abstract, papers or data) is subject to the following licence agreement (in Terms of use):

“By making available any Member Content on or through the Site or Services, you hereby grant to Academia.edu a worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, royalty-free license, with the right to sublicense, to use, view, copy, adapt, modify, distribute, license, sell, transfer, publicly display, publicly perform, transmit, stream, broadcast and otherwise exploit such Member Content only on, through or by means of the Site or Services. Academia.edu does not claim any ownership rights in any Member Content and nothing in these Terms will be deemed to restrict any rights that you may have to use and exploit any Member Content.” (source: Academia.edu, Terms of Use)

These aspects of content rights have to be carefully considered for publishing some research results on websites.

Second, the majority of these platforms restricts or blocks the access of content to non-registered user. These restrictions apply on your list of publications, abstracts, posts or full-texts. For instance, below is a notification for the access of full-texts on ResearchGate.

Clearly, the majority of these “social networks” for researchers are not Libre or open-access platforms, they just monetize research material. Again, researchers have to consider these aspects when they provide content and spend time on these websites. More important, researchers and research institutions must ensure that their data-handling/publication/copyright policies are in accordance with these websites. It is high time for researchers to consider content rights for their research results, and for Universities and funding institutions to provide clear guidelines on research communications and data-handling.

GECCO 2013, is it worth it to submit?

Submission deadline for the next GECCO conference is approaching (January 31st). Is it worth it to submit a paper to GECCO 2013? Of course, my answer is yes (if you have a paper and the budget). But, it is an opportunity to explain what makes for me a good conference, from a participant point of view. I identified different reasons or criteria to participate to a conference.

Meeting the community: It is one of the main reasons to attend a conference. Listening to presentations and conversing with other researchers is part of a researcher’s work. In addition to learn on your research topic you can also learn about research practices, establish contacts for collaborations, and exchange views on research policies. The fact that some sessions and organizers/session chairs/keynote speakers are focused on your research topic is an important criterion.

Publishing an article: Of course, having an accepted paper to a conference is a way to disseminate your research. Publication and referencing of the proceedings, as well as the opportunity to extend the paper for journals’ special issues, are important aspects. For instance, GECCO will include the proceedings in the ACM Digital Library. Checking the referencing of previous conference editions is a good indicator.

Obtaining feedback on research: This is not as easy as it seems, however the reviews of your paper, the questions and the possible discussions about your presentation are generally valuable. A good review process, an adequate time for the presentation and good conditions for meeting and discussing with other researchers are essential.

Taking one’s mind off things: Yes! And personally I am more productive after this kind of event.

On this topic I found some interesting tips (more particularly for PhD students) by Michael Ernst, "Attending an academic conference". He compiled a list of interesting advice "Advice for researchers and students".

Publishing and open access

Publication policy is an inevitable topic for researchers and no recent solution has a real consensus. In my opinion, current offers in terms of open publishing are far from being appropriate, at least in computer science. It is very important to keep in mind that the major issue of this question is the variety of interests and actors (and not just a matter of financial interest). Here are some recent points of view that I find interesting in the current debate.

First, the point of view of Professor Moshe Y. Vardi, editor-in-chief of Communications of the ACM. He explains in an article the principle of "Fair Access" pursued by ACM. An interesting point is that "in the case of publishing by a professional association, such as ACM, the authors, as ACM members, are essentially also the publishers." [1]

Another aspect of the debate, evaluation, is addressed in this article about "Open Evaluation" published in "Frontier in Computational Neuroscience" [2]. Again, in this article the close links between the different actors of the scientific publication (here readers and authors) are highlighted.

Finally, a small introduction about open publishing, from "Piled Higher and Deeper" by Jorge Cham, www.phdcomics.com: "What is Open Access". In my opinion, in this video the given view of open-access is over-simplified; however the last slides give interesting elements (“current scientific cultural practices”, “necessity to experiment some publishing practices”, “role of young researchers in the movement for change”)


[1] Moshe Y. Vardi, "Fair Access", Communications of the ACM, May 2012, Vol. 55 No. 5, Page 5
doi:10.1145/2160718.2160719

[2] Nikolaus Kriegeskorte, Alexander Walther, and Diana Deca, "An emerging consensus for open evaluation: 18 visions for the future of scientific publishing", Front. Comput. Neurosci. 6:94. doi:10.3389/fncom.2012.00094

Simulation-Optimization of Complex Systems

I recently read a call of papers from “Simulation Modeling Practice and Theory” journal (Elsevier) on “Simulation-Optimization of Complex Systems: Methods and Applications”. Coupling simulation and optimization tools is a very interesting topic and, in my opinion, multiagent approach is a promising research direction to tackle the underlying research issues.

Let’s take the case of optimizing a public transport network. The decision variables are, for instance, the frequencies of the lines (or the daily schedule of the buses, trains or tramways). If you find a model which is a good approximation of the system and can be efficiently tackled by an optimization procedure, you have your solution. However, you may require simulating the system for obtaining a good evaluation. For instance, simulation could help to determine the demand of each modes of transport (from a model of users’ behavior). In this case, the optimization procedure has to exploit a simplified model of the system to be efficient.

A potential way to combine simulation and optimization is given in the above figure. Note that this is not the only way to combine simulation and optimization. In this approach, the simulation works on a “complete” model of the system (the simulation model), and the optimization uses a simplified or partial model of the system (the optimization model).

In this configuration, the optimization procedure uses a set of parameters that approximates the system for a given solution (instance of decision variables that has been used by the simulation). These parameters may be a good approximation to evaluate the solutions that are close to the simulated solution, but new simulations are necessary to evaluate solutions that are significantly different to the simulated one. For instance, in our hypothetical case study, the simulation may determine the modal-choice for given frequencies of the lines. These fixed parameters of the modal-choice may remain a good approximation for small modifications of the frequencies. However, a new simulation is necessary to evaluate a solution with completely different frequencies of the lines, because these differences impact the modal-choice. In this combination of simulation and optimization, the simulation and optimization steps have to be repeated until a satisfactory solution based on a good approximation of the system is found.

A final word on agent approach for developing such a system. What are the interests of an agent approach in this context? Of course, parallel computation will be facilitated by agent approach, and if simulation or optimization procedures have been conceived as multiagent systems, an agent approach at a higher level may be valuable for a consistency in development tools. But another aspect, the “autonomy” of agents, deserves to be pointed out. I do not refer to the autonomy that may characterize intelligent agents, but rather the modularity (independence) of the system’s components. Agent oriented approach can support this modularity which is essential for developing such a complex combination between simulation and optimization. Conceiving such a system using a multiagent approach may support: the design and implementation of the interfaces between the agents (here the simulation and the optimization components) with a clear definition of roles, capacities, and interactions of agents; the management of asynchronous communications between the agents; and the integration of additional agents such as interface agent and data sources. As I said at the beginning, there are many perspectives.

Don’t hesitate to leave a comment or to send me additional resources for the blog.

Advanced Planning and Scheduling track at ILS'2012 Conference

A session on Innovations in APS (Advanced Planning and Scheduling) Systems is organized at the ILS'2012 conference (Quebec, Canada, August 26-29, 2012).

"APS are computer-supported planning systems that put forward various functions of Supply Chain Management, including procurement, production, distribution and sales, at the strategic, tactical and operational levels. These systems stand for a quantitative model-driven perspective on the use of Information Technology in supporting Supply Chain Management, for exploiting advanced analysis and supply chain optimization methods." Details