Entry tags:

academia, papers

One of the big problems of academia is that though we produce some amazing things, they're often not available, accessible, or even noticeable for the general public. That is, articles may cost money to read (unless you have access to academic journal subscriptions), interesting results get buried in dense scientific language, and often few people are talking about the results outside of academia (or sometimes even inside academia).

Last year, I committed myself to writing more book reviews to share what I read with others, and it occurs to me that this year, maybe I should make more of an effort to do the same with the scientific papers I read as well. The usual caveats apply: I've got my own set of biases in research just like I have taste in books, and it's entirely possible that I'll interpret results in ways other than they were intended.

This is something I did occasionally with my web security blog (and hoped to do more), but I'm currently reading papers about complex adaptive systems, biology, security, and more. So for now, these public paper reviews are going here right alongside my book reviews, and they'll be drawn not only from my own research interests but from the overlapping ones of my colleagues. I have a lead on a paper about railway design using slime molds, for example. You've been warned!