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ELECTRONIC NEWSLETTER ON REASONING ABOUT ACTIONS AND CHANGE
Issue 98042 Editor: Erik Sandewall 4.5.1998
Back issues available at http://www.ida.liu.se/ext/etai/actions/njl/
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********* TODAY *********
Already today, we have two answers for the discussion about ETAI
publication styles that was opened in yesterday's Newsletter. Also, a
contribution by Sergio Brandano re ontologies of time.
********* META-DEBATES *********
--- ARTICLE STYLES AND REFEREEING ---
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| FROM: Rob Miller
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Dear Erik,
First of all, I know I speak for many people when thanking
you for the enormous effort you've put into the ETAI and the
newsletter over the last year or so. People are clearly
enjoying the newsletter a great deal, and it's really become
part of the culture of the 'reasoning about actions' community.
Publishing an article in the ETAI has been a very positive
experience for Tony and me. We had a great deal of useful
feedback, and my initial worries about the subsequent status
of our paper, i.e. whether it would be generally accepted as
a respectable 'journal' paper, have proved unfounded. (I'm in a
good position to judge this, because I recently changed jobs,
and subsequently asked my new employers what their attitude
had been towards this publication when evaluating my CV.) The
question-and-answer sessions in the newsletter and in the online
interactions page, aside from being useful and good fun, have
provided good publicity for our work. So, in short, the
reviewing and debating mechanisms you've set up have worked
very well for us.
I therefore have only minor suggestions for changes and additions
to the ETAI publication and reviewing process:
(1) Encourage authors to include a statement in each ETAI article
along the lines of:
"This article is best read in conjunction with
the online interaction at http://.....".
(2) Encourage the anonymous referees to post questions on the
the interactions page during the 3 month period in which
they're reviewing the article. In conventional journal
reviewing, it's not unusual for referees to ask the authors
(through the journal's editor) for clarification on
various points, before making a final decision about the
paper. I see this as a very healthy process which can easily
be mirrored on the ETAI web pages.
(3) At present, after the initial 3 month public interaction
period, authors are invited to revise their paper if
they wish before it is sent for anonymous review. But
perhaps it would be better if the anonymous reviewers
simply referee the original paper, in conjunction with the
answers given to the questions posted online.
Perhaps the anomymous reviewers could then have 3
options (similar to the options for many conventional
journals):
(i) reject the paper,
(ii) accept the paper but with 'compulsory'
revision (and perhaps re-reviewing), or
(iii) accept the paper with 'voluntary' revision.
In this way, there would be a maximum of 2 versions of the
paper online (the second appearing after 6 months rather
than 3 months), so that version control wouldn't be too much
of a problem. (We felt reluctant to post 3 versions of our
paper in such a short time period, even though our 3rd referee
felt that this might have given a better final product.)
As regards the two questions that you posed in the last newsletter,
my guess is that different authors will have different attitudes;
some will still like to make their articles as self-contained as
possible, others will be happy to leave them as starting points
for an online discussion. My view is that the ETAI can and should
accomodate this range of preferences - hence suggestion (3) above.
Regards,
Rob
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| FROM: Leora Morgenstern
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Erik,
I guess I've been lurking long enough, and I should finally just get
out there and contribute to the Newsletter in particular on the
question of novel publication styles. I may be a bit of a
traditionalist with respect both to the issue of background material
and to clarifications, and I'd vote for having these incorporated into
the actual article. There is still a lot to be said for being able to
print out an article and having a clear statement of the background
problem in that article. I also believe that the way the author
summarizes and presents background work is important; it sheds light on
the author's perspective on the work. In the same way, I think it's
important for the author to encapsulate the essentials of the dialogues
in this forum, and to incorporate them into his article.
As a related point, I think the exercise of writing in a succinct way
the background material and the main point of the dialogues serves to
clarify the author's thoughts and is not something we want to give up.
Leora
********* DEBATES *********
--- ONTOLOGIES FOR TIME ---
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| FROM: Sergio Brandano
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In reply to Pat Hayes (ENRAC 3.5.1998)
>> An interval from the real-line is an ordered set of real numbers limited
>> by its end-points, which are not necessarily included in the set.
> It seems from this that the set of intervals is supposed to include open,
> half-open and closed intervals; is that right? (Or do you mean to say that
> there may be some doubt about whether a particular interval does or does
> not include its endpoints? If the latter, this is not the usual notion of
> 'interval' as used in real analysis, and you need to explain further.)
The former case is the one I meant.
You posed a good question, which may call into the present debate the
possible relations between epistemological and ontological
assumptions, at least within the "Features and Fluents" framework.
If we assume the epistemological assumption "K" (accurate and
complete information about actions), then occurrences of actions are
also supposed to give no doubtful information whether the scheduled
time interval where they are supposed to be performed does or does
not include its endpoints, so that the latter case from the quoted
text must not hold. Probably the case may hold within "Mo", but you
shall better ask Coradeschi for it.
>> Suppose $S$ consists of intervals from the real line. Assume
>> $<s1,t1> \in A$ and $<s2,t2> \in B$, intervals in $S$. We say that
>> $<s1,t1> \leq <s2,t2>$ iff $t1 \leq s2$. The strict order relation
>> $\less$ is an abbreviation for $\leq \logical-and \noteq$.
>
> It follows then that for intervals, $\leq$ implies $\less$ except for
> pointlike intervals (single-point closed intervals) since if $t1 \leq s2$,
> the intervals $<s1, t1>$ and $<s2, t2>$ cannot be equal unless
> $s1=t1=s2=t2$.
$\leq$ does not necessarily imply $\less$, as in the case of
$<2,5> \leq <5,9>$, which is a valid case with respect to $\leq$.
You are right concerning the case whether $<s1,t1>$ may be equal to
$<s2,t2>$, but this does not really affects the axiom of completeness
and, into the slightest question, it may be easily fixed.
>> Suppose now that $<s1,t1> \less <s2,t2>$. The axiom of completeness states
>> the existence of $\xi \in S$ such that $<s1,t1> \leq \xi \leq <s2,t2>$.
> Consider the closed intervals $[p,q]$ and $[q,r]$ with $p < q < r$.
> These satisfy $\leq$ and hence satisfy $\less$, but there is no interval
> between them. Hence, your axiom is false for intervals on the real line.
The closed intervals $[p,q]$ and $[q,r]$, with $p < q < r$, do not
fulfill the relation $<p,q> \less <q,r>$, hence they do not make a
valid counterexample.
Best regards
Sergio
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