Photography at the 2009 ACA
I have been unable to find out whether photography of presentations will be banned at the 2009 American Crystallography Association conference. I am doubtful there will be any information on the issue, but felt it was important to bring up nevertheless.
I have never felt comfortable when someone in the back of the room photographs each slide of a presentation. I also have not had the guts to ask them to stop.
A conference that promotes speakers to share new ideas and information is exciting. However, if the speakers are worried about being scooped then they will hold back and simply regurgitate their most recent papers.
Photo by runningafterantelope
The same reasoning applies during the poster sessions. I do see some people asking permission to take photos of posters. I have also seen thieves attendees taking pictures while the presentations were going on with the owner of the poster not present. Plan on your poster being photographed.
Peter N
June 12th, 2009 at 6:19 PM #
Isn’t it the purpose of giving a talk / showing a poster to tell the world about our discoveries? Why would you *not* want your audience take notes in writing or in the form of a photograph? I usually bring along small versions of my posters as hand outs and many others do so as well. And of course I’m happy to email PDF versions of my poster to anyone who’s interested in my research.
Check out http://www.eposters.net/
Sean
June 12th, 2009 at 8:14 PM #
Wow, the eposters site looks cool (will have to play around with it, thanks)!
A worry maybe that an audience member may take pictures of your data slides then beat you to publication.
Check out: http://physicsworld.com/blog/2008/09/should_cameras_be_banned_at_co.html
I am not suggesting that cameras should be banned, but just a friendly reminder to be careful.
Req
June 15th, 2009 at 11:18 PM #
I never attended ACA. Not a big fan of pure crystallography meetings. I get tired of listening to one structure after the other. And sadly there’s a mentality among crystallographers that “my” structure will tell it all, when it’s rarely a hypothesis driven field (especially for novel structures) and there’s far tooooooo much speculation. I much prefer GRC. Why couldn’t ACA adopt GRC conference policy?
Sean
June 17th, 2009 at 2:20 PM #
What is the GRC (Gordon Research Conference?) conference policy? Do they have it posted on their website? I looked briefly, but without any luck. Thanks.
Sean
June 19th, 2009 at 12:45 PM #
This will be an interesting issue to follow, how blogging and tweets will be dealt with at conferences…
http://blogs.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2009/06/cold-spring-har.html
a reply:
http://scienceblogs.com/geneticfuture/2009/06/on_the_challenges_of_conferenc.php
Cora
June 24th, 2009 at 7:36 PM #
The Gordon Research Conferences are a forum to discuss “cutting edge research”. That is, they strongly encourage the presentation of new, unpublished results. Thus the complete prohibition of photography unless specifically permitted by the author.
Why such restrictions? Because some journals can be really picky about what they consider “previously disseminated”. E.g., if you want to publish in Science, you better make sure that you don’t have this material in an abstract or a presentation at a conference without restrictive policies. You can present it at a GRC and still publish in Science.
If you have already published on the topic of your poster, it’s not a big deal to hand out copies. If most of the material is unpublished, I would be careful about handing out copies. Many journals will accept material for publication that was on a poster or in a talk, as that is not considered “published”. However, if you describe too well in an abstract what you have found, you may screw yourself – remember that many conference abstracts show up on SciFinder!
Peter N
June 25th, 2009 at 3:57 PM #
There you have it: a poster is de facto a publication, and a talk is a public disclosure. Sound’s like some researchers want to eat their cake and have it too. Why is this? Once you talk about your results in public you have shared it with the public and it’s out in the world. It’s not yours anymore in a sense that you can’t control what’s happening with this information.
Peter N
July 7th, 2009 at 8:56 PM #
Just came across this nugget and wanted to share it with readers of this blog that want to have their cake and eat it too. This is from a correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and Isaac McPherson where TJ writes:
“If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.”
full letter at: http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12.html
Sean
July 9th, 2009 at 12:30 PM #
Just came across a post by Cameron Neylon that thought may also be of interest to those presenting at the ACA.
http://blog.openwetware.org/scienceintheopen/2009/06/30/some-slides-for-granting-permissions-or-not-in-presentations/