My work and the definition of the Equality Criterion
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So a group from the Equal Vote Coalition has just had a paper published (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10602-022-09389-3) regarding STAR voting, VSE, and what they call the Equality Criterion. This is the first time I've been able to see a full copy of the paper, and thus it's the first time I have able to confirm that a.) some of my work was used, and b.) I was not given any credit for this.
I had been approached previously about the possibility of using one of my criteria definitions as the formal definition of the Equality Criterion in this paper. However, this occurred roughly a day before the paper had to be submitted to the journal. This was unfortunate because I was under a lot of stress and really didn't have enough time or mental bandwidth to address the questions about my work that came up. I tried to give a decent answer, but after a little back and forth I stopped getting responses.
At the time the issue of how to credit me did come up, since I generally post under BTernaryTau rather than my full name. Because I wasn't sure how to handle this and didn't even know if my work would be included, I said that I'd prefer to determine whether and how my work would be used first, then specify how I would be credited. However, because the conversation about the relevance of my work was never concluded, this topic was never returned to.
Eventually a preprint of the paper (https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-2050377/v1) was made available publicly, which I did check out. This preprint mentioned the Equality Criterion but did not include a definition. I was not included in the citations or the acknowledgements, so I assumed they decided to go with a different means of formalizing it. However, it is clear that the full paper does in fact draw upon my definitions for the cancellation criterion (https://bternarytau.github.io/miscellaneous/voting-theory/cancellation-criterion) and opposite cancellation criterion (https://bternarytau.github.io/miscellaneous/voting-theory/opposite-cancellation-criterion) in order to create its definition of the Equality Criterion, and yet this version also fails to credit me in any way.
On the one hand, I don't want to make a big deal out of this since I really like what the Equal Vote Coalition does, and since the paper ultimately used a fairly small portion of my work. On the other hand, a lot of my efforts with regard to voting methods are intentionally "hit-or-miss" with respect to whether they turn out to be relevant more broadly, so when part of my work does turn out to be relevant, I end up caring a great deal. This is especially true when my work is relevant to an organization that I have donated to and publicly advocated for. I also want to avoid setting an implicit precedent that it's ok to use my work without crediting me. I don't have a good solution for balancing these concerns, so I've settled on making this post. If nothing else, I hope making this public knowledge can prevent any future incidents of this kind.
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@bternarytau Thank you for bringing attention to this. I work with @SaraWolk everyday and I'm certain it was not the intention to dis you. I'll bring this to her attention and I'm confident she'll reach out and work with you to find a solution.
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@bternarytau I do remember that exchange as you said as well and I was also in a blur with a number of things happening all at once (I submitted that first draft on my way to the airport to get surgery cross country,) so my apologies for not following up as I should have or remembering that we'd left this a loose end.
My memory is still a bit foggy on what exactly we ended up using as the formal definition, since it was almost a year and a half ago, so I'm going to take a closer look at it right now and see what I can do.
I can say that since the definition in the hard printed part of the issue is Mark Frohnmayer's, and the more rigorous definition you'd been working on is in the appendix, which will be hosted online, we should still be able to put in changes and credit or cite you, so please give some thought to what you would like that citation to be exactly and email me at sara@equal.vote to follow up.
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@bternarytau
It appears that the forum's email sendgrid is currently down so Jameson is unable to log in to post.The following is from Jameson Quinn:
"Like Sara, for me the exact events right before submitting this paper are a blur for me, as we were meeting for long hours to get it done. However, this is clearly a mistake, and clearly our fault. I’m deeply sorry. We're working to get the correction to the appendix and bibliography made." -
@SaraWolk @Jameson-Quinn Thank you for responding. I've emailed Sara about next steps, and I hope to hear back from you soon.
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