This document is

http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/cogaff/misc/chew.d/chewing-test.txt

It provides acccess to a new version (pdf and docx) of a much older semi-serious
(satirical) paper on the Turing test posted here in 2014:

    http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/cogaff/misc/chewing-test.html

This document is one of three files directly downloadable from here,

    http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/cogaff/misc/chew.d

The other two are the *revised* versions (pdf and docx) of the old one, prepared
in April 2020 for a special issue of Minds and Machines, as explained below.

    http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/cogaff/misc/chew.d/Chewing-test.docx
    http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/cogaff/misc/chew.d/Chewing-test.pdf

Why?

After seeing a post about a special issue of Minds and Machines, on the Turing
test, I thought the editor might find my 2014 satirical paper of interest,
though I did not think it suitable for submission to a journal.

He responded by suggesting that I submit a revised version to the special issue,
so I did that later. The revised version, more suitable for a journal
publication, is available in docx and pdf formats, above. Those are NOT merely
reformatted versions of the original chewing-test.html document.

[An earlier version of this document, left out the "NOT" unfortunately!]

However, the tortuous Springer submission process via the Editorial Manager
demanded that I find six referees and required ridiculous amounts of detail for
each name, so I gave up, partly because my ability to work at my computer is
currently restricted, following a recent operation.

So I informed the editor that I could not complete the submission process.

In case he wishes to try to by-pass the Springer process to find potential
referees who are willing to decide after skimming the document (not allowed by
Springer/Editorial manager), I have made the *revised* version of the paper
directly downloadable by anyone here, in two formats, docx and pdf, as mentioned
above:

    http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/cogaff/misc/chew.d/Chewing-test.docx
    http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/cogaff/misc/chew.d/Chewing-test.pdf

Aaron Sloman
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~axs

PS

I have frequently informed Springer and Elsevier that I shall normally refuse to
accept an invitation to review a document without having the opportunity first
to skim the document, since abstracts usually do not give me enough information
to decide whether to write a review.

But the publishers always ignore my argument -- giving me only the options:
agree to review on the basis of abstract alone, or refuse.

So I've decided to ignore all such requests to review papers.

I think serious academic journals should now be moved away from publishers like
Springer and Elsevier onto one of the many web sites that allow documents to be
uploaded for free access, such as this one that has been used by several
disciplines since about 1991:

    https://arxiv.org/

I suspect there are growing numbers of such hosting sites provided by
universities, and there will be more, following the Covid-19 experiences.

There's a lot to be said for moving to a tradition of posting a version of a
paper that is open for comments and criticisms and then later producing revised
versions (possibly a succession of revised versions) responding to criticisms
and suggestions, using technology that keeps a history of changes, instead of
publishing only *frozen* papers in journals, so that the only way to produce an
update is to publish an entirely new paper, not necessarily linked to the old
one in a useful way.

That is a very wasteful academic tradition, which should be abandoned.

Aaron Sloman
April 2020