> Hi,
>
> I'm happy to have stimulated an interesting discussion. But it's
> becoming fragmented. Could I ask folks that want to discuss one of
> the following topics (all of which have spun off the original
> "presentations by non-authors" topic) to please use *different*
> "subject" lines:
>
> * cost of attendance from developing countries / in general
> * mixed presentation quality
> * whether the community is too split/too large
> * reputation system
> * too few interested people in the session & too little Q&A time
> * etc.
>
> It's not that I'm not interested in these issues - for many of them,
> I am. It's just that it's becoming difficult to follow the discussion.
Lars, thanks for getting this thread of discussion started! As Nitin
commented, it is really Good to see something other than floods of CFP
on the TCCC list.
yes the discussions have touched a number of issues, but I also agree
with Osama Bazan that most issues are inter-mingled. I tried to
extract some top level issues with my own views below.
It is inevitable that I missed some, and the order below is arbitrary.
1/ Whether an author should present his/her own paper:
to me it should be a principle that one author presents the paper,
assuming we continue running conferences as today. This is not about
"who makes better presentation"; getting paper accepted is not the end
step, getting comments/feedbacks/exchanges with others at the
conference is just as important.
2/ Suggestions of EDAS status marking about "no-show" or "show-non-
author", or more IEEE rules to enforce author presentation as a fix:
Before deciding the treatment of a disease, the first step is
diagnosis, right? Back 15 years I dont recall this problem existed.
So the question is why now. Personally I agree with a number of people
who have pointed out that funding availability is probably #1 reason
for no-show.
*If* this is the cause, then what would be the consequence of the
suggested enforcement? people with more funding can publish more, and
people with less funding publish less, even if they have worthy
results to publish?
3/ Whether we have evidence that people select conferences to submit
to based on cost:
Someone argues there doesn't seem to be much evidence for this, but I
got one here: for an IEEE workshop this year, after the TPC had made
all the acceptance decisions, several authors withdrew their papers
because of the unexpected high registration fee (something like $600-
$700 for a one-day workshop, because it's attached to a conf and the
policy was to pay full conf registration).
I doubt this is a single isolated incidence.
4/ Potential impact of conference profit making on the quality of
publication:
At the TCP meeting for one of the IEEE conferences this year, after
the acceptance had been all done, the TPC chair counted the number of
accepted papers and found a problem: the number did not meet the
mandate quota given by IEEE. Consequently the TCP members had to dig
out several previously rejected papers and turned them into accept.
Again I wondered whether such situation happened just this one time
only.
5/ Whether we cut down the cost of running a conference:
Someone expressed concern that "nobody "senior" is going to show up
unless the conference provides attractive options for socializing."
Well, if we all agree the goal of our conferences is to advance
technologies, I wonder if we actually can better accomplish the goal
by missing those few senior people but making it affordable to a lot
more others.
Now two other much BIGGER/longer term issues:
- as many people have pointed out, the community has grown many folds
over the last 2 decades, and necessarily became more diversified in
their funding situation and affordability for conferences. At the same
time, technologies have also moved forward by leaps and bounds.
But if one looks at our conference system model, it seems has not
changed much in general, other than added a lot lot more conferences/
workshops. I kind of like the suggestion of taking a "clean slate"
examination towards involve our conferencing system together with the
community growth and technology advances (I know this is a big task,
but seems need to be done)
- everyone is working hard to publish these days, as the existing
system drives us to work that way. The Dec issue of CACM has a blog
by Jeannette Wing "deadline-driven research" (http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2009/12/52820-cs-woes-deadline-driven-research-academic-inequality
) that seems worth reading.
Lixia
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