> closer to 5. The point isn't that it's longer than journals, it's that
> the process can be "long".
Well "long" is subjective. I guess I don't agree that even 5mo is
long. But, whatever ... we'll never solve the precise definition of
"long" I suppose.
> That's quite a lot longer than the gap between the CFP and the
> submission. Granted, many people know when cyclical CFPs are coming
> out, but the presumption is that it takes 2-3x longer to process
> reviews than to write the paper. That seems a bit upside down to me.
I think trying to couple those two things is pretty bogus. If you're
spending 1/2 to 1/3 of the review time to develop and write a paper then
you just shouldn't bother because your paper will be in the bottom 50%.
I think two things happen ... (1) as you note we know about when
deadlines will be and work towards those regardless of whether the CFP
has been posted or not and (2) we just do our work and at some point we
figure out we will soon enough have enough meat for a paper and pop up
and look around and see what venues having looming deadlines.
> > - As for the rate... its driven by the conference style (see Victor's
> > nice post on this) and the denominator. I just finished chairing
> > IMC (a pretty top-tier venue for measurement work). We had an
> > accept rate of 22% (47 / 211 submissions). Is that good? Bad? I
> > dunno.
>
> That can be hard to say as a raw number. The better question is
> "accept rate after quick rejects", i.e., papers so badly out of
> scope they didn't warrant a review (e.g., promotional product
> descriptions sent to a technical meeting).
None of the 211 papers were quick rejected without review. So, now what
does the number say? It says nothing about quality. It says something
about the number of submissions and the conference's setup not the
quality. Acceptance rate is very dubious to use as any sort of
assessment of quality. And, it is especially dubious in terms of a
simple number without any further context.
> So basically when you buy shoes, you show up and ask what size they
> have in stock and wear the ones that fit the best? :-)
Well, I guess there are two ways to look at it. You can view the
conference as the foot or the shoe. I was viewing the conference setup
as the foot. You think it ought to be the shoe.
> I.e., IMO, you pick the papers you want, not the papers that fit. Yes,
> that means adjusting the meeting schedule as a result - adjusting the
> number of tracks, adding panels if useful, or just adjusting the
> meeting dates accordingly.
>
> That's NOT what many conferences with low accept rates have chosen to
> do.
That seems fine in theory. My guess is conference planning has
something to do with it here. If the PC comes back and says "yeah,
instead of 3 days of single track this year, we're going to need 4 days
and also on the first day we need two tracks and on the second we need
three tracks" or "we're going to need to extend those days all the way
until 9:30 at night" or whatever then, well, that *might* work out.
And, the hotel *might* laugh at the general chair when he makes such a
request at that late stage in the game.
> Again, I'm asking us to ask ourselves whether only 10% of our papers
> are really conference quality, or whether we're picking 10% to make
> the shoes fit.
It is clearly the latter.
> Some of the current definition of "the bar" is based on the 10% we
> accept at past meetings. Many people might look at the next 10% of
> Sigcomm submissions and say, e.g., "that's not a Sigcomm paper" -
> but that is colored by the artificially high bar set in the
> past.
I agree that the notion of "the bar" is colored by what will fit. And,
I didn't mean to make any sort of statement on the second 10%. There
are some amount of papers over what is taken that is the mushy middle.
I meant to say that the bottom 50% is chud and we shouldn't pretend it
is somehow reasonable stuff to be presenting at a conference.
> The question for a conference paper should be:
>
> - is it reasonably correct (not perfect)
> - would it be useful to discuss, for both authors and attendees
>
> Right now the bar at <10% meetings is "can I find a reason to reject
> it". That's not a conference paper criteria, IMO.
I agree that is a bogus touchstone. I am not sure I am cynical enough
(*did I just say that?!*) to think people have default reject in their
minds when reviewing. It seems to me more often than not one doesn't
actually have to go looking for some reason to reject a paper, rather
the paper beats one over the head with a reason (or twelve). But, maybe
I get all the shitty papers in my stack ...
> Don't get me wrong about the general quality of submissions - yes,
> there are a lot of papers that ought to have been caught, either by
> the co-authors, the department/organization, or colleagues - before
> they went out the door. That's a different issue, but one that I
> don't think results in a <10% accept rates at large meetings.
Well, quick math says that if the bottom 50% don't show up then you at
least get to double this 10%, right?
allman
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