An Opinion Poll Related to the Bulletin of the EATCS

I append a questionnaire that I have helped put together in my role as chairman of the publication committee of the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science. The questionnaire will be sent out to all the past and present members (so some of you will receive it via email soon), but I'd also like to have the opinion of people in TCS who have never been members of the association. So, if you have time and/or interest in this matter, I'd be happy to receive a filled questionnaire from you or simply your answers to some of the questions. Use the comments section for submitting your input.

In case you wish to have a closer look, the Bulletin is freely available from this web page.

Let me remind you that people who registered for ICALP 2008 become members of the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science for a year. Becoming a member of the association is easy and cheap. See here.

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PART I: QUESTIONS RELATED TO THE POSSIBLE FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS OF THE BULLETIN OF THE EATCS

Note to the readers: Throughout the questionnaire BEATCS abbreviates Bulletin of the EATCS. Please return your answers in the comments section.
If you are already a member of the EATCS you will receive a copy of this questionnaire via email.

1. Do you think that the quality of the Bulletin of the EATCS (henceforth, BEATCS) has increased over the last five years? YES/NO/DON'T KNOW
1. If your answer is YES or NO, please state the reasons behind your answer.
Are you aware that the Bulletin of the EATCS is an open-access publication? YES/NO
1. If your answer is yes, how did you learn that the BEATCS is open access?
Do you think that the BEATCS should remain open access? YES/NO
Does the open-access status of the BEATCS influence whether you are a member of the EATCS? YES/NO
How often do you read the BEATCS? NEVER/ONE ISSUE per year/TWO ISSUES per year/ALWAYS
What parts of the BEATCS do you read?

2. What are your areas of scientific interest?
   
3. Do you think that the present contents of the BEATCS cater for the need of its readers and of the new generations of the TCS community as whole?
Is there any topic to which you think that the BEATCS should devote a new column?
4. If you are missing something in the BEATCS, what is it and what are your suggestions?
5. What do you think of the overall scientific quality of the columns in the BEATCS? VERY LOW/LOW/ACCEPTABLE/GOOD/VERY GOOD/EXCELLENT
Is there any column that you find particularly good?
1. In your opinion, is there any column whose quality needs to be improved substantially?
   
What do you think of the overall scientific quality of the contributed research articles? VERY LOW/LOW/ACCEPTABLE/GOOD/VERY GOOD/EXCELLENT
6. At present, the BEATCS has light reviewing for columns, in the sense that the column editor reviews contributions by guest columnists, and a rather informal reviewing of technical contributions by the Bulletin editor. Do you think that the BEATCS should strive to set up a more formal peer-review process for the contributions that are published as columns and/or for the technical contributions?
Do you think that the BEATCS should be indexed regularly by DBLP, ISI, and MathSciNet?

7. Should the BEATCS be transformed into a new journal-type publication with peer refereeing etc., and with most newsletter-style content transferred to the EATCS web site?
What could the BEATCS learn from publications like CACM and the Notices of the AMS?
To your mind, what is the flagship journal publication of the TCS community, i.e., the most representative journal mostly devoted to TCS?
8. To your mind, is the BEATCS suitable as the flagship publication of the EATCS?
9. To your mind, what is the most useful service that the BEATCS should provide to the TCS community?

PART II: ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS RELATED TO EATCS MEMBERSHIP

1. If you are a member of the EATCS, please state your main reasons for joining the organization.
If you are not a member of the EATCS, Please state your reasons for not joining the organization.
2. If you are missing something in the EATCS, what is it and what are your suggestions?