Monday, September 06, 2010
A Thought Experiment
Suppose that a top-class conference to which you usually submit your papers decide to publish its proceedings in an electronic open-access outlet instead of using a commercial publisher, like STACS and FST-TCS have done over the last few years. Would that decision have any effect on whether you submit your papers to that conference? Would you encourage your students to submit to that conference in order to further their future career? Do you think that a prestigious conference has anything to lose in publishing its proceedings in an electronic open-access outlet?
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When STACS moved out of LNCS I was quite sure less people will submit papers, but I don't think this changed anything. I myself wouldn't be much concerned about moving out.
When STACS moved out of LNCS I was quite sure less people will submit papers, but I don't think this changed anything.
I can substantiate this claim with some data I received from the STACS PC chairs.
The submission data for STACS 2008, 2009 and 2010 are as follows: the number of submissions for 2008 (the first year of open-access proceedings, when LIPIcs had not yet been officially created) was 200, STACS 2009 received 280 submissions (for some reason, the number of submissions is always a little larger when STACS is held in Germany :-)), and STACS 2010 attracted 238 submissions from 40 countries.
The PC chairs told me that the number of submissions was good and that their quality was excellent.
And what were the numbers in 2007, before STACS moved out?
I also heard that with STACS going out of LNCS, the quality of submissions hasn't changed.
And what were the numbers in 2007, before STACS moved out?
I recall hearing that STACS 2007 in Aachen had over 400 submissions, but that there was a good percentage of "junk" submissions.
As far as FST-TCS is concerned, the data provided by Madhavan Mukund are as follows:
Year Submissions
2007 135 Last year of LNCS
2008 117 First year of open access
2009 117
According to Madhavan, there was definitely no decline in quality of submissions, nor did they find any major change with distribution of papers, in terms of countries from where submissions were received.
Interestingly, Madhavan told me that the fraction of "junk" or "crank" submissions that do not even need to be reviewed reduced drastically between 2007 and 2008, so effectively the same number of serious papers were reviewed in each of these years.
At this time, I fail to see the added value of a commercial press when publishing the proceedings. We all know about conferences who distribute their call for papers only to those who pay for this or that subscription, ask for an unreasonable fee to participate, and then sell the proceedings. The result is that you are lucky if you get the call, if you can afford to attend, and otherwise pay for the subscription to read it. I also fail to see how this approach serves the general interests of the Scientific community, who makes a living with charity funds.---In my judgement, academic conferences ought take place in academic Departments, using local facilities. The proceedings ought to be published as a technical report, and be freely available to download as a well written PDF.
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