NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/comp/ai/4965

Text File | 1993-01-22 | 2.7 KB | 57 lines

Newsgroups: comp.ai
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From: [e-mail] (Afzal Ballim)
Subject: Re: Anonymous Schmemonymous (Was IJCAI Reviewing)
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail]
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Organization: University of Geneva, Switzerland
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 09:01:23 GMT
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In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Jordan B Pollack) writes:
|>
|> This discussion over the syntax of reviewing ignores the real problem
|> for IJCAI and AAAI, which is that their "significance" is quite at
|> odds with short and shallow reviewing cycles.
|> .
|>  .
|> I move that starting, say, in 1995 we communally agree that the AI
|> conferences won't count as major publications anymore, and in order to
|> make it happen we drastically INCREASE their rate of acceptance to
|> 50%, perhaps by getting rid of double reviews and resolution
|> committees, thus lowering the perceived quality and importance of a
|> citation there by the year 2000.
|>
|> Jordan Pollack                            Assistant Professor

Now there's a good idea. As a community we are still acting like we are
working in a fledgling subject, placing far too much emphasis on conferences
and not enough on journals. As Jordan points out, there are now many AI
related journals, some of whom are struggling to get good publications.

If we look at more mature disciplines, there conferences have little or
no peer-review before-hand. It is from the reaction to the presentation
that the author's judge there good papers from the bad, and know which
to pursue.

If you consider the time necessary to prepare a paper for AAAI/IJCAI
if you want a good chance of acceptance, that is equivalent in many cases
to the time spent in preparing a short journal article (i.e., not much
more time and you have the journal article).

The only problem with placing emphasis on journals, of course, is the slow
turnaround time. However, with electronic communication, etc., some of
the bottle-necks there can be reduced (in effect, reviewing + proof-reading
end up being the final bottlenecks).

So are we ready to treat conferences as proving-grounds rather than
proved-ground?

--
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