Database Publication Practices: Recap of SIGMOD 2004 Panel Zachary G. Ives University of Pennsylvania May 11, 2015 VLDB 2005, Trondheim, Norway
Observed Problems Conferences are being flooded: Lack of dis-incentives against not-ready-for-prime-time submissions Common practice to re-submit every rejection to the next conference – not always with major fixes Requires immense program committees Result has been a lack of quality control or consistency in reviews Not only frustrating, but can harm careers!
Possible Solutions Two classes: Make it harder to submit (or re-submit) papers limit number of submissions; break SIGMOD => VLDB => ICDE pipeline Or: streamline and improve the review process (see SIGMOD04 proceedings + SIGMOD Record summary, and VLDB05 conference proceedings for more details than I have time for here)
Ideas for Improving the Review Process Increase quality control and participation in reviews: Open reviewing on the Web More reviewers per paper Two-tier PCs (as with ICDE) Mandatory physical PC meetings Reviewer evaluations Hybridize journals (more effective reviews) and conferences (prestige & visibility): “Institutional memory” (opt-in) for borderline rejections in conferences – similar to journals’ consistent reviewers + rebuttal Accelerated journal reviews, mechanisms for prestige Merging of journals and conferences: use the conference as a forum for presenting the most interesting papers from the past year