Vviewpoints
DOI: 10.1145/1536616.1536631
Viewpoint
time for computer
science to Grow Up
As the computer science field has evolved, so should the methods
for disseminating computing research results.
UnliKe eVeRy otHeR academic field, computer science uses conferences rather than journals as the main publication venue. While
this made sense for a young discipline, our field has matured and the
conference model has fractured the
discipline and skewered it toward
short-term, deadline-driven research.
Computer science should refocus
the conference system on its primary
purpose of bringing researchers together. We should use archive sites as
the main method of quick paper dissemination and the journal system as
the vehicle for advancing researchers’
reputations.
In his May 2009 Communications
Editor’s Letter,
2 Moshe Vardi challenged the computer science community to rethink the major publication role conferences play in
computer science. Here, I continue
that discussion and strongly argue
that the computer science field,
now more than a half-century old,
needs to adapt to a conference and
journal model that has worked
well for all other academic fields.
Why do we hold conferences?
To rate publications and research- ˲
ers.
To disseminate new research re- ˲
sults and ideas.
To network, gossip, and recruit. ˲
To discuss controversial issues in ˲
the community.
The de facto main role of computer
science conferences is the first item:
rating papers and people. When we
judge candidates for an academic position, we first check the quality and
quantity of the conferences where
their work has appeared. The current
climate of conferences and program
committees often leads to rather arbitrary decisions even though these
choices can have a great impact particularly on researchers early in their
academic careers.
But even worse, the focus on using
conferences to rate papers has led to
a great growth in the number of meetings. Most researchers don’t have the
time and/or money to travel to conferences where they do not have a paper.
This greatly affects the other roles, as
conferences no longer bring the community together and thus we are only
disseminating, networking, and discussing with a tiny subset of the community. Other academic fields leave
rating papers and researchers to academic journals, where one can have a
more lengthy and detailed reviews of
submissions. This leaves conferences
to act as a broad forum and bring their
communities together.
A short history of cs conferences
The growth of computers in the 1950s
led nearly every major university to develop a strong computer science discipline over the next few decades. As a
new field, computer science was free
to experiment with novel approaches
to publication not hampered by long
traditions in more established scientific and engineering communities.
Computer science came of age in the
jet age where the time spent traveling
to a conference no longer dominated
the time spent at the conference itself.
The quick development of this new
field required rapid review and distribution of results. So the conference
system quickly developed, serving the
multiple purposes of the distribution
of papers through proceedings, presentations, a stamp of approval, and
bringing the community together.
With the possible exception of
Journal of the ACM, journals in computer
science have not received the prestige
levels that conferences do. Only a fraction of conference papers eventually
get published in polished and extended form in a journal. Some universities
insist on journal papers for promotion
and tenure but for the most part researchers feel they have little incentive
for the effort of a journal submission.
As the field went through dramatic
growth in the 1980s we started to see
a shift in conferences. The major CS
conferences could no longer accept
most qualified research papers. Not
only did these conferences raise the
bar on acceptance but for the papers
on the margin a preference for certain
subareas emerged. Researchers from
the top CS departments dominated
the program committees and, not nec-
