PACM

I serve on the conference committee of the ACM publications board and we've had extensive discussions on the question of the role of journals in publication venues. A number of CS conferences, though notably not in TCS, are moving to a hybrid publication model where their conference presentations make their way into refereed journal papers. One of our proposals is the creating of a specific venue for these activities, a new Proceedings of the ACM. In the September CACM,  Joseph Konstan and Jack Davidson lay out this proposal, with pros and cons by Kathryn McKinley and David Rosenblum respectively. The community (that means you) is being asked to give their input.

The theory model has not significantly changed since I was a student. Papers submitted to a conference get reviewed but not refereed, the proofs read over usually just enough to feel confident that the theorem is likely correct. Once authors started submitting electronically they could submit entire proofs, though often in an appendix the program committee is not required to read.

The papers appear in a proceedings and to quote from the STOC proceedings preface

The submissions were not refereed, and many of these papers represent reports of continuing research. It is expected that most of them will appear in a more polished and complete form in scientific journals.

A small select number of papers from a conference are invited to a special issue of a journal where they do go through the full referee process. Some, but not most, of the other papers get submitted to journals directly. We don't have the proper incentives for authors to produce a journal version with full and complete proofs.

Should theory conferences move towards a more hybrid or PACM type of model? I'd had several debates with my fellow theorists many of whom feel the advantages of requiring journal-level papers get outweighed by the extra effort and time required by the authors and the reviewers.