tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post116160002245439845..comments2024-03-18T17:27:11.613-05:00Comments on Computational Complexity: FOCS Day 1 and Business MeetingLance Fortnowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06752030912874378610noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-1161758864703755862006-10-25T01:47:00.000-05:002006-10-25T01:47:00.000-05:00The business meeting vote on prcoeedings compared ...The business meeting vote on prcoeedings compared a number of options of which the most relevant were:<BR/><BR/>* ststus quo (printed proceedings onsite, IEEE website - currently text searchable - several weeks later) <BR/>* printed proceedings + CD onsite, IEEE website later<BR/>* online posting + CD only (no printed proceedings, agnostic about IEEE website - not needed?)<BR/><BR/>There was a strong preference for one of the latter two (about equally divided) over the status quo. This was enough support that the TC will explore both the CD and online posting. (There is enough uncertainty about what we are able to do in this regard that it made no sense to make a binding decision at the meeting.)<BR/><BR/>Personally, I would love to add earlier online availability (a CD would be good, too) to the existing system rather than replace the printed proceedings.<BR/><BR/>As Janos said, the main reasons for the preference for elimination of printed proceedings included <BR/>* eliminate a lot of the delay between submission and the conference<BR/>* not having to carry a printed copy around the conference <BR/>* cost<BR/><BR/>From my budget experience the cost of printed proceedings is dwarfed by the cost of many other items. For STOC it was about $24/copy (which included all of the editorial costs, many of which we still might need to cover). The potential savings from aggressive budgeting on other items such as food, dwarfs this.<BR/><BR/>The reasons for having some early online posting include:<BR/>* broader availability and lower expense than the expensive IEEE website.<BR/>* not having to wait the weeks before papers become available online.<BR/><BR/>Some issues:<BR/>* Indexing, table of contents, front matter, page numbers, etc probably will need to be done anyway so the time between when final version is submitted and when the fully citable version is available may not be completely eliminated. (There are about 3 weeks that the pubisher allocates to these items in the usual schedule.)<BR/>* IEEE might object to online posting (copyright etc.) <BR/>* Printed proceedings may be required by some libraries.<BR/>* Some people prefer leafing through printed proceedings to reading papers online.<BR/>* Early online availability might reduce conference attendance.<BR/>* IEEE might not be as cheap as ACM in producing proceedings CDs. (ACM charges about $4/CD after one has paid for the printed run.)<BR/>* Who would be responsible for maintaining the server where the online versions would be posted? (The TC does not have such a server, nor does it have a budget to support one.)<BR/><BR/>It does seem worth exploring these options with IEEE. I think that the sentiment is very strong for having broader online access and a CD format, whatever we choose to do about printed proceedings.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-1161633616559661522006-10-23T15:00:00.000-05:002006-10-23T15:00:00.000-05:00Totally agree with the anonymous at 3. It is a bia...Totally agree with the anonymous at 3. <BR/><BR/>It is a biased sample. There may be external issues with electronic proceeding (like IEEE approval) but soliciting opinion electronically must be an easier task. Why move to a more complicated problem and not solve an easier self-contained (within the community) problem first.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-1161632344605922222006-10-23T14:39:00.000-05:002006-10-23T14:39:00.000-05:00Simply polling those who made it to FOCS clearly i...Simply polling those who made it to FOCS clearly introduces a bias--of course they would like to receive a nice big physical conference proceedings.<BR/><BR/>Meanwhile, those of us who couldn't make it are sitting out here in the cold, waiting to read the papers.<BR/><BR/>Physical copy or no, please make everything available online as soon as possible!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-1161615848661425432006-10-23T10:04:00.000-05:002006-10-23T10:04:00.000-05:00Seems that one consequence of submitting final ver...Seems that one consequence of submitting final versions of papers "perhaps as little as one week before the conference" is that if the paper contains an error, it will only be found by the authors at the last minute. It does happen that after papers get accepted to the conference and they are later found to be incorrect, they are withdrawn in time and not published (e.g. STOC 2006). But it would seem less likely with this new system that they would be found sufficiently in advance. But then again, what's a few more buggy papers?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-1161615667032332872006-10-23T10:01:00.000-05:002006-10-23T10:01:00.000-05:00This is a sermon that ought to be delivered to dea...<I>This is a sermon that ought to be delivered to deans, and to non-theory folks in CS.</I><BR/><BR/>Are the slides of Karp's talk available on line anywhere? I'd show them to my dean immediately if they were :-)Luca Acetohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01092671728833265127noreply@blogger.com