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It's even more infuriating to work in a country where the rules for decisions (tenure, periodical assessments, etc) are common between disciplines, so non-journ

It's even more infuriating to work in a country where the rules for decisions (tenure, periodical assessments, etc) are common between disciplines, so non-journal papers are worth around zero, and your whole subfield pivots around conferences... Common decision in my career: what do I prefer for this paper? That people actually read and cite it, or that it counts for tenure and other career stuff? Many colleagues I know just change subfield, or pivot toward multidisciplinary work (e.g. with doctors, to be able to send it to medicine journals) just to avoid this.

madcaptenor 9y ago
Former academic mathematician here. The American Mathematical Society has made periodic statements (2004: http://www.ams.org/profession/leaders/culture/CultureStatement04.pdf http://www.ams.org/profession/leaders/culture/CultureStateme... . 2009: https://www.ams.org/profession/leaders/culture/CultureStatement09.pdf https://www.ams.org/profession/leaders/culture/CultureStatem...) basically saying that in math, author order is generally alphabetical, as opposed to the lab sciences where lots of information is encoded in the order of the authors. (I'm not sure how author order works in CS.) I believe the purpose of this statement is to submit it with cases for hiring, promotion, tenure, etc. where non-mathematicians will be evaluating mathematicians. I wonder if some professional society has made an equivalent "conferences count like journals in CS" statement.
- madcaptenor 9y ago
  Maybe see for example https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~mernst/advice/conferences-vs-journals.html https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~mernst/advice/conferences-v... and the links therein.
- Al-Khwarizmi 9y ago
  I have searched for this in the past and I haven't seen any official professional statement, which by the way, is a pity. I have seen people submit personal letters from prestigious professors stating it instead. In my view, the CS community is somewhat US-centric in this respect... it's not a huge problem for US professors (many of them publish exclusively or almost exclusively in conferences and they seem to be fine) so not much is done, unfortunately.

madcaptenor 9y ago

Former academic mathematician here. The American Mathematical Society has made periodic statements (2004: http://www.ams.org/profession/leaders/culture/CultureStatement04.pdf http://www.ams.org/profession/leaders/culture/CultureStateme... . 2009: https://www.ams.org/profession/leaders/culture/CultureStatement09.pdf https://www.ams.org/profession/leaders/culture/CultureStatem...) basically saying that in math, author order is generally alphabetical, as opposed to the lab sciences where lots of information is encoded in the order of the authors. (I'm not sure how author order works in CS.) I believe the purpose of this statement is to submit it with cases for hiring, promotion, tenure, etc. where non-mathematicians will be evaluating mathematicians. I wonder if some professional society has made an equivalent "conferences count like journals in CS" statement.

madcaptenor 9y ago
Maybe see for example https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~mernst/advice/conferences-vs-journals.html https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~mernst/advice/conferences-v... and the links therein.
Al-Khwarizmi 9y ago
I have searched for this in the past and I haven't seen any official professional statement, which by the way, is a pity. I have seen people submit personal letters from prestigious professors stating it instead. In my view, the CS community is somewhat US-centric in this respect... it's not a huge problem for US professors (many of them publish exclusively or almost exclusively in conferences and they seem to be fine) so not much is done, unfortunately.