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I prefer the CS model in some ways, but there are issues. * The review process for conferences is necessarily compressed relative to journals. This usually low

I prefer the CS model in some ways, but there are issues. * The review process for conferences is necessarily compressed relative to journals. This usually lowers the quality of reviews and also limits paper length. * It is difficult to "grow" a highly selective conference, so the acceptance rate is usually quite high. This means that archaic tenure review committees evaluating on where you publish instead of what you publish will ascribe little weight to your conference papers. If people are not submitting their best work to a conference, it can't afford to be overly selective. This is much the same problem that new journals have, but worse because conferences usually have to reach a critical number of people to be considered a success.

scott_s 15y ago
The conference versus journal issue is orthogonal to professional society versus for-profit entity, since the ACM and IEEE have journals. This means that archaic tenure review committees evaluating on where you publish instead of what you publish will ascribe little weight to your conference papers. Not in CS, in my experience. People in CS know which are the highly selective (what I have always heard called "top tier") conferences. In my experience in industry and academia, conferences are our primary consideration and journals are an afterthought. (Sometimes not even a thought.) The CRA memo is from 1999. I think most people have caught on by now.
- jedbrown 15y ago
  That is specific to CS. I have one foot in CS, but the other two feet are in applied mathematics and natural sciences where conferences are not especially attractive publications venues.
  - scott_s 15y ago
    Yes, I agree, it is specific to CS - if you re-read my posts, I think you'll find that I prefaced everything with that qualifier. I have friends in the hard sciences, and we sometimes talk about how the publishing models are quite different.

scott_s 15y ago

The conference versus journal issue is orthogonal to professional society versus for-profit entity, since the ACM and IEEE have journals. This means that archaic tenure review committees evaluating on where you publish instead of what you publish will ascribe little weight to your conference papers. Not in CS, in my experience. People in CS know which are the highly selective (what I have always heard called "top tier") conferences. In my experience in industry and academia, conferences are our primary consideration and journals are an afterthought. (Sometimes not even a thought.) The CRA memo is from 1999. I think most people have caught on by now.

jedbrown 15y ago
That is specific to CS. I have one foot in CS, but the other two feet are in applied mathematics and natural sciences where conferences are not especially attractive publications venues.
- scott_s 15y ago
  Yes, I agree, it is specific to CS - if you re-read my posts, I think you'll find that I prefaced everything with that qualifier. I have friends in the hard sciences, and we sometimes talk about how the publishing models are quite different.