5 ms·

If I'm dreaming, the ideal outcome of this would be that Springer and IEEE decide to actually apply some kind of scrutiny to the conferences whose proceedings t

by mjn 13y ago

If I'm dreaming, the ideal outcome of this would be that Springer and IEEE decide to actually apply some kind of scrutiny to the conferences whose proceedings they publish under their names. It's a pretty poorly kept secret that, while they publish some stuff that's top work in several fields, they also publish some total crap that is so bad it's inconceivable someone actually competent has spent even 20 minutes vetting it. But they seem not to care a lot. They (especially the IEEE) are coasting on a name produced through some good work over the years. Much of that reputation is well deserved, but you can only shove so much junk into IEEE Xplore before it loses the cachet it built up in previous years. If they don't shape up, it will reduce the attractiveness of IEEE and Springer for people publishing actually good work as well. Why affiliate your legitimate conference with publishers who have no quality control? The IEEE in particular is a nonprofit organization which is supposed to have a mission to advance engineering, so it's particularly problematic that it wouldn't be doing a better job.

p4bl0 13y ago
> If I'm dreaming, the ideal outcome of this would be that Springer and IEEE decide to actually apply some kind of scrutiny to the conferences whose proceedings they publish under their names. I'm sorry to break it to you but that won't happen. It would totally destroy the awfully good business model they have, which is one of the best engineered fraud ever. Right now the situation is: - Researchers, oh which almost 100% are paid by public money, do research and write their results in papers which they submit to journals / conferences / workshops. - If the targeted journal / conference / workshop want to do peer review, their editors / committee is in charge of distributing the load, those people also are researchers (also close to 100% paid by public money). - They offload the reviewing work to other researchers who hopefully are competent on the subject of the papers. Again, public money since the reviews are seen (and I think it's normal) as a normal part of the researchers' job. - The selected papers are given to the publishers and often their copyright too. - The publishers now put the papers online, put a paywall it front of them, and make private profits $$$$. - On top of that, not many people do buy individual papers, most papers are rented by academic institutions for colossal amount of money (again, public money!). I'm really not kidding when I say "colossal".
- mjn 13y ago
  I can see that narrative with Springer, but the IEEE is a nonprofit, the main professional society for large areas of computer & electrical engineering. It's not necessarily the best-run nonprofit, but they aren't trying to pump up a stock price or give an ROI to investors or anything. They do need some revenue to pay for their ongoing operations, but in theory they should also be very interested in ensuring that revenue-generating operations don't compromise their main mission and reputation (which is the reason to raise revenue in the first place). I think part of it is that historically the IEEE has wanted to be relatively open to new fields of research, so if you have a few professors willing to vouch for a new conference, the IEEE is willing to sponsor it and publish the proceedings. It's quite decentralized and any of the various "societies" and "interest groups" within the IEEE can sponsor a conference without central approval... and it's also fairly easy to start a new interest group. That system depends on most active IEEE members being legitimate researchers, though, who are in good faith trying to put on real conferences. If that's true, it makes sense for the approval policy to be relatively permissive. But some people have been taking advantage of this and producing vanity conferences, so this system probably needs to be tightened. Either the IEEE needs to exercise more control over conference approval, or they need to be more diligent in kicking out people who abuse the trust of the permissive system. The ACM (the main professional society for computer scientists) is somewhat more conservative about sponsoring new conferences, though that does occasionally produce the opposite problem where it takes a lot of legwork (and sometimes politicking) to get a new one accepted.
  - p4bl0 13y ago
    I sincerely hope you are right. However, as pointed out in other comments, most researchers know what are the good and bad venues in their particular fields. This means that in reality, who is the publisher of a journal or of the proceedings of a conference matters less than the reputation of the conference or journal itself (sadly, that may be less true when it comes to recruitment in academia) which is given by the quality of the papers published in there. If I had to chose fights I guess it would be for the generalization gold open access and for the end of bibliometrics before trying to get these publishers more involved in what they publish (since we don't really need them anymore).

by mjn 13y ago

p4bl0 13y ago

> If I'm dreaming, the ideal outcome of this would be that Springer and IEEE decide to actually apply some kind of scrutiny to the conferences whose proceedings they publish under their names. I'm sorry to break it to you but that won't happen. It would totally destroy the awfully good business model they have, which is one of the best engineered fraud ever. Right now the situation is: - Researchers, oh which almost 100% are paid by public money, do research and write their results in papers which they submit to journals / conferences / workshops. - If the targeted journal / conference / workshop want to do peer review, their editors / committee is in charge of distributing the load, those people also are researchers (also close to 100% paid by public money). - They offload the reviewing work to other researchers who hopefully are competent on the subject of the papers. Again, public money since the reviews are seen (and I think it's normal) as a normal part of the researchers' job. - The selected papers are given to the publishers and often their copyright too. - The publishers now put the papers online, put a paywall it front of them, and make private profits $$$$. - On top of that, not many people do buy individual papers, most papers are rented by academic institutions for colossal amount of money (again, public money!). I'm really not kidding when I say "colossal".

mjn 13y ago
I can see that narrative with Springer, but the IEEE is a nonprofit, the main professional society for large areas of computer & electrical engineering. It's not necessarily the best-run nonprofit, but they aren't trying to pump up a stock price or give an ROI to investors or anything. They do need some revenue to pay for their ongoing operations, but in theory they should also be very interested in ensuring that revenue-generating operations don't compromise their main mission and reputation (which is the reason to raise revenue in the first place). I think part of it is that historically the IEEE has wanted to be relatively open to new fields of research, so if you have a few professors willing to vouch for a new conference, the IEEE is willing to sponsor it and publish the proceedings. It's quite decentralized and any of the various "societies" and "interest groups" within the IEEE can sponsor a conference without central approval... and it's also fairly easy to start a new interest group. That system depends on most active IEEE members being legitimate researchers, though, who are in good faith trying to put on real conferences. If that's true, it makes sense for the approval policy to be relatively permissive. But some people have been taking advantage of this and producing vanity conferences, so this system probably needs to be tightened. Either the IEEE needs to exercise more control over conference approval, or they need to be more diligent in kicking out people who abuse the trust of the permissive system. The ACM (the main professional society for computer scientists) is somewhat more conservative about sponsoring new conferences, though that does occasionally produce the opposite problem where it takes a lot of legwork (and sometimes politicking) to get a new one accepted.
- p4bl0 13y ago
  I sincerely hope you are right. However, as pointed out in other comments, most researchers know what are the good and bad venues in their particular fields. This means that in reality, who is the publisher of a journal or of the proceedings of a conference matters less than the reputation of the conference or journal itself (sadly, that may be less true when it comes to recruitment in academia) which is given by the quality of the papers published in there. If I had to chose fights I guess it would be for the generalization gold open access and for the end of bibliometrics before trying to get these publishers more involved in what they publish (since we don't really need them anymore).