5 ms·
In many CS fields, workshops are the equivalent of conferences in other fields such as physics. It is important to judge each field on how the primary peer-revi
by mzl 13y ago
In many CS fields, workshops are the equivalent of conferences in other fields such as physics. It is important to judge each field on how the primary peer-review publication is done, not by some abstract rule that is supposed to be the only valid standard.
As a side note, I've heard people from the humanities scoff at physicists and their belief that journal papers are worth mentioning. The only real publications are books.
- p4bl0 13y agoActually, there are workshops in many CS fields which are selective (not as much as big conferences, that's for sure) and as serious as conferences or journal on peer-reviewing. The name "workshop" mainly means that the focus of the event is very specific and that the attendance is intended to be small so that real discussion with everyone can happen (contrary to big conferences where there are hundreds of people). For example my last published paper was submitted to a workshop [1] and I had four different detailed reviews, which had nothing to envy to big conferences reviews I could have got for it. This is an example of a not very selective (because it has little submissions) workshop but which is very serious and would most certainly reject any computer generated paper. Another example could be CHES [2] which is a workshop which grew big and is now the most prestigious conference (again, that means more prestigious than journals as in most CS fields) of its field (crypto hardware/side-channel security). In this case the name "workshop" sticks, but it is actually a full-fledged conference. Yet another example of a small workshop [3] (still in the same field) which does serious peer reviewing (I had three looong and detailed reviews when I submitted my paper there). Last year they selected 8 papers for presentation the day of the workshop, and 4 of them were selected by a journal [4] for subsequent publication of an extended version (and after another small round of reviews since there were already the reviews of the workshop which were deemed serious enough by the journal's editors). Maybe this is particular to the field of security (could it be due to the hacker subculture background it has in addition to its academic background?), but I guess my point is that it is not possible to generalize how the publication system works for all sciences, let alone for all academic research. [1] http://pprew.org/ http://pprew.org/ [2] http://www.chesworkshop.org/ http://www.chesworkshop.org/ [3] http://www.proofs-workshop.org/ http://www.proofs-workshop.org/ [4] http://link.springer.com/journal/13389 http://link.springer.com/journal/13389
- mzl 13y agoSorry, I was too general. I am very much aware that there are selective workshops in CS (I've been to some). I think I mostly wanted to point out some differences. My main wish was to convey that publishing venues are different, and the name of the venue is not always an indication of the type of publishing. Thanks for pointing out that I made the mistake I was trying to correct.
- p4bl0 13y agoActually this is what I understood from your previous post. I was trying to strengthen your point with concrete examples and thought the best way to do it was in a reply. Sorry if that was unclear!
- mzl 13y agoNo problem. It was one of my pet peeves when others (typically physicists) devalued the work of the computer scientists at the university I was at just because they believed that journals were the only acceptable form of publishing.