NSF-CRI'07 Breakout Session
June 4, 2007
How should we/NSF value the
various publication venues in Computing?
Abstract
In the evaluation both of
tenure dossiers and of NSF proposals, we academics are asked to weigh
the significance of the products of research---often somewhat removed
from our own area of expertise. As technology alters the media of
publication, more venues become available. But as things change, the
problems of evaluation remains the same. A critical question that should
be revisited is how we should evaluate a publication and its venue.
Where should we tell our students to publish? Possible answers: Citation
counts, for example by: ISI/Thomson Science Citation Index? ACM or IEEE
DL? Google Scholar? Citeseer? Journal (refereed with author/editor
conversation and without time limit)? Publisher's imprimatur? Which
publisher? Permanent archive with stewardship by librarians. Conference
(with minimal conversation and with time limit)? Ratio of accepted
papers to submissions. Census of registrants at the conference? Relative
to number of parallel sessions? Length of presentation? Permanently
archived. Workshops (small audience) versus flagship conference (big
audience)? Permanently archived? Presence in Digital Libraries? (Whose?)
Crawled by search engines? (Whose?) Indexed by citation indices?
(Whose?) Digital Object Identifier? Self-commented servers (Self-blogging
online venues like Ginsparg servers.) Technical Reports. Bathroom walls.
Session Leader and Moderator:
David Wise, Indiana University |