Are Computer Science conferences (too) closed communities?

by jordicabot | Oct 1, 2018 | publishing, Research Rants

In this Communications of the ACM column we discuss whether research conferences in computer science are too close to new members trying to join the ranks, especially when these new members try to enter the community “alone” (i.e. not publishing together...

Never cite workshop papers

by jordicabot | Mar 21, 2017 | evaluating research, publishing, Research Rants

I have the feeling that more and more people cite workshop papers to sustain their claims. As if workshop papers were peer-reviewed. They are not. At most, they are “peer-filtered” (meaning that the PC of the workshop checked the work to make sure authors...

An email I got with all the wrong reasons to publish a paper

by jordicabot | Nov 27, 2014 | funny, publishing, Research Rants

This didn’t happen to a fried (or a friend of a friend…). This happened to me. I’m just removing personal details of the person that sent the email (“hate the deed, not the doer” or whatever works as the English translation of the Spanish...

Where am I supposed to submit complete research works?

by jordicabot | Nov 13, 2014 | publishing, Research Rants

The other day we tried to submit a journal paper summarizing the PhD work of one of my students. He had published a couple of conference papers and one workshop paper covering specific parts of his work and, after the PhD, he wanted to write a journal paper presenting...

Scientists’ (sad) behaviour as seen by Team Geek book

by jordicabot | Sep 5, 2014 | doing research, publishing, Research Rants

I’m really enjoying the book Team Geek: A Software Developer’s Guide to Working Well with Others and I strongly recommend it to any software developer out there but that´s not why I’m mentioning here. I’m doing it because it includes a...

What stats would you like to know for every conference?

by jordicabot | Aug 4, 2014 | organization, publishing, Research Rants

In the opening session of any conference, the PC Chairs give a brief presentation of the conference. This typically includes informing about the number of abstracts and full papers submitted, the number of papers accepted, the corresponding acceptance rate and some...