Database Publication Practices:Recap of SIGMOD 2004 Panel

Zachary G. IvesUniversity of Pennsylvania

April 18, 2023VLDB 2005, Trondheim, Norway

Observed Problems

Conferences are being flooded: Lack of dis-incentives against not-ready-for-

prime-time submissions Common practice to re-submit every rejection

to the next conference – not always with major fixes

Requires immense program committees Result has been a lack of quality control or

consistency in reviews Not only frustrating, but can harm careers!

Possible Solutions

Two classes: Make it harder to submit (or re-submit) papers

limit number of submissions; break SIGMOD => VLDB => ICDE pipeline

Or: streamline and improve the review process

(see SIGMOD04 proceedings + SIGMOD Record summary, and VLDB05 conference proceedings for more details than I have time for here)

Ideas for Improving the Review Process

Increase quality control and participation in reviews: Open reviewing on the Web More reviewers per paper Two-tier PCs (as with ICDE) Mandatory physical PC meetings Reviewer evaluations

Hybridize journals (more effective reviews) and conferences (prestige & visibility): “Institutional memory” (opt-in) for borderline rejections in

conferences – similar to journals’ consistent reviewers + rebuttal

Accelerated journal reviews, mechanisms for prestige Merging of journals and conferences: use the conference as a

forum for presenting the most interesting papers from the past year