Re: Cost and access (Was Re: [ESWC 2015] First Call for Paper)

On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 4:53 PM, Gray, Alasdair <A.J.G.Gray@hw.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> On 7 Oct 2014, at 15:31, Phillip Lord <phillip.lord@newcastle.ac.uk>
>  wrote:
>
> "Gray, Alasdair" <A.J.G.Gray@hw.ac.uk> writes:
>
> This is true. So, if the reason that ESWC and ISWC only accept papers in
> PDF is because we need LNCS for tenure and that they will only take PDF,
> it would be good to have a public statement about this.
>
>
> I think PDF is only at the submission stage. For camera ready the source
> file
> (s) - latex or word - are required.
>
>
> Again, I'd like to know for sure.
>
>
> For ISWC this year, it was certainly the case that I needed to submit the
> latex for the camera ready version.

This has been the case for quite a few years now.

>
> This presumably is for Springer/conference organisers to be able to get all
> the appropriate metadata that they add for indexing.

Yes, they make sure that references to other publications in their
volumes are in good shape (i.e. they actually fix them), they add
copyrights, page numbering, running titles, and so on. I imagine all
of this gets harder when the number of alternative submission formats
increases.

But Springer aside, I remember perfectly well how much work I had to
do as the PC/proceedings editor for a (fairly small, ~30 camera-ready
papers) conference before submitting the volume to Springer. I nearly
killed myself fixing crippled sources in LaTeX and Word (i.e. fixing
the presentation infelicities and failures to conform to the
template). Dealing with two formats was bad enough and the thought of
another, alternative one -- no matter how Webby it is or how much I
like it personally -- would make me want to die. And there's no reason
to believe that presentation in HTML would be any better than in
latex/word.

So, while I see the sense in dogfooding in this case (and I also
understand why people want Webby formats for papers), I'm be a bit
concerned about the arguments like "just let me use my fav't Web
format and keep using PDF for yourself". They may underestimate the
efforts that someone else needs to invest to turn submissions, even
camera-readies, into publishable material.

Anyways, my two cents,
Pavel

>
>
> Also in this brave new world, how would the length of a submission be
> determined?
>
>
> There are lots of alternative measures. Word limits would work.
>
> Page based limits are pretty daft anyway. I am sure that you, like I,
> have do some strange \baselineskip fiddling or shrunk a figure to 99,
> then 98, then 97% until it finally fits, although it isn't entirely
> visible any more. Word-limits avoid this.
>
> For myself, I would drop word limits as well, and specify a reading time
> of around 30 minutes. I have certainly gone through papers in the past
> and made them less readable so that they fit within the page limit. Ever
> removed all your adjectives? What about replacing conjunctions with
> punctuation? If the reviewers get bored ploughing through an overly long
> paper, they just send a review with tl;dr.
>
>
> We should certainly be doing what we can to make the message of our papers
> more accessible for future researchers. Remember that reviewers are no
> different from other researchers, although they do have the task of
> witnessing that the contribution of the paper is accurate. To this end, we
> should be making use of technology that enables the papers to be read in the
> readers preferred format, without losing the meaning intended by the author.
>
> Grappling around with page limits is a complete waste of time, particularly
> with all the tricks that authors use to trick they system.
>
> Alasdair
>
> One of the interesting thing about innovating with the publication
> process is that it helps to find out what about a scientific paper we
> actually care about and what are just hang overs from our past.
>
> Phil
>
>
>
> Alasdair J G Gray
> Lecturer in Computer Science, Heriot-Watt University, UK.
> Email: A.J.G.Gray@hw.ac.uk
> Web: http://www.alasdairjggray.co.uk
> ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5711-4872
> Telephone: +44 131 451 3429
> Twitter: @gray_alasdair
>
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Received on Tuesday, 7 October 2014 15:16:31 UTC