Re: [CFP] Call for Papers ESWC 2019

Dear Sarven, 

Thank you for your email and comments. 
We will discuss them among the organisers of ESWC and come back with feedback. 
As far as I understood there is a long term contract with Springer regarding ESWC. Anyway, we will take your comments into account and try to provide constructive feedback.

Regards and cheers,
Agnieszka

> Wiadomość napisana przez Sarven Capadisli <info@csarven.ca> w dniu 18.09.2018, o godz. 12:47:
> 
> To whom it may concern,
> 
> Some will certainly view the following as unwarranted criticism, but I
> would argue that it is about continuous improvement and raising
> awareness based on societal and technical expectations. All feedback is
> integral. Treat the following as you see fit. I come in peace (mostly).
> 
> On 2018-09-08 15:09, Agnieszka Ławrynowicz wrote:
>> *ESWC will not accept papers that, at the time of submission, are under
>> review for or have already been published in or accepted for publication
>> in a journal, another conference, or another ESWC track.* The conference
>> organizers may share information on submissions with other venues to
>> ensure that this rule is not violated.
> 
> Please indicate:
> 
> * the entities it may, planning to, or has shared data with, as well as
> a notification at the time of sharing.
> 
> * the data that's shared and under which conditions.
> 
>> The proceedings of this conference will be published in Springer’s
>> Lecture Notes in Computer Science series. 
> 
> That's too bad for the community given that researchers are given two
> options to have their work be part of the scholarly record:
> 
> * authors are required to sign away exclusive rights to Springer, and
> articles become closed access / paywalled in that only subscribing
> entities or pay-per-view can get to the content.
> 
> * authors can take the Open Access option with Article Processing
> Charges (APC).. about 38 EUR / page + taxes last time I checked. The
> work is in theory readable by anyone. Keep in mind that Springer doesn't
> particularly want such documents to be indexed eg. some archive services
> respect the robots.txt.
> 
> In either of those cases, only the privileged researchers are able to
> access the content or are able to publish in an "open" way.
> 
> Granted, online publishing is not free. Naturally there are costs to put
> something out there and have it stick around long time. Aside: if you
> don't have a personal domain and hosting, stop reading this email and
> take care of that now.
> 
> Springer doesn't promise that a representation of a scholarly record
> will not change either. I've seen it changed and have documented. I've
> also made aware of cases where Springer's manuscript editors have made
> decisions without the authors' consent eg. changing affiliation,
> changing article's content. Changes even happen after the publication
> and that's a major no-no as far as what's expected of a scholarly
> record. Springer has broken this legal or social "promise" - I would
> argue that they are unfit for scholarly publishing on that point alone.
> Beware with the OA option in that, authors are supposed to hold on to
> the copyright of their work, but at least in one case (of mine) they've
> somehow managed to assign the copyright to themselves. It took them a
> week to correct the issue on their website. Yes, they literally had one
> job. One job.
> 
>> - Papers must not exceed 15 pages (including references). Papers that
>> exceed the page limit will be rejected without review.
> 
> Yikes!
> 
> Note to junior researchers: I haven't seen this strongly enforced. It is
> a ballpark length - for whatever it is worth, ie. mostly to have some
> (arbitrary) uniformity for articles and peer-review process. The SW
> venues tend to be flexible about the length (read: look the other way
> for the time being, even if it is a few pages over, and slap your hand
> gently until camera-ready). If I remember correctly, Springer doesn't
> particularly care if ends up being a bit over either but they might
> whine about it or ask you to shorten (or cough up cash?)
> 
> I've seen abstracts break the "official" LNCS requirements ("at least 70
> and at most 150 words"), and still they are not rejected without review.
> When it was brought up to PC Chairs, I was told along the lines of
> "C'mon Sarven...". That wasn't at all about punishing authors, but to
> test if they actually meant and respected the social agreement they've
> put forward.
> 
> So, I'd suggest to treat that as a general guideline. In the event a
> venue rejects your work because your research article leaked into page
> 16 or abstract doesn't fit a particular dimension, or some other obscure
> reason, that is a good time as any to look into non-print-centric venues
> to communicate your work on Semantic "Web" using *Web-centric* methods.
> Tell the venue to get real in the meantime.
> 
>> - All research submissions must be in English.
> 
> Ack that's kind of a de facto standard, and there are (dis)advantages
> associated to that. We don't have to dwell on that. Just out of
> curiosity, have you checked with reviewers skills and interest?
> 
>> - Submissions must be either in PDF or in HTML, formatted in the style
>> of the Springer Publications format for Lecture Notes in Computer
>> Science (LNCS). For details on the LNCS style, see Springer’s Author
>> Instructions
>> <https://www.springer.com/us/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-guidelines> 
>> For HTML submission guidance, see the HTML submission guide
>> <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nvM3yOQkQrSXiotSeMHEIjP42Xitlp6X_a0cQeFJthc/edit?usp=sharing>.
>> - We encourage embedding metadata in the PDF/HTML to provide a machine
>> readable link from the paper to the resource.
> 
> There are a number of issued here that are intertwined. I'll try to
> unpack for those unfamiliar:
> 
> I remain excited that ESWC (as well as ISWC) is keeping the Web-centric
> path open and raising its awareness for a few years now, and can only
> encourage everyone and help wherever possible to push it even further.
> We got this.
> 
> Please note some clarifications on the current guidelines (hopefully
> they'll be updated on the website soon):
> 
> * the Linked Open Research Cloud ( https://linkedresearch.org/cloud ) is
> for everyone. It doesn't require a particular application to interact
> with. Just follow the basic process to send a notification about your
> article or review.
> 
> The next point is perhaps on a personal note:
> 
> * if you self-publish/archive your work (eg. at your personal website,
> institution, archive) prior to legally engaging with Springer, their
> self-archiving policy doesn't apply. Publish your work at you see fit
> (eg formatting, location, license) and then send a version that fulfils
> ESWC's requirements. If you go through the ESWC/Springer process,
> naturally need to meet their requirements. However, that original
> version that you self-published/archived, that's yours. No one can touch
> that or demand any changes. Check with your legal know-how team if
> you're in doubt or would like to learn more.
> 
> As for camera-ready, that's still Springer's print-centric workflow
> unfortunately. But it really doesn't matter given the big picture. Your
> HTML version was never intended for them to begin with. It was always a
> gateway to something much more important.
> 
> One fundamental reason for the HTML push over the years wasn't because
> of the format itself but what it entails. Which brings me to:
> 
> Researchers and labs in the SW community increasingly improve their
> practice to adopt Web-centric methods to communicate their knowledge
> with the rest of the world. There are different affordances as to what
> and how a researcher can potentially communicate in contrast to what a
> third-party company offers. A third-party will always pose as a barrier,
> a limit to freedom of expression, whether it is in the form of article's
> accessibility, views or interactions; as well as constraints on
> exercising one's autonomy or ownership of their contributions eg. where
> they can publish their knowledge, who can access it and under what
> conditions, have it be part of the global scholarly record and so on.
> 
> Please note that "Self-publishing" doesn't necessarily mean that such
> work automatically meets a certain quality-check and gets certified by
> the community. Registration (ie existence of something) and
> certification are orthogonal functions. We certainly want both without
> having to compromise on the location or ownership of the content.
> 
> Keep in mind that the SW community does reviewing for free. The
> publisher doesn't pay anyone obviously. Why would they when we are
> willing to hand everything over on a silver platter?
> 
> Ask the ESWC/ISWC.. organisers or the steering committee as to what the
> agreements are with Springer, what the budgets are.. why the conference
> registrations are so high.
> 
> Ask your librarian or institution how much they pay for the
> subscriptions. I'll save you some time: you're not going to get a
> complete and accurate answer. The scholarly community pays one way or
> another.
> 
> Ask your colleagues whether it would be possible to continue with your
> research communication without paying a third-party publisher. In most
> cases, you can drop them. This sort of a thing is already a nation-wide
> thing in Germany and Sweden re Elsevier. More countries are leaning
> towards this.
> 
> There was (maybe still is) possibility that if your article is
> peer-reviewed and accepted, it could be presented as an "invited talk"
> without it being in the proceedings. Now I understand that this is not
> something researchers may opt for if possible, but something to consider
> and maybe kindly ask the ESWC for the possibility.
> 
> Ultimately what some of us want:
> 
> * ESWC community stops their business with Springer (or any for-profit
> third-party "publishing" service provider)
> 
> * ESWC (as well as ISWC, The Web Conf, Semantic Journal... with their
> respective "publishers") self-operates ie. everything as usual re
> peer-reviews and certification, but looks into enabling
> self-publishing/archiving, alongside investing towards dedicated
> archiving (or even through on-demand services). CEUR-WS.org is one of
> many possibilities that can address the community's needs.
> 
>> - Authors of accepted papers will be required to provide semantic
>> annotations for the abstract of their submission, which will be made
>> available on the conference web site. Details will be provided at the
>> time of acceptance.
> 
> Include the URL of your self-published/archived ("preprint") in your
> abstract so that a free/open copy can be easily discovered for those
> coming across the publisher's versions. Examples:
> 
> * Paywalled: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-25639-9_5
> * Open Access:
> https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-60131-1_33
> 
> I regret both publications for different reasons, but perhaps the OA
> publication (with APC) even more so because we had to pay extra on top
> of what our institutions were paying for the subscription. Acknowledged
> that every case differs, but something for everyone to keep in mind.
> What are the consequences when you go through a third-party?
> 
>> - Accepted papers will be distributed to conference attendees and also
>> published by Springer in the printed conference proceedings, as part of
>> the Lecture Notes in Computer Science series.
> 
> If/when Springer makes the publications available on their website for a
> brief period of time before going closed access, use archive services
> (archive.is, perma.cc, ..) to make a snapshot. Internet Archive is
> polite about a server's robots.txt, so unfortunately it doesn't get
> through but I think there are other ways any way - I'm sure you can
> figure that out ;)
> 
>> - At least one author of each accepted paper must register for the
>> conference and present the paper there.
> 
> Some can't legally or physically participate. Please indicate if
> 
>> Open and Transparent Review Policy
> 
> All great! I'm really glad to see this continue.
> 
> 
> We want research contributions to be:
> 
> * registered: a persistent URI leading to a free and open accessible
> location of the full content
> 
> * certified: peer-reviewed and other forms of quality-control and
> confirmations from the community
> 
> * archived: at trusted locations
> 
> .. and naturally findable/discoverable, accessible, shareable and so on.
> 
> Along with that, we want to take the opportunity to practice the things
> that the SW research community came up with - that's part of the HTML
> being the "gateway" format, but it is actually about democratising
> scholarly information as Linked Data, decentralisation, and building and
> using interoperable applications to do cool stuff with it. Go on and use
> the fancy tech in your research contributions, whether it is an article,
> review, data, or anything for that matter.
> 
> None of that requires a third-party "publisher" whatsoever. If anything,
> their archaic business-driven practices holds progress and considered to
> be ethically unjustified. This is not strictly a SW research community
> issue but systematic across the scholarly knowledge industry.
> 
> 
> So.. good luck. Ack the fine-print and consequences of own actions.
> Enjoy the conference. Control Yourself!
> 
> -Sarven
> http://csarven.ca/#i
>

Received on Tuesday, 18 September 2018 20:09:58 UTC