[Conferences-discuss] Printed proceedings?
Greg Ward
gward@python.net
Wed, 13 Feb 2002 12:05:23 -0500
For the three IPCs that I have attended (7, 8, and 10), there has always
been a bound and printed book of proceedings. Generally speaking, I
like this for a variety of reasons:
* it lets you read papers for talks that you miss, or long
after the conference is over
* it's a lot easier to read than a CD-ROM -- no printer required,
portable, etc.
* authors can point at a physical artifact and say, "Look! I'm
a real Python programmer, I've been *published*"
* forces authors/presenters to think hard about their topic twice:
once while writing the paper, and once while preparing their
talk. On good talks and papers, this shows (I think).
There are some inherent problems with having a printed proceedings book:
* cost of printing and binding
* the overhead of having a program committee review and accept/reject
papers (but this also serves as an important quality control
filter -- usually the dross doesn't get into the conference)
There are also some implementation problems with the proceedings books I
have seen so far; I think the biggest one is simply this: no copy
editor! As near as I can tell, no one is responsible for making sure
that the published papers are grammatically and orthographically
correct, or that the formatting isn't all screwed up. (Take a look at
Martin von Loewis' paper in the IPC10 proceedings to see a classic
"formatting all screwed up" paper. It's not fatal, but it sure is
annoying.) I've been on the program committee several times, and the
first couple of times I went after grammatical/spelling/formatting
problems with a vengeance. This year, I realized that was pointless
when the paper might end up being rejected, so AFAIK no one ever fixed
up the grammar/formatting of the published papers. (The only one I've
read so far is Martin's, which had some minor German-isms in the grammar
that -- along with the bad formatting -- would have been fixed by a
proper copy-edit.)
So: how does everyone feel about having published papers coming out the
conference? In short, is it worth the time, effort, and expense?
Greg
--
Greg Ward - geek gward@python.net
http://starship.python.net/~gward/
What happens if you touch these two wires tog--