[Foundation-l] WikiSym 2007 Call for Papers

[Delirium]

Angela wrote:

>>Note that authors of accepted papers are expected to attend
>>    
>>
>>>the conference and present the paper, otherwise publication will be canceled.
>>>      
>>>
>>That seems like a good way to ensure it remains a strictly North
>>American affair...
>>    
>>
>
>The same rule applied last year when WikiSym was held in what was
>possibly the worst place for international travelers to get to (37
>hours for me) yet certainly wasn't a Danish-only, or even
>European-only, affair. I don't think it's unusual for conferences to
>require that people attend the conference if they want to have their
>paper published in the proceedings is it?
>  
>
Yeah, this is pretty much standard for academic conferences, for better 
or worse.  Conferences want to ensure that: 1) they'll get paid the 
registration fee, which supports their costs; and 2) that a conference 
with presentations actually happens, rather than people just using the 
proceedings as a place to publish a paper.

There's occasional debate in computer science, where conferences are 
considered a major publication venue (unlike most other fields, which 
mainly use journals) about whether this is good, bad, or neither.  On 
the plus side, it promotes collaboration and more direct peer review by 
encouraging/forcing annual face-to-face meetings with presentations, 
panels, and question/answer sessions.  The annual nature with submission 
deadlines also tends to promote more timely publication of results, even 
preliminary ones, and researchers at academic institutions usually can 
also get a grant or institution pay for the trip.   On the minus side, 
it raises the financial cost of publication for independent researchers 
(compared to journals, which are usually free to publish in).  Not a 
debate we're likely to resolve on this mailing list, since it's been 
going on (in CS anyway) for decades...

-Mark