Q3: Large Conferences

From Health of Conferences Committee

Question 3: PROGRAM COMMITTEES

Does your community practice:

• double blind submissions
• program committee submission restrictions
• rebuttals (author responses)
• large program committees
• program subcommittees
• others?

Do these practices seem to help or hurt promoting your field?

OOPSLA

double blind submissions

Not for the moment

program committee submission restrictions

No restrictions but stricter review for program committee papers

rebuttals (author responses)

No, though every now and then a complaint is registered and the Program Chair as well as the Conference Chair respond appropriately.

large program committees

Not sure what qualifies as large and I assume it is in relationship to the number of submitted papers. For OOPSLA the submission usually range from 160-190 papers. Program Committee ranges from 22 - 28. I will leave it up to you to determine if this is a large committee or not.

program subcommittees

Not officially, but the assumption is that every PC member will reply on others that assist him/her in reviewing the paper assigned to them. However, ultimately the members of the PC are responsible. (which it the common practice). However, with some of the introduced new categories of papers (such as Essays and the selected Onward! subcommittees are formed and are responsible for the selection of their papers.

Do these practices seem to help or hurt promoting your field?

Some of these are new and the impact is not completely determined, however, we noticed a very positive impact for introducing the Onward! track.

SIGGRAPH

double blind submissions

only with external reviewers of papers. Although I have been told that the papers community know who is doing what research and the blind review process isn't always possible. Other SIGGRAPH programs have not exercised the blind process.

program committee submission restrictions

SIGGRAPH allows for committee members to submit to any program. However, there is a process mechanism for each that precludes review/participation in discussion/voting on the part of the committee member for their submission.

There is no rebuttal process in any SIGGRAPH program that alters the decision of the committee.

large program committees

SIGGRAPH supports whatever program committee size is necessary in order to meet the needs of each program's submissions and implementation of the presentations at the conference.

program subcommittees

SIGGRAPH programs requiring a lot of on site preparation/coordination have subcommittees that assist in these areas.

others?

SIGGRAPH has spent many years fine-tuning the process of content from submission to presentation. It is a never-ending process that continuously changes as the needs arise. Most of our practices work well. Because SIGGRAPH has an average of 12-18 programs each year, program reviews are done on a rotational basis (average of 3-4 per year) by the Conference Advisory Group.

SIGCSE

stand-alone workshops

in computer science education, CCSC and other groups sponsor quite a number of regional conferences. SIGCSE is in cooperation with these. Since these have a strong following, SIGCSE has not seen any reason to try to duplicate them.

panels

each conference has a range of panels on new or emerging ideas.

crazy idea sessions

The SIGCSE Symposium provides an opportunity for "Special Sessions" and Birds-of-a-Feather than can promote a range of "crazy" ideas.

On balance, are these other venues effect for advancing your field?

What mechanisms, if any, do you use allow good papers from these venues

to later achieve wider dissemination?

The SIGCSE Bulletin and conferences are the primary mechanisms for communication within the computer science education community -- especially at the college level. We have tried to expand this to other levels (with special emphasis on two-year colleges and high schools), within our resources. For example, we have had special conference rates for high school teachers.