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Re: RAE / conferences
Hi Peter, plus CPA fraternity
Forward at will - I am long past caring who knows I'm a heretic.
Just to add that my anciently historical field of astrophysics knew
just three journals in which to publish, and not that many
conferences, which tended to be large but covering many subordinate
fields together. Computing 'boasts' several thousand journals, and
countless conferences.
It became clear to me sometime ago that even 'prestigious' (ACM,
IEEE) journals and conferences were pretty much closed shops.
Because of things like RAE, each little club is able to promote its
members by almost automatically rejecting papers from anyone they
didn't admit. This explains the number of such venues, which cannot
otherwise make sense, and gives the lie to any association of
acceptance/rejection rate and 'quality'.
Cats spread their kind by fouling the garden of anyone who doesn't
own a cat. The only answer is to get a cat of your own. Pretty
soon, there's a heck of a lot of cats. For cat read conference or
journal. The difference is CPA is NOT a closed shop.
IMHO CPA is a last bastion of common sense. Discussion is open and
the true academic value - what you can learn from each other by
coming - is high. This is so precisely because the organizing
society has consistently refused to play this stupid game. It's the
last place left I feel some measure of co-operation, and not just
pointless competition.
For scholarship to survive, we need honest people with rank to
resist, and to revive the old tradition of keeping the crap off the
heads of those trying to still progress and inspire and help along
the young.
If it's all down to petty alliances and politics then we're better
off shagging each other in business. At least there's some reward on
offer, even if it's only money.
One other thing. In defending CPA last year, I was able to point to
a much better than typical balance between industry and academic
delegates. This stuff DOES get applied more than most alternative
approaches, perhaps because it can boast interest from theory to
hardware. With the massive rise of embedded systems, it's timely too.
Resistance is NOT futile! RAE will disappear soon enough. These
things never succeed, by anyone's measure, in the end.
Ian
Dr. Ian East
Department for Computing, School of Technology
Oxford Brookes University
Turing Building
Wheatley Campus
Oxfordshire OX33 1HX
01865 484529 ireast@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
ML U08006 C & Unix
ML U08033 Computer Hardware
