Given the loud outcry regarding the STOC 2013 formatting, which gave you 10 double-column pages to work with (at the cost of, you know, having to turn your paper into double-column format), I though I'd again express my annual dismay at the format for ICALP submission. Twelve LNCS pages is simply not enough space to present anything interesting at a suitable level of detail. I'm tempted as always to turn in a 1 page paper, that says "If the 1 paragraph abstract sounds interesting, here's the arxiv link to something you can read." Why they haven't pushed LNCS to allow at least 14 pages remains a mystery to me.
Back to formatting.
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11 comments:
+1 to one page abstract and an arxiv link.
Even worse is the fact that these are published in LNCS whose price is highway robbery. ($25K per year for its part in SpringerLink per typical large institution.)
Even after deferring all proofs to appendix my paper is still > 12 pages.
Anon #3: That's pretty funny (whether true or not). And why would anyone want to try to read a paper where all the proofs are moved to an appendix anyway. Silly format.
This year, given the choice between submitting to ICALP track C (and squeezing a paper beyond reasonable limits) and submitting to PODC/SPAA, I opted for the latter.
Why do you care that the paper is limited to 12 pages in a place where nobody will read it- since I presume you will or do have a version on arXivs and on your own website.
I say go with the 1-page abstract.
More generally- why do we have conf proceedings anyway when the webs gives BETTER access- free, no paywalls, etc. AND a better version of the paper since it can be updated.
LNCS allows more than 12 pages as far as I know. There are LNCS conferences with 14 page papers out there.
They extended the deadline since fitting into 12 pages LNCS is NP-hard :D
The problem is that the PC can referee only what is being submitted and officially can not rely on other versions out there (arxiv, etc). It is a childish and silly game, and I hope the FOCS experiment (no page limit, no childish 10 pages thing) would succeed (it might fail) - we would have to wait and see.
I also had many times the temptation to submit a one page abstract to the proceedings version - especially because the ACM considers authors putting their paper on the arxiv an illegal violation of their sacred copyright (I kid you not). Furthermore, I do not want anybody to read proceedings version - it is badly formatted, and usually missing figures, proofs, etc, and is less readable than the full version, even if you just want to mine the paper for information for 10 minutes.
I wish a PC would encourage the authors to submit an abstract+arxiv link as final proceedings version. That would be awesome.
What I consider particularly idiotic is that the bibliography is counted within the 12 pages. So we have the incentive to cite as few papers as possible. What is this good for? Why do we have to spend time on removing citations?
If it's so complicated to make a 12 page version why not skip the conference and send directly to a journal?
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