Apology for Flame, and Survey

[Jordan Pollack]

I flamed about some of the policies of WCNN, and David Bisant wrote:

> new problems
>in conferencing appear.  I think their fee structure is a reasonable 
>approach to solving these problems.

I obviously over-reacted, since I agree that there is also a more
positive reading of these policies which I didnt consider at the time -
that they are innovations that that the organization is using to cope
with several problems, such as:

a) filtering out computer-generated articles,
b) authors not showing up to deliver talks or posters,
c) expense of supporting travel costs for both plenary 
   speakers and conference organizers, and
d) declining membership/subscription revenues.

It was the simultaneous appearance of all these novel structures in
one place which raised a red flag, and led me to breathe fire.  I am
not usually so rude, and now I owe MANY colleagues apologies for my
outburst.

First, I'm very sorry for linking the two completely separate
societies - IEEE and INNS, and for denigrating the papers of
individuals who have published their work in these refereed meetings
over the years. Also, I want to apologize to the dozens of major
scientists involved in organizing and governing INNS, for sullying
their good names, and finally to Mike Cohen and my other new neighbors
at Boston Univ, who are merely using their good offices to promote the
meeting.

I hope the society will eventually forgive my unsociable outburst.

However, I do believe the $35 reviewing fee is a serious and big
issue, as I have never seen a precedent in any branch of science. And
while there are real costs to reviewing which are bundled into
the costs of meetings, this "unbundling" is a very slippery slope
to walk. If such fees catch on in conferences, they might catch on
universally, from journals to funding agencies to faculty search
committees, and this would dramatically change the "social contract,"
I fear, with many more negative than positive results!  But perhaps
even in this sub-issue I am over-reacting. Since the list is too large for
a discussion, I would like to perform an informal survey, which I
will then condense and post the results:

1) What do you think about review fees for scientific conferences?

2) What about review fees for scientific journals?

3) What about review fees for grant applications to NSF/NIH and other agencies?

4) What about review fees for faculty and postdoc job applications?

5) What do you predict as the ramifications of changing the current
scientific free review system to a fee-based review system?

Jordan Pollack                           Associate Professor
Computer Science Department              Center for Complex Systems
Brandeis University                      Phone: (617) 736-2713/fax 2741
Waltham, MA 02254                        email: pollack at cs.brandeis.edu