Apology for Flame, and Survey

[Timothy X Brown]

Review fees to cover costs may or may not be justified, but it is a
dangerous precedent, especially when an implicit goal was to limit
entry. Organizers of conferences/journals/grants/positions can only
lose by restricting the submission that they receive. Each of the
"problems" Jordan Pollack mentions can be addressed in slightly
different ways:

>a) filtering out computer-generated articles,
I thought "filtering out" is the quintissential role of the review
process. By having some standards for acceptance, such fluff can be
removed. One of the roles of a conference is to do some of this before
hand so I don't waste valuable time on low information content.

>b) authors not showing up to deliver talks or posters,
Have no review fee, but the authors must submit the conference fee
which is then refundable if the paper is not accepted.

>c) expense of supporting travel costs for both plenary 
   speakers and conference organizers, and
If the organizers cannot organize a cost effective conference, get
someone else to do it. I know that the American Social Sciences
Association runs a huge 28 parallel session conference, and conference
fees last year (this was in downtown Boston) were $35 with a $15
student rate! Of course, banquets (choose from one of 10), etc, were
extra and water was the only refreshment provided, but what is the
point of the conference? BTW, I've organized conferences without my
expenses being covered.

>d) declining membership/subscription revenues.
Orgainize smaller conferences (with <6 parallel sessions), smaller
print runs, etc. If profits are the only motive, put a centerfold in
the magazine and have naked dancers at the banquet.

	Tim

Timothy X Brown
MRE 2E-378
Adaptive Systems Research
Bell Communications Research
445 South Street
Morristown, NJ 07960
Tel: (201) 829-4314
Fax: (201) 829-5888