Parallel Paper Submission

[Adriaan Tijsseling]

> I wholeheartedly agree with Tom.  Parallel submission would create
> a huge waste of reviewer time, and would lead to many bad feelings
> if a paper is accepted to two outlets.  Obviously the problem with
> the sequential approach is that review turnaround can be slow.  This
> is an issue that we all can and should work on.

An additional problem is that the reviewing process itself is not
particularly efficient. How many times does it not occur that reviewers'
reports do not agree? Or that one reviewer suggests a modification, which
another reviewer actually requests to be removed?

An ideal, but certainly attainable option is to have one single online
repository for papers, in the same vein as citeseer or cogprints.
Researchers can then retrieve the papers they are interested in, read them,
and return a score based on relevance, originality, and the like. Perhaps
they can submit a more detailed commentary anonymously, visible to the
author(s) only. 

In this age, one should optimally try to benefit from modern internet
technologies. Let the academic public decide which articles they deem
relevant and useful. This way articles are much faster distributed (the
current 1, 2, 3 year delay between writing and publishing is really becoming
ridiculous nowadays).


Adriaan Tijsseling