What to do with rejected FOCS submissions? Many people say that the conference should accept many more papers, but there is strong resistance to doing that.
How about creating a conference that would be reserved for presenting rejected FOCS papers? The only criterion for acceptance would be that the paper would have to have been rejected from FOCS. The format would depend on the number of people who wish to present their work in spite of the submission having been rejected from FOCS. This new conference could be co-located with FOCS, and could happen on the day just before, the day just after, or as poster sessions in the evenings during the same days. Then the two communities could mingle. Imagine the conversation in the hotel elevator:
"-What is your research area?
- Arbitrary analysis. What's your research area?
- Forgetful algorithms.
- That sounds interesting.
- I'd like to hear more about your arbitrary analysis. Are you going to present a paper?
- Yes, I am giving a FOCS talk tomorrow. How about you, are you going to give a talk on forgetfulness?
- Yes, I am giving a FOCS Rejected talk tonight.
- Great! I look forward to hearing it!"
There is a French precedent for this, the Salon des Refuses, organized by a bunch of painters whose paintings were refused from the official Paris Salon. Manet's Dejuner sur l'herbe was exhibited in the first one.
ReplyDelete"The anyone-but-IEEE Symposium on the First Floor of Computer Science"?
ReplyDeleteIf we accept all rejected papers, then in a few years, most papers at FOCS-Reject will be on P vs. NP.
ReplyDeleteYou can always consider sending the papers to Rejecta Mathematica:
ReplyDeletehttp://math.rejecta.org/
I'm not sure why people should be proud of their rejected papers.
ReplyDeleteWhat's wrong with the model of poster session where everybody can submit a poster? Why to call it a FOCS Rejected talk?
But then your proposal looks almost the same as just a conference accepting all submissions. Some people like that model, though more people don't.
Running a real conference with proceedings would be a disaster for people CVs.
Anonymous, people should be proud of their rejected papers because the fact that others do not see what is good about their work is a testimony to their originality.
ReplyDeleteSODA, SoCG, STOC, Approx, FSTTCS, ESA, WADS, STACS, ICALP, FUN, Random, Arxiv - so many great places to publish papers, why this fixation with FOCS?
ReplyDeleteGreat way to outsource reviewing ! :)
ReplyDelete