On a post by J.Wing on reviews in Computer Science

A nice and timely post: Yes, Computer Scientists Are Hypercritical.

And also the paper cited by the first commenter (John Douceur) is a nice one and proves that it is possible to improve the refereeing process for conferences.

Even if I am convinced we should follow Lance Fortnow’s invitation and grow up.

His viewpoint is 2 years old by now, but it seems to me not so much has changed…

We are still defining whether a piece of research is good or not guided by resource constraints of conferences. If a piece of research doesn’t fit in within the available space and time resources it’s rejected.

Are we sure we are doing the good of our discipline by using as research quality yardsticks such odd criteria and processes?

Slightly (very slightly!) some consciousness is emerging here. See e.g.

“Everyone in software engineering knows (and recent PC chairs have admitted) that getting a paper accepted at the International Conference on Software Engineering is in part a lottery” (from the Bertrand Meyer’s post The Modes and Uses of Scientific Publication).

I hope we shall soon be able to grow up…