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    <title>Cryptology ePrint Archive Forum</title>
    <link>http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/index.php</link>
    <description><![CDATA[]]></description>
    <language>EN</language>
    <pubDate>Tue, 18 Jun 2013 23:02:11 -0600</pubDate>
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    <category>Cryptology ePrint Archive Forum</category>
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    <item>
      <title>[General] Re: RSS feeds</title>
      <link>http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?2,130,921#msg-921</link>
      <author>cbw</author>
      <description><![CDATA[Hello,

Apart from the RSS feed at http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/rss.php there is also the IACR News system system (eMail, Twitter). Just use the tag  / channel &quot;Forum&quot;: http://www.iacr.org/news/

Best,
Christopher

www.christopher-wolf.de
Ruhr-University Bochum
Germany]]></description>
      <category>General</category>
      <guid isPermaLink="true">http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?2,130,921#msg-921</guid>
      <pubDate>Tue, 18 Jun 2013 23:02:11 -0600</pubDate>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>[IACR Publication Reform] Automatic follow up</title>
      <link>http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,920,920#msg-920</link>
      <author>cbw</author>
      <description><![CDATA[Hello,

In case you want to follow up this forum - but not to poll it every other day, there are several options:

* RSS feed: http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/rss.php
* IACR News system (eMail, Twitter) via &quot;Forum&quot;: http://www.iacr.org/news/

Best,
Christopher]]></description>
      <category>IACR Publication Reform</category>
      <guid isPermaLink="true">http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,920,920#msg-920</guid>
      <pubDate>Tue, 18 Jun 2013 22:56:53 -0600</pubDate>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>[IACR Publication Reform] Testable change</title>
      <link>http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,919,919#msg-919</link>
      <author>amitsahai</author>
      <description><![CDATA[The problem with radical redesign is that it is hard to understand what change has caused which effect.

I suggest that we as a community focus on one problem at a time.  If we want to focus on multiple problems, maybe each conference should attack one at a time, so at least each variable can be tested separately.

Let's start with the problem of low quality reviews.  Here is a modest initial proposal based on an economic model:

Each review should have two components: (1) technical summary and feedback, and (2) subjective evaluation wholly supported by technical evaluation in (1)

The technical summary should be presented to the authors before decisions are made, and the authors will rate reviews based on understanding.  So will other PC members (anonymously).  The results will be used to rate PC members and reviewers and provide them with tokens.

PC members and reviewers will need to spend these tokens to get their papers published at top conferences in the future.  The monetary system will need to be worked out, but we can let junior researchers borrow tokens from the central bank at the start of their careers so as not to harm their initial careers.  But eventually everyone has to pay in quality reviews for papers that they want to publish.

These are initial thoughts and the proposal should certainly be refined to address potential abuses.  For example, technical parts of the review should be devoid of all subjective opinions and hidden praise, so that the temptation to flatter the authors for earning tokens can be avoided.  Also, probably feedback from authors of papers in the bottom 33% should not be counted towards awarding tokens.  

Amit]]></description>
      <category>IACR Publication Reform</category>
      <guid isPermaLink="true">http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,919,919#msg-919</guid>
      <pubDate>Tue, 18 Jun 2013 03:28:41 -0600</pubDate>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>[IACR Publication Reform] Re: The speed of science: two case studies</title>
      <link>http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,915,918#msg-918</link>
      <author>hoerder</author>
      <description><![CDATA[Hi,

Christopher, if a paper does not get resubmitted to an IACR venue it doesn't imply that it's not going to be resubmitted at other venues where IACR members are on the program committee and have to spend time reviewing the re-submission. Depending on how it is crafted, the resubmission policy might just end up shifting the workloads around. Also, Dan raises a valid question: What exactly is a resubmission? How much does a rejected paper have to change to be a new submission?

From the CHES community I heard rumors that they're considering an journal of their own but instead of papers people have to submit extended abstracts and reviewers act more or less as shepherds. I'm not sure whether this makes more sense or not, just wanted to point out that there are more possibilities. And that both halfs of IACR are leading very similar discussion in parallel (as far as I can see it).

A friend of mine who is doing solid state physics was just complaining about stupid reviewers a week ago and the way he described their model, it sounded quite like the proposed proceedings of the IACR. I reckon that there will never be a perfect system and that quite a lot depends on the little details for each system and the degree of flexibility they offer. 

What I'd truly like to see is a more scientific debate about it. Right now, we have suggestions, examples and hypotheses but no hard data, not even a detailed comparison of two or three submission models that are currently used by other disciplines (of similar size) who are reasonably happy with their system. Please don't get me wrong, I see the need to &quot;grow up&quot; and the suggestions, examples and hypotheses that I've seen so far all make valid points but all that I see emerging from it is that it's not simple. Maybe it would be useful to get outside support from people who do metascience. (I'm sure that someone's doing just that. What else do we have social scientists for?)

Cheers,
Simon Hoerder]]></description>
      <category>IACR Publication Reform</category>
      <guid isPermaLink="true">http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,915,918#msg-918</guid>
      <pubDate>Tue, 18 Jun 2013 02:52:59 -0600</pubDate>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>[IACR Publication Reform] Re: The speed of science: two case studies</title>
      <link>http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,915,917#msg-917</link>
      <author>cbw</author>
      <description><![CDATA[Hi,

I guess it's quite simple math: If the same paper does not get resubmitted to Crypto / Eurocrypt / Asiacrypt / TCC, we don't have to review it again and again 4 (!) times. 

If the saved time will be spent on better reviews is clearly a different ball-game...

Best,
Christopher]]></description>
      <category>IACR Publication Reform</category>
      <guid isPermaLink="true">http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,915,917#msg-917</guid>
      <pubDate>Mon, 17 Jun 2013 16:07:18 -0600</pubDate>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>[IACR Publication Reform] Re: The speed of science: two case studies</title>
      <link>http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,915,916#msg-916</link>
      <author>Orr</author>
      <description><![CDATA[While I do get your point, what I think your analysis is missing the fact that we all have pipelines of results and submissions (even before considering co-authors).

For example, if you have on average 5 papers/year (a rate of 10 weeks/paper), and one year your papers got slightly more rejected, the next year you are likely to have slightly more.

Additionally, you need to consider the fact that some people collaborate more, or have many students (who do most of the writing work). I guess you are not implying that Bart spends 3.25 weeks/conference paper?

Finally, I suspect that there is also a difference in the amount of work people put into Crypto submissions and tier 4 conference submissions (not going to name any, so no one will get offended).]]></description>
      <category>IACR Publication Reform</category>
      <guid isPermaLink="true">http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,915,916#msg-916</guid>
      <pubDate>Mon, 17 Jun 2013 09:07:43 -0600</pubDate>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>[IACR Publication Reform] The speed of science: two case studies</title>
      <link>http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,915,915#msg-915</link>
      <author>djb</author>
      <description><![CDATA[Nigel Smart was quite clear at Eurocrypt in advertising the Proceedings of the IACR as fixing our &quot;High review load&quot;. Well, gee, sounds great, but how come the IACR Board seems unable to explain to the rest of us _how_ this reduction in review load is supposed to happen?

Nigel doesn't answer the question but says he's putting together &quot;a more detailed proposal&quot;. Christian Cachin says that there &quot;could&quot; be a one-year &quot;ban on resubmission&quot; but he fails to define &quot;resubmission&quot;.  Ivan Damgård (not on the current IACR Board) says &quot;Claiming you added something substantial in two weeks is probably bogus anyway.&quot;

Let's think about this &quot;two weeks&quot; figure for a moment.

Case study 1: DBLP for &quot;Ivan Damgård&quot; finds 7 conference papers in 2012 (Crypto, CT-RSA, ICITS, PKC, SCN, SCN, TCC), not to mention 7 eprint papers the same year. That's a throughput of one conference paper every 7.4 weeks. How can Ivan claim that 2 weeks isn't enough time for a &quot;substantial&quot; improvement to a paper, if he spends a _total_ of only 7.4 weeks per successful conference paper?

Furthermore, surely Ivan would agree that some papers are easier to write than others, and also that he's not spending all of his time on paper-writing---if he really focuses on a paper then he can probably get it done much more quickly. Is it really so hard to believe that an author has done &quot;something substantial in two weeks&quot;?

Of course, it's actually Ivan plus coauthors, and increased use of the Internet is in general making it easier and easier to have many coauthors, which makes it even easier to believe that a research team is doing something very quickly. How can anyone imagine that a knee-jerk time-based response could substitute for a proper scientific evaluation?

Case study 2: Let's look at what happened to one of those eprint papers, 2012/699, in which Ivan proposed a specific &quot;practical&quot; LPN-based cryptosystem. A few days later I pointed out publicly that this specific proposal failed to account for the attack in 2012/355, a paper at RFIDsec 2012. Of course, RFIDsec isn't a top-tier IACR conference, but surely Ivan will agree that 2012/355---forcing changes in the parameters and &quot;practicality&quot; of his paper 2012/699---was worthy of publication.

Here's how 2012/355 evolved. An LPN-related system &quot;Lapin&quot; was presented at FSE 2012 the morning of 21 March 2012. Tanja Lange and I were in the audience, were both immediately skeptical of the security of the system, and started investigating attacks. We had our attack paper ready for the RFIDsec submission deadline on 31 March 2012, and had it in essentially final form by 5 April 2012---two weeks and one day after the FSE talk. We prioritized other tasks at that point, and didn't end up doing the last few days of work to post the paper until June 2012, but with some slight rescheduling we would have had the complete paper online two weeks after we started.

I'm sure that Ivan, and many hundreds of other people here, can think of similarly efficient paper-writing examples from their own experience. So why do we have Ivan saying &quot;two weeks is probably bogus anyway&quot; for a mere revision? And how can Christian possibly think that a one-year ban is even marginally reasonable?

---Dan]]></description>
      <category>IACR Publication Reform</category>
      <guid isPermaLink="true">http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,915,915#msg-915</guid>
      <pubDate>Sat, 15 Jun 2013 14:31:51 -0600</pubDate>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>[IACR Publication Reform] Issues</title>
      <link>http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,901,914#msg-914</link>
      <author>subho</author>
      <description><![CDATA[Dear Colleagues, 
    Here are my points:

1. IACR should keep JoC (journal)  and C, EC, AC, PKC, FSE, CC, CHES (conferences/workshop) as competitive as they are. With more submissions and same acceptance rate, the number of accepted papers will indeed increase. Say with 300 submissions (will soon happen in C, EC, AC), 20% acceptance rate (60 accepted) should be sufficient.

2. Agree with Nigel: We should not kill the more or less competitive conference which are not under the IACR banner (e.g., SAC, CT-RSA, ACISP, Indocrypt). These conferences provide the diversity. In fact, IACR may present a list of favourite conferences which are no under its umbrella. 

3. 
(i) Putting the papers in a pool by the authors marking their interest in conferences and 

(ii) allowing the PC chairs/members to select from that (given that anonymity will in any case will not be preserved)

will be a disaster. 

By themselves the PC Chairs and Members are extremely busy. How will they get time to select the papers from a pool of say 600? A few good papers by new authors will never be noticed from a large pool of bad papers. Author names will become more important than the content of the paper.

4. For resubmission: For IACR conferences and workshops we should have the following.

Any resubmission (means say less than 50% additional material over the earlier work) to any IACR conferences/workshops should list the IACR conferences/workshops where the papers were rejected
earlier. Extra pages must be allowed to add the previous comments and answers.     

I believe this is already allowed now, but due to page constraints this is not added by the authors. Please allow additional pages for this.

The conferences which are rejecting the paper may also encourage re-submission. That tag may be useful for future re-submission.

5. Each conference should have more PC Chairs (say 1 each from different areas, compared to editorial board members of JoC) and PC members (should be around 50) for a better review quality. Given 300 submissions, 100 of which are really competitive, there should be two levels of reviews. We cannot afford 3/4 reviews for bad papers. There should be a standard format that should politely say the authors that we are not interested in these papers and we are not reviewing them. Potential papers may be reviewed more seriously, expecting that these will obtain a resubmit decision to other places if rejected.  

In my opinion, the current mode does not need any big change. IACR publication channels are competitive and let it be. There are enough places to publish moderate cryptology related works. I have very few publications in IACR publication channels. My personal experience is my papers that are rejected from these places deserve to be rejected. 

We should try to provide better reviews to the authors and less load on the serious reviewers.

Best regards,
Subho]]></description>
      <category>IACR Publication Reform</category>
      <guid isPermaLink="true">http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,901,914#msg-914</guid>
      <pubDate>Thu, 06 Jun 2013 04:04:43 -0600</pubDate>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>[IACR Publication Reform] Talking Numbers</title>
      <link>http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,901,913#msg-913</link>
      <author>cbw</author>
      <description><![CDATA[Hello,

To see the effect of pooled reviewing I have looked up some submission numbers from http://icsd.i2r.a-star.edu.sg/staff/jianying/conference-ranking.html They give the average number of papers and accepted papers for all IACR venues. From there we get:
 * around 640 submissions to the flagship conferences (110 accepted)
 * around 430 submissions to the workshops (120 accepted)

The big question is: how many of these are re-submits? 

Let's assume that for each paper accepted there are two that get favourable reviews - so the authors are &quot;implicitly invited&quot; to resubmit (hopefully after making changes). The problem is more pressing for the flagship conferences as their submission dates are roughly spread around the year while a PKC paper cannot go to FSE or vice versa. 

So let's fix 200 re-submissions for the flagship conferences. For the workshops, I would also put 100-200 - but for a different reason: When a paper gets rejected from a flagship conference (with not so favourable reviews), the authors may decide to resubmit for a workshop.

Hence, we talk about 300-400 papers here that would not need additional reviews if we use pooled reviewings. Which basically means we eliminate the equivalent of one conference plus one workshop PC :-)

I know it's all guesswork - but impressive guesswork, isn't it ;-)

Based on this, we would have a total of 600-700 papers / year to review under the new regime. Even if we accept 50% of all papers (strictly upper bound), we &quot;only&quot; increase the bandwidth from 230 papers to 350. Which is not too bad from my point of view.

Again - it's only guesswork. For example, I would very much like to have more reliable figures on the number of re-submits then the &quot;educated guess&quot; from above. 

Best,
Christopher]]></description>
      <category>IACR Publication Reform</category>
      <guid isPermaLink="true">http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,901,913#msg-913</guid>
      <pubDate>Wed, 05 Jun 2013 12:05:19 -0600</pubDate>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>[IACR Publication Reform] Re: How to handle resubmissions?</title>
      <link>http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,901,912#msg-912</link>
      <author>cc</author>
      <description><![CDATA[Ivan points out an important issue and suggests a very reasonable solution.  The ban on resubmission could be one year.

Indeed, the database folks have already solved these problems in the same way, i.e., see the description of the reviewing process of PVLDB and their FAQ.

PVLDB submissions -- http://www.vldb.org/pvldb/pvldb-m2c.html
PVLDB FAQ -- http://www.vldb.org/pvldb/pvldb-faq.html


  Christian]]></description>
      <category>IACR Publication Reform</category>
      <guid isPermaLink="true">http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,901,912#msg-912</guid>
      <pubDate>Wed, 05 Jun 2013 02:13:28 -0600</pubDate>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>[IACR Publication Reform] Assigning Papers to Talks</title>
      <link>http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,909,911#msg-911</link>
      <author>cbw</author>
      <description><![CDATA[Hello,

Moving from a all-workshop &amp; -conference-model to a journal-only-model poses some transition problems. In particular, it is no longer clear at /which/ event a paper should be presented. I aim at developing a solution for this that tries to minimize conflicts between venues and is moreover flexible for a change in the &quot;scientific value&quot; of such venues. 
In a nutshell, we have a process with several stages:
 1.) Proc/IACR accepts a paper (with some grade)
 2.) A workshop/conference (&quot;venue&quot; from now on) would like the paper to be presented at this venue
 3.) The author accepts or declines the invitation

Ad 1: This is more or less clear with the current proposal: Some papers get accepted, some rejected. At the end, we have a pool of &quot;acceptable papers&quot;, each assigned a grade. We assume that the grade somehow reflect the quality of an accepted paper. From this pool, some venues will draw their presentations and hence build their programme

Ad 2: This is a bit more problematic now: Who decides *where* a paper can be presented? Does Eurocrypt have precedence over Asiacrypt or the other way around? TCC over PKC? What happens with &quot;satellite venues&quot; (currently icw - see https://www.iacr.org/icw/)? Are they the last in the queue? /When/ do we need to decide? If workshop A has paper K - and three weeks later conference D comes around. Can they snap A's paper?

Hence, I suggest to go back to the old model where authors needed to self-estimate their work and hence pick an appropriate workshop they would like to submit to:

Ad 3: After a venue has invited an author, the author can accept or decline such an invitation. This has the following effects:
 a) If an author accepts, he cannot present this paper at another venue
 b) If an author rejects, he may not be picked for presentation anymore
(a,b) are the risk of the author.

I envision a rather short period for the author to decide - something like a week. If an author does /not/ react in this time frame, we assume a reject (&quot;not even interested enough to answer this one eMail&quot;).  


To allow the author an informed decision, he will need some information about past venues. In particular, I can think of
 * lowest grade of an article that was invited for this venue
 * highest grade of an article that /accepted/ this venue
 * average grade of all articles that accepted this venue
This is more-or-less an impact factor - but easier to compare with the grades an author got from the Proc/IACR-reviewers.

So it becomes the same game as before: Know your research, know how good it is - and know if an invitation from PKC is the best you can expect - or if Eurocrypt may be lurking just behind the next incoming eMail. 

In addition, it is flexible about the &quot;value&quot; of different venues: If my goal was to go to place X (and PKC takes place there), I may turn down an invitation from Crypto/Eurocrypt/Asiacrypt but accept one from PKC. And vice versa. This way, all venues need to put together an interesting programme to make sure that people come - /including/ the speakers.

If the value of a venue changes, so will the grades of the authors who go there.

It also has built-in conflict resolution: If venue X and Y want the same paper, both bid and wait how the author decides. 

In addition, this also takes care of JoC-A: I think that some of these articles are in fact fine for presentation. Not the full 60 pages - but at least some. With this model, venues could also invite them; presumably with a longer talk and a restricted topic (&quot;2.1, 2.4 &amp; 3.1&quot;).

Last but not least, I actually /can/ think of some cases where an article is so important for area X - but at the same time so important to the community as a whole - that it will be accepted for conference A and also workshop B. But these should be really rare cases, needed special approval.

My two cents,
Christopher]]></description>
      <category>IACR Publication Reform</category>
      <guid isPermaLink="true">http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,909,911#msg-911</guid>
      <pubDate>Tue, 04 Jun 2013 06:25:26 -0600</pubDate>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>[IACR Publication Reform] Selecting Papers for Presentations</title>
      <link>http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,909,909#msg-909</link>
      <author>cbw</author>
      <description><![CDATA[hoerder Wrote:
&gt; 2) Let the authors specify a preferred conference
&gt; out of {C,EC,AC} and an alternative in case the
&gt; paper is not rated as {C,EC,AC} quality. [...]

That's a very neat idea  :-)

However, I am a bit concerned that it will lengthen the time between acceptance and presentation too much. Hence, I would like to twist it a bit:

/After/ a paper got accepted (and an author knows the grades / reviews for his paper), he can select some conferences where he would like to present his results. Actually, this may even include the &quot;likes&quot; from reviewers for a certain conference (see full posting of Simon for details).

The selection must follow the chronological order of the conferences. For example, if we have

PKC, EC, SAC, Cr'X, TCC X+1

in that specific year, an admissible ordering would be

EC, SAC, TCC

but not

SAC, PKC, TCC, Cr

Any conference within the given order means &quot;I am certainly going to this conference if accepted&quot;. Any other conference may invite this author, too, but he may turn down the invitation without any negative consequence.

I think each conference should only know its own papers, but not the other choices the authors made.

Best,
Christopher]]></description>
      <category>IACR Publication Reform</category>
      <guid isPermaLink="true">http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,909,909#msg-909</guid>
      <pubDate>Tue, 04 Jun 2013 11:11:37 -0600</pubDate>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>[IACR Publication Reform] Re: Questions</title>
      <link>http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,902,908#msg-908</link>
      <author>hoerder</author>
      <description><![CDATA[Hi,

sorry for the out-of-order answering. My answer for 2 is slightly long.

1) Generally I would prefer the workshops to join but they should be given a choice.

3) No clue. How do other disciplines with 2 journals distinguish between the journals?

2) Let the authors specify a preferred conference out of {C,EC,AC} and an alternative in case the paper is not rated as {C,EC,AC} quality. In addition to the reviews, every registered reviewer should be able to assign &quot;likes&quot; (or whatever you may call it) to papers (that haven't had a talk yet), irrespective whether they've reviewed the paper in order to provide a short term measure of the papers impact. (You can't like your own papers.)

Selection for mainline conferences: PCs can invite any paper where the author's haven't accepted a talk invitation yet up until x weeks (some global, fixed deadline) before the conference. Talk invitations from the preferred mainline conference can not be rejected by the authors, otherwise they have a week to accept/reject the invitation (without being penalised for a reject).

Selection for the workshops: PCs can invite any paper where the author's haven't accepted a talk invitation yet and that has passed the deadline for its preferred mainline conference up until y_{w} weeks (a workshop specific, fixed deadline) before the workshop. There is no restriction on acceptance/rejection for talk invitiations except that it has to happen within a week.

Open talk invitations/likes should be displayed to all PCs, registered reviewers in the system. Authors should see the likes of at least their paper and how it ranks. Optionally, the &quot;likes&quot; may age according to some formula. (If likes do age, I'd choose a simple aging formula such as counting only likes fresher than 1 year.) Another option is to remove papers that have been in the system for x years without getting and accepting talk invitations from the list of papers that compete for talk invitations.

Examples:
Paper A wants [EC,TCC]. EC chooses it, case closed.
Paper B wants [EC,PKC]. EC does not choose it, PKC sends an invitation, authors accept, case closed.
Paper C wants [C,CHES]. EC chooses it, authors reject, C doesn't choose it, CHES chooses it, authors accept, case closed.
Paper D wants [C,CHES]. EC chooses it, authors reject, C chooses it, case closed.
Paper E wants [AC,PKC], AC doesn't choose it, PKC doesn't choose it, three years pass, topic suddenly en vogue, PKC, TCC and AC send invitations within one week, paper goes to AC by default, case closed.

Result: C/EC/AC get their choice of papers. The workshops get to choose from the remaining papers but don't risk loosing papers (where the authors accepted the talk invitation) to other venues. PC's know whether a paper has other open talk invitations so they can gauge the risk of not getting the paper when they send invites. The likes provide PCs an overview of the short term impact that a paper has but als gives them the flexibility to shape the conference/workshop program based on topics. (My base assumption is that PCs have a strong enough incentive to maintain a healthy and competitive research discipline so that massively malicious program selection does not happen. Program selection that is only a little bit malicious can be accepted as it doesn't affect paper publication, it only affects whether a paper gets boosted by a conference talk. Under that assumption, they only need an indication of what's trending/generating impact at the moment.)

Cheers, Simon]]></description>
      <category>IACR Publication Reform</category>
      <guid isPermaLink="true">http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,902,908#msg-908</guid>
      <pubDate>Tue, 04 Jun 2013 09:06:28 -0600</pubDate>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>[IACR Publication Reform] Re: Some issues + Counter proposal</title>
      <link>http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,899,906#msg-906</link>
      <author>cbw</author>
      <description><![CDATA[Hello,

I mainly agree with Orr. However, there are a few points I would like to make:

Ad 5: This could work - but I think it will create some overload. It's a half-baked attempt to keep the original conferences on the surface - but to have /one/ submission venue (&quot;Collection of IACR Conferences&quot;) in the background. I think we are better of having /one/ submission venue not only de-facto but also by-name.

Ad X: Yes, I would also like to use JoC in Series A &amp; B mode. However, the destinction should not use all letters of the alphabet. I guess, we are fine with
 * JoC-A: currently JoC
 * JoC-B: Proc/IACR
 * JoC-C: Open Source implementations of cryptographically relevant software

To explain the last: In some areas of mathematics, they have A: Pure, B: Applied, C: Software as otherwise &quot;Software&quot; would not have a place to publish. I do find this a very good suggestion and would like to copy if for the IACR.

Best,
Christopher]]></description>
      <category>IACR Publication Reform</category>
      <guid isPermaLink="true">http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,899,906#msg-906</guid>
      <pubDate>Tue, 04 Jun 2013 05:52:19 -0600</pubDate>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>[IACR Publication Reform] Re: Change is needed, but slow change is important</title>
      <link>http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,900,905#msg-905</link>
      <author>cbw</author>
      <description><![CDATA[Hello,

I see your concerns, but I think slow change is not good per se. /If/ we were to integrate Proc/IACR into the JoC, there is no problem with the ranking of the journal.

Having a &quot;normal track&quot; for Crypto and a &quot;wannabe track&quot; (Proc/IACR), this will simply demote the second.

Best,
Christopher]]></description>
      <category>IACR Publication Reform</category>
      <guid isPermaLink="true">http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,900,905#msg-905</guid>
      <pubDate>Tue, 04 Jun 2013 05:46:46 -0600</pubDate>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>[IACR Publication Reform] Re: How to handle resubmissions?</title>
      <link>http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,901,904#msg-904</link>
      <author>cbw</author>
      <description><![CDATA[From my point of view, this should be handled with the &quot;maybe&quot; option: If something is so bad that it should not be resubmitted, it's a clear &quot;reject&quot;. Otherwise, it becomes a &quot;maybe&quot;. 

If an author does something funny like just changing the title of his article, s/he should be banned for a couple of month, preferably a full year from submitting to Proc/IACR.

Best,
Christopher]]></description>
      <category>IACR Publication Reform</category>
      <guid isPermaLink="true">http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,901,904#msg-904</guid>
      <pubDate>Tue, 04 Jun 2013 05:45:00 -0600</pubDate>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>[IACR Publication Reform] Re: Questions</title>
      <link>http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,902,903#msg-903</link>
      <author>cbw</author>
      <description><![CDATA[Hello,

Ad 1: Yes, they should. But they should not be forced to be part of the system. At the end of the day, they will have to find one solution or the other to live with Proc/IACR. Being part of the system can be one. If they should be treated differently is a different ball game. I'll reply to this separately (as to question 2).

Ad 2: I think we should have a couple of people who draft the programme. This could be substantially less than for the current workshops / conferences.

Ad 3: I think JoC should be part of Proc/IACR - or actually the other way around: JoC becomes JoC - Series A. And Proc/IACR becomes JoC - Series B. Series C should be for Open Source projects that are valuable for our membership.

Just an additional comment: I think the editors / reviewers of Proc/IACR should be independent from the programme committee of the workshops / conferences. Otherwise, this poses simply too many problems (who get's a chair - how many?).

Best,
Christopher]]></description>
      <category>IACR Publication Reform</category>
      <guid isPermaLink="true">http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,902,903#msg-903</guid>
      <pubDate>Tue, 04 Jun 2013 05:43:20 -0600</pubDate>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>[IACR Publication Reform] Questions</title>
      <link>http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,902,902#msg-902</link>
      <author>nigel</author>
      <description><![CDATA[I am putting together a more detailed proposal. 

Some questions which come to mind which I would like feedback on are...

1) Should the workshops be included in this plan? I think they should otherwise we miss the main goal of getting IACR published (full) papers (fully) refereed, and published in a journal. 
  - To exclude workshops means someone could (in principle) submit an extended abstract to a workshop and then a &quot;full version&quot; to a conference. 
  - Including workshops would mean that the areas which are sometimes not so well represented at the main conferences (e.g. FSE/CHES like stuff) would get a look in.

But some people have suggested workshops should be treated differently. I would like to know what others feelings are; and reasons for this. There may be some other solution we have not thought of as to the workshop/conference division.


2) If we decouple acceptance to Proc. IACR from presentation at conferences/workshops; how should the programmes for conferences/workshops be determined?  Any ideas here would be nice. Since we have a clean slate we could do anything.


3) How to deal with JoC? The idea is to have two journals like other learned societies. But we need to define clearly the roles of the two outlets. I have received some interesting ideas on this front, and wondered if others had some other ideas.


To answer some points others made in threads: The idea is not to reduce quality thresholds, but to maintain them in an environment where there is a larger community and more people working. This also means the &quot;satellite&quot; workshops (SAC, CT-RSA etc, Indocrypt) should also not be harmed.]]></description>
      <category>IACR Publication Reform</category>
      <guid isPermaLink="true">http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,902,902#msg-902</guid>
      <pubDate>Tue, 04 Jun 2013 05:15:55 -0600</pubDate>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>[IACR Publication Reform] How to handle resubmissions?</title>
      <link>http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,901,901#msg-901</link>
      <author>ivandamgard</author>
      <description><![CDATA[I think Nigel's proposal can go a long way towards solving the problem we currently have with refereeing overload and the resulting bad quality of reviews we suffer from now. 

It can also help increasing bandwidth, which I think we need, NOT because I think we should accept lower quality papers, but because we need more bandwidth just to keep the bar in the same position.

Now, a major potential problem is resubmission: the proceedings of the IACR should maintain a good reputation, but might at the same time become essentially the only entry point to publication in the IACR system.  So papers will get rejected, but I don't think we want rejection to necessarily be a death warrant on a paper. So if you can resubmit, who decides if the revision is substantial enough to merit a new review? and how to arrive at that decision? This is also the problem Dan points out in another post.

I would propose a combination of several things: first, you can only resubmit after some time has past since last rejection. Claiming you added something substantial in two weeks is probably bogus anyway. Second, you must specify in a dedicated field in the resubmission form what you changed. If this is not clearly written or is quickly found to be wrong or insufficient, you get rejected without a full review. Third, it is clearly communicated that attempts to attack this, e.g., by changing only the title and submit as a new paper will seriously damage the authors' reputation if found out.

- Ivan]]></description>
      <category>IACR Publication Reform</category>
      <guid isPermaLink="true">http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,901,901#msg-901</guid>
      <pubDate>Tue, 04 Jun 2013 04:32:51 -0600</pubDate>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>[IACR Publication Reform] Change is needed, but slow change is important</title>
      <link>http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,900,900#msg-900</link>
      <author>lindell</author>
      <description><![CDATA[The proposal put forward by Nigel is very radical, and certainly has some important and positive points. However, I am very concerned with radical, rapid, untested change that can be very detrimental in the long run. I think that we can make partial steps towards solving the problem without trying to change the entire culture of the community in one shot.

To be more concrete:
1) I like the idea of a Proceedings of the IACR. However, the process for publishing there can be (a) submit to conference, (b) if accepted, prepare full version by the conference date. Note that presentation at the conference depends on having a full version ready and accepted. Given that we are attempting to go for a 3 month journal process there is enough time for this (especially if people know that presenting at the conference depends on this and so they would have to start getting ready ahead of time). This would achieve the journal that we want, would force people to write full versions, would implement a strict deadline so that it doesn't take forever, but would not go into unchartered waters with unexpected side effects.
2) There is a big danger in Nigel's proposal of the journal being ranked low. This is due to the fact that essentially we are saying: let's accept almost anything that is correct and not garbage, since only the really interesting work will go to the conferences anyway. I'm not sure that this will happen, but it's a concern.
3) Regarding the workshops: I would not want to see these harmed. I can testify personally about TCC: it provides a place for people to do pure theory without feeling that they have to target a wider community, and this is a good thing.

I think that the most important thing is to go slowly. Maybe we can make one track of Crypto to follow this model and see how it works. There are often unforeseen consequences that take years to come out. (E.g., open access publishing has seen thousands of garbage journals being opened, and they earn money by people paying to publish there. It seems like a joke, but serious researchers have been known to be tricked by their aggressive tactics. See http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/health/for-scientists-an-exploding-world-of-pseudo-academia.html?pagewanted=all&amp;_r=0 for more about this.)

Personally, I think that item (1) above is a good middle-road for this issue.]]></description>
      <category>IACR Publication Reform</category>
      <guid isPermaLink="true">http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,900,900#msg-900</guid>
      <pubDate>Mon, 03 Jun 2013 23:57:28 -0600</pubDate>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>[IACR Publication Reform] Some issues + Counter proposal</title>
      <link>http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,899,899#msg-899</link>
      <author>Orr</author>
      <description><![CDATA[1. The proposal does not deal with IACR workshops. If the revolution happens as-is, I support the inclusion of the workshops in the proceedings of the IACR as well, and let the workshops pick the papers not taken by the main venues. Otherwise, the workshops will be cannibalized by the Proc.IACR.

2. Depending on the number of the papers in Proc.IACR (anything which is significantly higher than the number of papers accepted at the moment to all IACR venues), the satellite non-IACR venues may be hurt (if Proc.IACR accepts 500 papers rather than ~250-300 papers, people will submit to proc.IACR, and no one will submit to SAC, CT-RSA, Indocrypt, etc., thus &quot;killing&quot; these venues (some of which with great importance in supporting local communities).

3. There should be a wider discussion than just two reviewers + 1 editor. While this does not happen very often (if at all), some members of the community feel that some of the reviews are done according to the person/field/approach rather than the actual technical merits. A 3-person decision is necessarily more susceptible to this problem than a 30-person decision process. This is especially important with the paper we do need to promote which reside on the borderline between two communities (e.g., TCC/FSE papers).

4. If the main problem this problem comes to solve is the review period, a transition to a JoC where the editors are somewhat harsher with reviewers, and reviewers understand the importance of a timely review, is probably a better solution.

5. To reduce the workload of reviewers between committees, we can maintain the reviews from conferences going into the next conference. For example, the papers that were the last one to be rejected (borderline accept/reject papers), the reviews will be transfered to the next committee, and the number of assigned reviewers can be reduced (just a thought).

6. In papers with missing details (due to page limit, lack of time, etc.) - committees should approach things with harsher approaches concerning the missing details. Full proofs can be now described (in some cases) by the automatic tools, we should use them. Pseudo codes of attacks, or VHDL prints can be accessible through some new anonymity preserving mechanisms.

Finally, I would like to suggest to maintain the conference model (with some changes and improvements), and solve the publication issue by introducing a series of &quot;sub-journals&quot;: JoC-A, JoC-B, ... (as many as we need).
- All papers will be submitted to JoC.
- If the reviewers decide it's worthy of acceptance, and of value to the entire crypto community -&gt; JoC.
- Worthy of acceptance, value to parts of the crypto community - will be directed to the relevant JoC-A/B/... (dividing the JoC world into several domains). Maybe requiring an additional review.

Of course, one can do the opposite (maybe besides the best paper awards of all IACR venues): submit to JoC-A/B/... according to the domain separation, and if the reviewers+editor of JoC-X thinks it is of value to the entire crypto community, move it to the JoC pile (possibly with an additional reviewer from outside the community).

This way, more good journals are created, and the value of JoC is not cannibalized by the new journals.]]></description>
      <category>IACR Publication Reform</category>
      <guid isPermaLink="true">http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,899,899#msg-899</guid>
      <pubDate>Fri, 31 May 2013 07:56:56 -0600</pubDate>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>[IACR Publication Reform] Re: IACR publication reform - my two cents</title>
      <link>http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,895,898#msg-898</link>
      <author>cbw</author>
      <description><![CDATA[Hello,

Simon Hoerder wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
&gt; Finally: What are you going to do with the backlog
&gt; of papers that are already in the
&gt; submission-resubmission cycle when the Journal
&gt; starts. (I don't know how large that backlog
&gt; is/will be.) If it's just a few, I don't think
&gt; that it's going to be a problem but if there is a
&gt; backlog of a few hundred papers you risk that the
&gt; journal either starts pear-shaped or that
&gt; reviewers initially are too tough to get rid of
&gt; the backlog.


Thanks for raising the question. To my knowledge, it has not been addressed yet. But I have not been in Athens either ;-) 

I *does* have to be addresses - but it's not really difficult: We have an online-journal now, so there is no bandwidth limitation anymore. So in 2016, we can already review the three flagship conferences using the following grades:
 (1) Accept
 (2) Reject 
 (3) proc.IACR

All authors with (3) get asked if they want to submit to proc.IACR. If they do (presumable with small changes), we can already publish the first article in proc.IACR in May 2016 :-) And as I said: There is no limit. If we accept 300 articles within the first 6 month, that's fine.

So I guess the backlog will not add too much to the overall workload.

Best,
Christopher]]></description>
      <category>IACR Publication Reform</category>
      <guid isPermaLink="true">http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,895,898#msg-898</guid>
      <pubDate>Thu, 30 May 2013 05:04:53 -0600</pubDate>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>[IACR Publication Reform] Re: IACR publication reform - my two cents / workshop problematic</title>
      <link>http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,895,897#msg-897</link>
      <author>cbw</author>
      <description><![CDATA[Hello,

I agree that there is a foreseeable problem with the workshops - both IACR and non-IACR. In a nutshell, we will &quot;vamperize&quot; them with the &quot;Proceedings of the IACR&quot; (proc.IACR)and suck out of them all the good publications.

I don't think that the workshops will disappear. We'll get either an informal solution or a formal solution (or a mix of both):

(1) Informal solution: Workshops will accept any talk where an author says &quot;look, I have an IACR Publication. Would you like me to speak at your workshop?&quot; Out of sheer lack of submissions, workshops will agree. Alternatively, the will actively &quot;hunt&quot; publications in proc.IACR that have not been accepted for AC/EC/Crypto-Presentation. Both information is public, so we cannot prevent this.

(2) Formal solution: Workshops get (somehow) incorporated into proc.IACR and agree among each other which presentation goes to which workshop. The system will be self-regulating: Authors that thing their article is too good for workshop X will decline an invitation and hope to get invited for workshop Y. If their article is indeed good enough, this may happen. And it will be difficult to manage in the beginning.

At least for the IACR-workshops (CHES, FSE, PKC, TCC), I would like to see an offer from proc.IACT towards them. If they don't take it, that's fine. However, there should be a genuine offer. I agree it should not be in the first year of proc.IACR - things need to fall into place first. But from year two onwards, they should be included.

Secondly, I would like to extend this offer to all workshops that have &quot;in cooperation with&quot; status - see https://www.iacr.org/icw/. Again - it should be an offer, nothing more.

Including more workshops could prove difficult. In particular: If a workshop does not even fulfil the rather minimal criteria of ICW - why should we include it into proc.IACR?

So at the end, there will be some workshops that are formally associated with proc.IACR (maybe on a year-by-year basis) and other workshops that can informally draw from the publications there to increase the number of reviewed talks they have. How they fill the other slots is a different ball game and I am very interested to see different solutions implemented :-)

Best,
Christopher]]></description>
      <category>IACR Publication Reform</category>
      <guid isPermaLink="true">http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,895,897#msg-897</guid>
      <pubDate>Thu, 30 May 2013 04:58:17 -0600</pubDate>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>[IACR Publication Reform] Adversarial phenomena in the publishing system</title>
      <link>http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,896,896#msg-896</link>
      <author>djb</author>
      <description><![CDATA[I think that the real problems with our current publishing system come from cases where different parties have conflicting incentives. Some of the comments I heard at the IACR membership meeting yesterday seemed to start from the notion that these parties won't make any attempt to act rationally in their own self-interest; this notion strikes me as naive.

Financial example of conflicting incentives: Publishers make money, primarily by acquiring and exploiting copyright monopolies. Universities would rather spend the same money on students, faculty, etc.

Non-financial example: Authors submit inaccurate papers; the incentive here is the _time_ needed to carefully write and check proofs, software, etc. Readers expect papers to be accurate; same incentive. We blame the author for inaccuracies---the reader is the innocent user; the author is the attacker---because it's obviously much more efficient for the author to do the requisite checking than for the readers to do it.

Another example: Authors submit papers with significant portions that aren't actually new. Here there's (1) a time incentive against checking the literature properly, combined with (2) an incentive to take as much credit as possible. Readers expect papers to be new, except for clearly labeled review to set context; having the same ideas published again and again and again is a huge waste of time. Again it's clear that the reader is the innocent user and the author is the attacker.

Another example, with a new attacker: Reviewers send in inaccurate reviews; again the main incentive is the time required for accuracy. Readers expect that the review process will be accurate, so that acceptance actually conveys some meaningful information (although there are obviously limits to how much information an ``accept'' or ``reject'' can convey to the public). Here reviewers are the attackers, and readers (plus, to some extent, authors) are the innocent users.

Another example, involving collusion between parties: A narrow topic X is published more frequently than justified by its importance to the community as a whole, because reviewers working on X are inflating grades for papers on X. (This isn't necessarily intentional---the incentives are so clear that one would _expect_ this behavior to appear as a consequence of randomness combined with evolutionary pressure. Eliminating, or compensating for, this type of randomness takes real community effort.) Readers expect that the distribution of acceptances across topics reflects the importance of those topics to the community.

Nigel, in explaining two days ago the IACR Board's strawman proposal for a Proceedings of the IACR, emphasized the &quot;high review load&quot; created by papers that are submitted again and again and again &quot;often unmodified&quot;. The conflict of incentives is again quite clear. What's completely unclear is how a Proceedings of the IACR is supposed to reduce the review load.

I'm not disputing the ability of a centralized mechanism to rule out the extreme case that Nigel points to, namely resubmission of a paper that's &quot;unmodified&quot;. But this trivially recognized case is already quite rare. As a reviewer I often see authors submitting a paper repeatedly without making _the critical changes that I keep asking for_, but this judgment requires expert review. It's essentially never true that the paper is &quot;unmodified&quot;; adding some superficial rule against resubmission of &quot;unmodified&quot; papers will affect only a few cases, and even in those cases the authors _will_ adapt to the rule in the obvious way, so there won't actually be any reduction in the review load.

Of course, there are also many cases where papers _do_ make the critical changes, and cases where reviewers are simply wrong. (Last year I made a serious mistake in a review---I could blame the paper for misleading me, but I could have and should have caught the mistake myself. Fortunately the mistake became clear to me during the committee discussion.) By pointing to &quot;unmodified&quot; papers Nigel seems to be trying to suggest that resubmissions are never worthwhile; this exaggeration seems central to the current design of the Proceedings of the IACR.

I'm not saying that it's impossible to stop misbehavior by authors and by reviewers. A new system can create new incentives that override the existing incentives---consider, for example, the incentives that would be created by exposing submissions and reviews to the public. What I'm saying is that it's important to think through how authors and reviewers will actually behave.

---Dan]]></description>
      <category>IACR Publication Reform</category>
      <guid isPermaLink="true">http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,896,896#msg-896</guid>
      <pubDate>Thu, 30 May 2013 02:02:03 -0600</pubDate>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>[IACR Publication Reform] IACR publication reform - my two cents</title>
      <link>http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,895,895#msg-895</link>
      <author>hoerder</author>
      <description><![CDATA[Unfortunately I wasn't able to attend EC yesterday so apologies if some of the points have been raised already.

It seems to me that not including the workshops in the Journal scheme is contra productive as you'll have to review journal rejects again for those conferences. Furthermore, those conferences will get journal rejects only -- journal acceptances that do not get into C/EC/AC are out of the pool. However:
1) It may be reasonable to have a one or two year delay for bringing the workshops into the journal system just to make sure that the system works well enough and not to have all eggs in one basket immediately.
2) It may be reasonable to combine the workshops with regular, co-located post-grad (summer) schools on en vogue topics. If everyone knows that IACR organizes 2 to 4 summer schools on state of the art topics every year and if there's an inofficial price limit on those summer schools, then everyone can include a suitable multiple of that limit in grant applications for PhD studentships and you'll never lack people attending those summer schools &amp; workshops.

If you want a quick turn-around, include a &quot;letters to the editor&quot; or short paper section. Sometimes a paper triggers an idea that should be published but isn't substantial enough to make a full, high quality paper. Instead of padding it with background blubber and sending it to a crappy conference or keeping silent until you've accumulated enough substance for a full paper, people could just send a short, down-to-the-point paper to the journal and get it published fast.

The journal should have a good categories/keywords/tag system to help with lit research. Coherent tagging rules would be helpful and reviewers should make sure that the paper has been tagged properly (in case of acceptances). Right now, when I submit a paper I specify all keywords that seem relevant at the time of submission. With re-submissions, I noticed that I never come up with the exactly same list of keywords (unless I look up what I used the last time). I take that as indication that my intuitive ad-hoc approach to keywords probably does not help a lot. (Keyword based search should beat googling in my opinion.)

Finally: What are you going to do with the backlog of papers that are already in the submission-resubmission cycle when the Journal starts. (I don't know how large that backlog is/will be.) If it's just a few, I don't think that it's going to be a problem but if there is a backlog of a few hundred papers you risk that the journal either starts pear-shaped or that reviewers initially are too tough to get rid of the backlog.

Cheers,
Simon Hoerder]]></description>
      <category>IACR Publication Reform</category>
      <guid isPermaLink="true">http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,895,895#msg-895</guid>
      <pubDate>Thu, 30 May 2013 01:03:23 -0600</pubDate>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>[IACR Publication Reform] Re: IACR publication reform - bad reviewers</title>
      <link>http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,893,894#msg-894</link>
      <author>hoerder</author>
      <description><![CDATA[Hi,

I would implement both things. A rebattle phase where you can try to convince the reviewer that something he's said is wrong and a review rating where you can assess whether the review was helpful. 

If you also add a fairness rating, then it should be weighted by the PC to protect tough but fair reviewers. 

Cheers, 
Simon Hoerder]]></description>
      <category>IACR Publication Reform</category>
      <guid isPermaLink="true">http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,893,894#msg-894</guid>
      <pubDate>Thu, 30 May 2013 00:50:39 -0600</pubDate>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>[IACR Publication Reform] Re: IACR publication reform - bad reviewers</title>
      <link>http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,893,893#msg-893</link>
      <author>cbw</author>
      <description><![CDATA[Dear Serge,

&gt; One concern is that the review process of the unique 
&gt; submission must be more reliable than what we have so
&gt; far. I have seen many bad reviews in IACR conferences
&gt; recently. 

I agree. Two possible remedies come to mind.

First, we could use a &quot;rebattle-phase&quot; were authors can comment quickly (1 week or so) on the reviews before they are discussed. I think it will help to identify badly written reviews - in particular reviews with factual flaws. To my knowledge, this was successfully implemented in some security conferences. 

The second thing is &quot;reviewing the reviews&quot;. Here, authors comment on how helpful / fair reviews are (and also assign numerical grades). Sure - the responds will be biased: If my paper got accepted, I like the review(er) and vice versa. However, this bias can easily be identified and eliminated given a few reviews. Hence, this could be built automatically into the reviewing system. Bad reviewers simply don't get requests for reviews anymore. 

I don't have a strong opinion (yet) which would be the best solution, but I would be very grateful for other suggestions / comments :-)

Best,
Christopher]]></description>
      <category>IACR Publication Reform</category>
      <guid isPermaLink="true">http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,893,893#msg-893</guid>
      <pubDate>Wed, 29 May 2013 09:56:04 -0600</pubDate>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>[IACR Publication Reform] Re: IACR publication reform - background material</title>
      <link>http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,890,892#msg-892</link>
      <author>nigel</author>
      <description><![CDATA[Go here to see the presentation of the boards thoughts from the Rump Session of Eurocrypt 2013

http://www.iacr.org/conferences/eurocrypt2013/rump/IACR-Publication.pptx

Nigel]]></description>
      <category>IACR Publication Reform</category>
      <guid isPermaLink="true">http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,890,892#msg-892</guid>
      <pubDate>Wed, 29 May 2013 09:17:12 -0600</pubDate>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>[IACR Publication Reform] Re: IACR publication reform - background material</title>
      <link>http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,890,891#msg-891</link>
      <author>vaudenay</author>
      <description><![CDATA[I attended to Nigel's presentation at the EC13 rump session and fully agree on that our communitty has to grow up and make some drastic change in his communication scheme which is by far suboptimal and counterproductive at this time. I support moving to something completely new as soon as possible.

A scheme with open access, permanent submission, fast response, and not necessary any public presentation would be great. One concern is that the review process of the unique submission must be more reliable than what we have so far. I have seen many bad reviews in IACR conferences recently.

Also: the scheme should make clear what is the role of the co-chairs (or the &quot;college of co-chairs&quot;) and the reviewer in charge (or &quot;editor&quot;).

Many thanks to the board members for working on this evolution!]]></description>
      <category>IACR Publication Reform</category>
      <guid isPermaLink="true">http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,890,891#msg-891</guid>
      <pubDate>Wed, 29 May 2013 01:52:39 -0600</pubDate>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>[IACR Publication Reform] IACR publication reform - background material</title>
      <link>http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,890,890#msg-890</link>
      <author>cc</author>
      <description><![CDATA[fHere is a selection of prominent viewpoints on the publication culture
in computer science and the current developments, including a survey
on conference-journal hybrids by Jonathan Grudin.

---

The VLDB model ( P-VLDB )
  -Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment home page
  http://vldb.org/pvldb/
  -Document with motivation and description
  http://www.vldb.org/pvldb/papers/p40-jagadish.pdf

Time for Computer Science to Grow Up (Lance Fortnow)
  http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1536616.1536631

Program Committee Overload in Systems (Ken Birman and Fred Schneider)
  http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1506409.1506421

Conference-journal hybrids (Jonathan Grudin et al.)
  http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2398356.2398371

Publication culture resources (Jonathan Grudin)
  -A collection of many links to ACM articles on publication culture
  http://research.microsoft.com/~jgrudin/CACMviews.pdf

Rebooting the CS publication process (Dan Wallach)
  http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2001269.2001283

Publication Culture in Computing Research
  -Report from Dagstuhl Perspectives Workshop 12452
  http://dx.doi.org/10.4230/DagRep.2.11.20
  http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/volltexte/2013/3977/]]></description>
      <category>IACR Publication Reform</category>
      <guid isPermaLink="true">http://eprint.iacr.org/forum/read.php?14,890,890#msg-890</guid>
      <pubDate>Tue, 28 May 2013 07:29:44 -0600</pubDate>
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