Friday, July 07, 2006

SODA submits: stunning drop

Muthu announces that there were 380 submissions at SODA this year. This is a stunning drop: last year, some 450 were submitted, and the year before, 487 (although many of those were short papers). This is the lowest submission count since 2002, coinciding with a much-larger-than-normal increase in the committee size.



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12 comments:

  1. The fall of the Berlin wall was stunning. This was at most mildly unexpected by some democrats. 

    Posted by Anonymous

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  2. I have a question:

    Does the lower number of submissions have any implications on (i) the number of accepted papers and (ii) the average quality of the accepted papers?

    Why am I asking?

    I am a first year graduate student; I was considering of submitting a paper to SODA, but I didn't make it to the deadline. (My co-author, who is very established, said that it would probably get in.)

    So, unless this paper goes to STOC, I will have to settle with a not-so-good conference, say ICALP.

    So, I am wondering if it was actually a bad choice not to submit. 

    Posted by Anonymous

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  3. It's usually a bad choice not to submit, especially if someone who should know thinks it's a likely accept. But if you didn't make the deadline, you didn't make it; SODA deadlines are hard. Better to spend more time making sure you make the next deadline and less time fretting about lost opportunities.

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  4. The number of submissions may increase after each world-cup year.
     

    Posted by Anonymous

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  5. The reason the drop is stunning is because 'it's a bad choice not to submit'. For the student who felt they should have submitted, don't sweat it. Improve it if you can, and send it to STOC. conferences keep coming around.

    In fact, one theory as to why submissions might be dropping for SODA is that other conferences are beginning to take up the slack. ESA had a large number of submissions this year, for example. I do like the world cup hypothesis though. 

    Posted by Suresh

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  6. This is the third, totally unexpected drop that I've seen in a theory conference over the last three years. They come out of the blue, with no reason or pattern, and usually self-correct the next year. They defy the overall trend for conferences which is up.

    The impact on the quality of accepted submissions for SODA 2007 will be negligible. Simply accepting 115-120 papers instead of 135 would keep the acceptance ratio right in line with previos years.

    Posted by Anonymous

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  7. oh i agree that the quality change will be minimal. not so clear to me that a slavish adherence to past year's acceptance ratios is necessary. it's worth remembering that the acceptance ratio for the past few years has been artificially set because of the hard constraint of 135 on papers accepted in a 3-track, 3-day conference. 

    Posted by suresh

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  8. Why we see a steady rise in almost every cs conference after year 2000?

    My explantion is something like this: because of the dot.com bubble and the burst of dot.com bubble, there are more-than-norm number of graduate students enrolled in year 2001-2006. Now this batch of students are being digested, we will return to the norm soon.

    Actually, this also explains why there are many professors who didn't get tenure in 2005/2006, and why it is so hard to get a faculty position in 2006.



    Posted by Anonymous

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  9. This happend for FOCS'06 also. The number of submissions was 240 which was much lower than the norm of 270 in previous years. Maybe since economy becomes better, the people are more willing to go to the industry than publishing papers in academia. 

    Posted by Anonymous

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  10. Btw, does anyone have an idea of when the actual SODA acceptance will usually be intimated to the authors? SODA very vaguely declared that they would intimate the results in the month of September. However does that mean Sept beginning/mid-Sept/ towards the end? What is the usual trend? 

    Posted by Anonymous

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  11. the alenex deadline is Sep 28. this would imply that the SODA result date is anywhere from Sep 21 earlier. I'd bet on the middle of September. Rather sneaky for the PC to make it so vague: I didn't notice this till you pointed it out :)  

    Posted by Suresh

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  12. Looks like the program committee just met electronically last week -- I'm guessing (hoping?) notifications come out later this week or early next week (Sept 8th/Sept11th) 

    Posted by Chad

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