LFG 2008 - First call for papers (revised)

[chris brew]

I'm an interested observer, not (yet) a regular submitter to LFG
conferences, but:
- By restricting submissions, you run the risk of missing the best work, if
it so happens that
  someone is doing more good work than you expect. If you do not impose
restrictions, you run the      risk that fewer research groups will have
accepted papers, so some people who would benefit from
 attending the conference do not do so.

- If reviewing standards are high enough to ensure that bad work is rejected
and good work accepted, it doesn't matter whether multiple submissions are
allowed or not, since the strategy of gaming the system by producing
multiple submissions of less polished work will fail

- if there is evidence that people are trying to game the system in this
way, and that the reviewing process is failing to handle it appropriately,
two possible solutions exist. Either impose restrictions or tighten the
reviewing process. If there is no such evidence, why bother with the
restrictions anyway?

- The role of conferences is different in different subfields. At some
conferences the work presented is typically high-quality finished research,
at others the intent is to provide a venue for work in progress.
Often, a publication in one of the former conferences has as large an effect
on the future of the author as does a publication in a good journal. If this
is happening, fairness dictates that the review process should be entirely
focussed on ensuring that the best work gets in. Most CL conferences are
like this. You can argue about whether the reviewing process is indeed
achieving these goals, but everybody agrees that the attempt should be made.
It would be unfortunate if someone was denied the crucial publication
because of rules that are not quality-related.

This is not so critical if the intent is to provide a venue for work in
progress, and not so much rides on acceptance and rejections. In that case I
think restrictions could make sense. Maybe the LFG community has to decide
what the conference is for?



On 03/11/2007, A. B. Bodomo <abbodomo at yahoo.com.hk> wrote:
>
> Dear all,
> I support this move to have a restriction on the number of papers we
> submit at LFG conferences. Indeed, this move should have been made long ago.
> For me the LFG conferences are Linguistics conferences and most Linguistics
> conferences, like the annual LSA conference, already have this wise idea of
> restricting the number of submissions. I don't think it would be such a good
> idea to rely on people restricting themselves the way we expect it. It is
> natural for people to want to maximise their chances of getting accepted by
> submitting as many as possible. For me, the restriction should be the
> standard one at Linguistics conferences: at most one single authored paper
> and one joint paper, but I am fine with this middle of the road solution by
> our Executive Committee since I understand Computational Linguistics
> conferences do something different from General Linguistics conferences.
>
> I would like to see more diversity in the topics, areas, backgrounds, and
> languages presented at LFG conferences and this should, of course, not be
> achieved at the expense of quality, since all papers still have to pass
> through "anonymous" peer reviews.
>
> Best,
> Adams
>
> *Martin Forst <mforst at parc.com>* wrote:
>
> Dear Josef, dear all,
> > does anybody know the reason for the new restriction on the number of
> > submissions (see below) in the revised call for papers for LFG 2008?
> The Executive Committee introduced this restriction in order to secure
> diversity in the papers.
> The rationale behind this goal is that quality is of course crucial for
> a conference program, but breadth is important, too.
>
> Although we (i.e. the Program Committee - lfg08 at easychair.org) do not
> expect the restriction to rule out a lot of potential submissions, we
> are interested in knowing what people think about it, in particular if
> they are opposed to it. Please let us know your arguments and, even more
> importantly, the number of additional abstracts you would have submitted
> if the restriction did not exist. The Executive Committee will consider
> these in the decision of whether to keep the restriction for LFG 2009.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Martin
>
>
>
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