{"id":33,"date":"2004-06-22T20:08:55","date_gmt":"2004-06-23T03:08:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/index.php\/archives\/2004\/06\/22\/selecting-papers\/"},"modified":"2004-06-22T21:42:29","modified_gmt":"2004-06-23T04:42:29","slug":"selecting-papers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/2004\/06\/selecting-papers\/","title":{"rendered":"Selecting Papers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most of the people who sub\u00admit\u00adted papers to the XML<\/span> 2004 Con\u00adfer\u00adence<\/a> will have heard by now wheth\u00ader their talk was accep\u00adted, waitl\u00adis\u00adted, or rejec\u00adted. Pick\u00ading the papers is quite an involved pro\u00adcess; since the qual\u00adity of the con\u00adfer\u00adence depends on the qual\u00adity of the papers it\u2019s also an import\u00adant pro\u00adcess. Every con\u00adfer\u00adence picks papers in a dif\u00adfer\u00adent way; here are some notes on how the con\u00adfer\u00adence I chair does this.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

First, the num\u00adbers. This year the con\u00adfer\u00adence is half a day short\u00ader<\/a> and so we could only take 94 papers. A day before the sub\u00admis\u00adsion dead\u00adline, we had about 70 sub\u00admis\u00adsions in the data\u00adbase. By the time the dead\u00adline arrived, we had over 250 sub\u00admis\u00adsions in 15 areas. For\u00adtu\u00adnately only one review\u00ader needed to get assigned papers early!<\/p>\n

All the papers were assigned to the 99 review\u00aders, tak\u00ading into account review\u00ader interests and poten\u00adtial con\u00adflicts of interest (work\u00ading for the same com\u00adpany etc), mak\u00ading sure that each paper was assigned to at least 5 review\u00aders, and each review\u00ader had between 10 \u2014 15 papers to review. The web-based sys\u00adtem I designed is simple and does\u00adn\u2019t show the review\u00aders the speak\u00ader inform\u00ada\u00adtion, so it\u2019s a blind review sys\u00adtem (assum\u00ading the speak\u00ader does\u00adn\u2019t put their info in the abstract!)<\/p>\n

After the review\u00aders had fin\u00adished, the Plan\u00adning Com\u00admit\u00adtee had a selec\u00adtion meet\u00ading to pick the papers. We had a num\u00adber of criteria:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. pick good papers<\/li>\n
  2. bal\u00adance the pro\u00adgram, so there are papers on all the top\u00adics of interest to our audi\u00adence and not too many on any one subject<\/li>\n
  3. broaden the speak\u00ader base to ensure a range of opin\u00adions and knowledge<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The grades and com\u00adments from the review\u00aders were essen\u00adtial in this pro\u00adcess. I can\u00ad\u2019t ima\u00adgine try\u00ading to select papers without the help that the review\u00aders give. I also don\u2019t think it would be as good a res\u00adult \u2014 James Surowieck\u00adi\u2019s piece in Wired called Smarter Than the CEO<\/span><\/a> gives some good reas\u00adon\u00ading as to why group decisions are often bet\u00adter than indi\u00advidu\u00adal ones. The Plan\u00adning Com\u00admit\u00adtee looked at the grades and the com\u00adments and read the abstract for every talk that was sub\u00admit\u00adted, and in gen\u00ader\u00adal we took the highest-scor\u00ading talks, while tak\u00ading the oth\u00ader cri\u00adter\u00adia above into account.<\/p>\n

    And so we ended up with 94 papers that were accep\u00adted, we waitl\u00adis\u00adted the next highest-scor\u00ading talks in each top\u00adic area, and we had to reject the rest for this con\u00adfer\u00adence. Reject\u00ading talks is always hard \u2014 it\u2019s often the case that the author wrote a good abstract on an inter\u00adest\u00ading top\u00adic, but someone else wrote one on a sim\u00adil\u00adar top\u00adic that was just that bit more inter\u00adest\u00ading to the review\u00aders (who, after all, are rep\u00adres\u00adent\u00adat\u00adive of the audi\u00adence). Some of the abstracts, of course, wer\u00aden\u2019t very good \u2014 they were too short, or too vague, or did\u00adn\u2019t describe what the speak\u00ader inten\u00added talk\u00ading about, but rather why the con\u00adfer\u00adence should have a talk on that sub\u00adject. Since the review\u00aders did\u00adn\u2019t have speak\u00ader inform\u00ada\u00adtion, they made their judge\u00adment solely on the qual\u00adity of the abstract. <\/p>\n

    We have a form\u00adal waitl\u00adist for a num\u00adber of reas\u00adons. Speak\u00aders often can\u00adcel (some\u00adtimes at the last minute) and we want a high-qual\u00adity talk for those speak\u00ading slots. We also keep a few speak\u00ading slots open for late-break\u00ading news which are filled in early Octo\u00adber. If we don\u2019t get enough good talks for those slots, the waitl\u00adis\u00adted speak\u00aders will get them. <\/p>\n

    It looks like a good set of talks this year; should be an inter\u00adest\u00ading conference!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Most of the people who sub\u00admit\u00adted papers to the XML<\/span> 2004 Con\u00adfer\u00adence<\/a> will have heard by now wheth\u00ader their talk was accep\u00adted, waitl\u00adis\u00adted, or rejec\u00adted. Pick\u00ading the papers is quite an involved pro\u00adcess; since the qual\u00adity of the con\u00adfer\u00adence depends on the qual\u00adity of the papers it\u2019s also an import\u00adant pro\u00adcess. Every con\u00adfer\u00adence picks papers in a dif\u00adfer\u00adent way; here are some notes on how the con\u00adfer\u00adence I chair does this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conference"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}