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Quitting the Graphics Field Over SIGGRAPH
An anonymous reader writes "A Professor at Stony Brook university has quit the field of computer graphics. He claims too much importance is given to one particular conference (SIGGRAPH) and that acceptance of papers in this conference has too much importance in terms of the careers (tenure, grants etc) of a researcher. Furthermore he claims the paper reviewing for SIGGRAPH is not fair and bright and novel papers are summarily rejected because they are either not from a 'hot' field or because the reviewer does not understand the concept and is not willing to spend time understanding it. He has started a discussion forum which has comments from several big names in the field including the papers chair of SIGGRAPH 2007."
I hear the basket-weaving field is fairly decentralized. I'm afraid it won't get you much academic cred though.
Qualitas edurus commercium, nullus penitus net rimor, nullus deus beneficium
As far as I can tell, most of academia is like this. Paper reviews (and conference reviews in particular) are really a bit of a lottery. Since academics don't get paid to review, they will often palm the reviews off to grad students who may or may not have the first clue about the field. And there is generally no rejoinder process for conferences, so you just have to wear it, improve the paper and resubmit it somewhere else. Journals and grant applications generally allow you a right of response, but you are still subject to the lottery of whether the reviewers:
a) know anything about the field,
b) actually read the paper
c) are open minded enough to consider new ideas or
d) have brains at all.
A colleague of mine recently had a brief paper (restricted to a maximum of two pages) rejected because it was too short - at exactly two pages. I kid you not.
Can I have your stuff?
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.