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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."
And this guy is changing to which academic field where things are different?
A-Bomb
In replying to this comment, I know that I'm going to sound like a bitter grad student; but, for some reason, I feel inclined to burn karma and make this statement:
I sympathize with this professor, and the trouble that he has faced. Although I work in the field of computer security (instead of computer graphics), I have seen many novel and ingenious papers rejected from conferences precisely because they are not from the current 'fad' field. Usually, I require large amounts of caffeine (and alcohol) just to make it through the conferences I attend, because they are filled with uninteresting papers written by hack academics attempting to ride the latest trend.
Perhaps it is this experience that has influenced the way in which I do academic reviews for conferences, when I am called upon to do so. I have no patience for papers that have nothing meaningful to say. Whenever I give an 'accept' rating to a paper, it is because I feel that the authors have something genuinely interesting to say. Whenever I give a 'reject' rating to a paper, I do my best to give as many constructive comments as I can -- I try to point out what insightful or meaningful things the author has done, as well as things that are genuine technical flaws and should be addressed. But, the thing I am never scared to do? I have never backed down from stating in a review, blatently, that the author's work seems novel and useful, and that some of the details are way over my head and should be subject to further review.
Given all the (meaningless) talk about reforming the academic review process, I often wonder: how much of the problem described by this professor would be solved if more reviewers had the balls to admit that some of the most novel ideas were over their heads?
This has been recognized for years. See "How to get your SIGGRAPH paper rejected, from 1993.
Some years ago, I stopped submitting papers to SIGGRAPH and started filing patents. It's been much more profitable.
Anyway, SIGGRAPH seems to have shrunk. I think the show floor peaked in size around 1997. Today, the Game Developer's Conference is where the real technical action is.
SIGGRAPH is mostly a rendering convention now; there's a little animation, a little behavior, and a tiny bit of physics in the papers this year, but other than that, it's rendering and compression. Which are relatively mature technologies.
I'm not one to dis peer review, but in this case screw them. Put your money where your mouth is and show them who's boss by showing them the money.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Salon des Refusés:
In the 1860s, artists of the nascent realist and impressionist movements submitted works to the Salon de Paris, the official exhibition sponsored by the Académie des beaux-arts, selection committee only to be rejected. The resultant complaints of bias led French emperor Napoleon III to allow the rejected works to be displayed in a separate exhibition.
The first Salon des Refusés in 1863 invited art-works rejected for display at the Salon de Paris.
Most were poor quality, leading to ridicule in the press. However, the exhibition included several important paintings including Édouard Manet's Le déjeuner sur l'herbe (The Luncheon on the Grass) and James McNeill Whistler's The White Girl. Other artists who showed at the Salon des Refusés include Henri Fantin-Latour, Paul Cézanne, Armand Guillaumin, Johan Jongkind, and Camille Pissarro.
You know, up until a couple of years ago, I worked my entire adult life (about 20 years - or so :-)) in IT. Call it mid-life crisis, whatever. I needed a change. I was disgusted with corporate idiocy, among other career-specific reasons.
I completely changed careers; although I had some studies in my new field (translation), I got another degree to "re-establish" myself, and set out to work for myself. I can honestly say I've never been happier. Is it because I changed careers, or because I now work for myself? I don't know. All I know is I'm a much happier person, and (I'm told) more pleasant to be around.
I'm one of those people that firmly believes that humans are not meant to do just one thing in life.
I'm quite certain he'll find something that gives him more satisfaction, if he hasn't already.
People don't get paid to review papers for conferences or journals. They only review papers because of a genuine interest, and because someone asked them nicely. If potential harm (to your career) could come from going out of your way to be helpful, would you still be helpful? It's already difficult to find qualified people who are willing to review papers; if they could be penalized later, I'm sure it will be much harder.
A good editor will know if the reviewer(s) are fair.
It is a flawed system, but I don't see how it can be fixed without some fundamental changes. One such change would be to have less emphasis on publications, but I don't see that happening anytime soon.
Having done my UG dissertation on image processing, i feel somewhat inclined to agree with the assertion papers are complex! Having read my fair share of SIGGRAPH papers... the simpler ones waffle on and on above novel uses for convolution filters, the more complex ones take you to a realm of mathematical uncertainty - they ask for great leaps of faith (specially those that over generalise the pseudo code and dont link to working programs!)
Computer imagary is a very large and wide ranging subject, and because of that a conference MUST specialize in trends to generate the worthwhile feedback and peer review we all crave (if you read paper after paper on unrelated domains, it doesnt make you an expert, nor is such an atmosphere likely to attract experts!)
Matt
The purpose of publishing a paper is not to boost the authors' egos. It's to convey ideas to other people. A paper which does not communicate concepts clearly does not deserve to be published.
... why couldn't he just spell this part out stepwise instead of being so verbose" and also complained that if you make the proof too easy to understand, it won't get accepted.
Bingo. That's exactly the problem. When I first started in grad school (mechanical engineering), I found the papers very difficult to understand, and I thought it was a problem in my knowledge. But then when I had someone else explain it to me, I was like, "uh, couldn't they have just said [simpler version]" and my adviser politely explained how something that looks too easy won't look novel and notable enough to publish.
In a lecture from a math professor (Erdos number 1), I heard exactly the same thing. He said it takes him a long time to review a submission, because he has to say, "er, okay, how did he get from here to here
You really have to wonder what this is supposed to accomplish. Are you less smart because you got more people to understand your idea? (I've always thought that if you can't explain what you did to a reasonably intelligent layman, given enough time, you don't understand it yourself.)
Apology to Ubuntu forum.