[sigcomm] considerations for reviewing extended papers

[Fred Douglis]

Vern,

I agree that this is indeed a contentious issue, and one with which many
conferences struggle, with or without a formal policy in place.

Also, your proposal to treat workshops like TRs suggests that everyone has
some uniform view of TRs.  I was assuming you basically ignore TRs when
considering originality... right?  I think that was more implicit than
explicit in your description, but maybe I missed it.

I come down on the side of the current SIGCOMM PC chairs, I guess.  I
think a workshop paper is to a conference paper as a conference paper is
to a journal paper.  Most journals won't republish a conference paper
verbatim, but expect some increment, which seems to vary depending on the
journal.   I certainly think that if an author publishes at HotNets, say,
and then sends something to the annual SIGCOMM conference that is not a
"significant" improvement over the HotNets paper, then it should without
question be rejected.

WWW2005 a year ago rejected at least one paper based on the observation
that it overlapped enormously a workshop paper.  There was no previously
stated policy other than requiring original submissions and there was a
strong consensus that originality required a substantial increment, not
just wordsmithing.

Fred