└── README.md /README.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | Journal of Systems Research (JSYS) 2 | ================================== 3 | There is a need for an open-access, free-for-authors, free-for-readers, high-quality journal for systems research. This repository contains a proposal for such a journal. 4 | 5 | ## Mission and values 6 | 7 | JSYS seeks to promote high-quality, open-access research on computer 8 | systems. JSYS will never charge readers or authors. All research 9 | published in JSYS will be available as open-access from the day it is 10 | accepted for publication. JSYS will not impose page limits on accepted 11 | publications. 12 | 13 | ## Why do we need a new journal in systems? 14 | 15 | 1. Top venues like SOSP/OSDI and Eurosys don't do revisions: good work that is not perfect gets rejected and bounced around (wastes both author and reviewer cycles). 16 | 2. Artificial constraints like being single track limit the number of papers accepted and presented. 17 | 3. Coupling publication and conference attendance is unfortunate, shutting out authors from countries like Iran and authors who simply don't have the money to travel 18 | 4. Conference papers also have an unfortunate limit on number of pages both in the submission version and in the final camera-ready version. Some conferences require authors to pay significant amount of money (e.g., $150) per extra page in the camera-ready version. 19 | 20 | These problems would all be solved by moving to a journal format. The 21 | quality would remain high, similar to SOSP/OSDI and Eurosys. 22 | 23 | Conferences would still remain, but they would be explicitly for networking. Authors can publish without attending the conference. 24 | 25 | ### Why not use an existing journal like ACM TOS? 26 | 27 | To ensure the open-access mission of the journal is carried out 28 | properly, it must be governed by an independent board. Existing 29 | journals such as Transactions on Computing Systems are all governed by 30 | organizations such as ACM, which have a different mission and set of 31 | values. A number of conferences, such as Neurips and RSS, are governed 32 | by their own independent foundations. 33 | 34 | ## How would the journal work? 35 | 36 | JSYS would work in a manner similar to PVLDB. Authors can submit to 37 | the journal on the first of every month. By the first of the following 38 | month, the authors will receive a decision: accept, revise, or 39 | reject. A revise decision means the authors can submit a revised 40 | manuscript 1--3 months after getting the decision. 41 | 42 | **Continuous Interaction**. During the one month of review, there will be 43 | continuous interaction between the authors and reviewers via 44 | HotCRP (in a double blind manner). In this way, the need for rebuttal 45 | is eliminated. The continuous, anonymized communication helps clears 46 | mis-understandings. 47 | 48 | **Non-confrontational review**. The goal of all reviewers to identify 49 | what needs to be done to get the paper to a publishable 50 | state. There are no constraints such as acceptance rate. The authors 51 | can then choose whether to perform the work identified by the 52 | reviewers to publish in this journal. 53 | 54 | 55 | ## Role of students 56 | 57 | We hope to include senior graduate students as reviewers in the 58 | journal. The reviewer set will also include established 59 | researchers, to ensure the grad-student reviewers are calibrated. 60 | 61 | We think there are many benefits to including senior graduate students 62 | as reviewers: they have more time than faculty to do deeper reviews, 63 | they are more enthusiastic about the review process, and they are more 64 | open to learning how to write good reviews. We also suspect they are 65 | less likely to turn in late or extremely short reviews. There is not a 66 | significant difference in review quality between a senior grad student 67 | and someone who has just graduated. 68 | 69 | ## Timeline 70 | 71 | It will take time before the journal becomes "prestigious". Several 72 | new conferences such as NSDI and Eurosys significantly increased in 73 | quality since their founding; we expect it will be the same with the 74 | journal. We expect it will be five to seven years before the journal 75 | is considered "top". 76 | 77 | ## How would we fund the journal if we are not charging authors or readers? 78 | 79 | The journal will rely on volunteer work, similar to most computer 80 | science conferences. It is not expensive to host the papers published 81 | in the journal. The journal will not offer type-setting or 82 | copy-editing: the authors will do this themselves (this is common in 83 | computer science conferences). In this manner, the journal takes 84 | advantage of characteristics unique to computer science research. 85 | 86 | Similar journals such as the Journal of Machine Learning Research 87 | (JMLR) have been open access for over 20 years without charging 88 | readers or authors. The publisher [shares](https://blogs.harvard.edu/pamphlet/2012/03/06/an-efficient-journal/) the biggest expense is 89 | filing taxes. 90 | 91 | ## Potential Problems 92 | 93 | A number of problems may arise in this model. [Dave 94 | Levin](https://www.cs.umd.edu/~dml/) provided a list of thoughtful 95 | questions (which we originally came up in the context of reviewing in 96 | security): 97 | 98 | 1. Will there a lack of expert reviewers in this model? Conferences 99 | attract expert reviewers; at least initially, it may be hard to 100 | find such reviewers for this journal. 101 | 2. Will reviewers ask for a lot of additional experiments for 102 | publication? This has the potential to move the paper away from the 103 | vision of the authors, and add (perhaps un-necessary) extra work 104 | for the authors. 105 | 3. Will the lack of in-person PC meeting lead to large variability in 106 | quality of accepted papers? 107 | 4. Will this model encourage lots of low-quality submissions? 108 | 109 | We believe these questions can be answered by collecting data during 110 | the review process. For example, we will ask authors to rate 111 | reviews. We will also collect the self-reported expertise metric from 112 | each reviewer. 113 | 114 | ## Next Steps 115 | - Forming a steering committee 116 | - Finalizing details of journal 117 | - Getting the journal registered? [Get an ISSN](https://www.loc.gov/issn/ISSN%20app%20form%20916%20(2008-12).pdf)? 118 | 119 | ## Discussion 120 | 121 | We've setup the #jsys channel in the Systems slack to discuss this 122 | idea. Please join the systems slack 123 | [here](http://bit.ly/join-systems-slack-2019), and look for the #jsys 124 | channel. 125 | 126 | Similar open-access journals 127 | ============================= 128 | - [Journal of Machine Learning Research](http://www.jmlr.org/) 129 | (open-access for over 20 years!) 130 | - [Journal of Object Technology](http://www.jot.fm/index.html) 131 | - [Compositionality](http://compositionality-journal.org/) 132 | 133 | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------