TODS Special Issues

The March 2004 issue of TODS should be in your mailbox (as well as available in cyberspace, at the ACM Digital Library) around the time you receive this issue of SIGMOD Record. This issue is a first, a special issue dedicated to extended versions of SIGMOD and PODS papers from the 2002 conference. This special issue opens the topic of invited papers from conferences, and indeed, the more general topic of journal versions of conference papers. A conference paper is the scholarly equivalent of fast food: quick to read (eat), sometimes healthy for you, and undoubtably convenient. The strict page limit (10–12 pages, depending on the conference) favors topics that can be introduced, developed, and evaluated in a short amount of space. One can read several conference papers, on a wide variety of topics, in the time that it takes to read one journal article. A journal paper is the equivalent of a three-course dinner. It is allowed space (in terms of page count) to more fully examine related work, develop algorithmic or theoretical refinements to the proposed approach, and perform a more thorough evaluation of the central idea of the paper. Some topics are perfect for a conference paper. The approach is simple and thus can be described fully in just a few pages, the applicability is routine, the related work minimal, and the requisite evaluation straightforward. Other topics are better suited for a journal paper: there may be a substantial prior literature that must be summarized and the positioning of the paper explained, the approach may be complex and require careful development, the evaluation may be quite involved, with many aspects to consider. In fact, some ideas require more space than even a journal article provides (as I have remarked in these pages three years ago1). The impetus for the last two books that I wrote was exactly that: I knew that to fully discuss my ideas and the rationale behind them, a single journal article, or even two or three related articles, would not be sufficient, but the several hundred pages afforded by a book-length monograph was perfect. Then there are those ideas that work well in both conference and journal form. The conference paper is a teaser, presenting just enough of the idea and its evaluation to be interesting and to get the idea out there. The journal paper then elaborates on the idea, expounding on exactly where and in what circumstances the idea applies, identifying exactly where the benefits reside and the magnitude of those benefits, and providing a full exposition of the idea, with all necessary detail. It is this last category of papers that program chairs of SIGMOD, PODS, EDBT, and ICDT are encouraged to nominate for invitation. These nominations are evaluated by the Editor-in-Chief and a relevant Associate Editor to select those conference papers with the most potential for extension, for invitation. The invitation emphasizes the TODS prior publication policy2, summarized here.