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Background
For better or for worse, the career of a researcher depends on the publish-or-perish model. Pressure to generate publications tends to motivate cutting-edge research, and publication frequency is one of the few methods of judging a researcher's status and ability. The peer-review process also provides valuable objective feedback for researchers, and it usually prevents low-quality work from being published.
Research publications normally appear in two forms: conferences and journals. Conferences gather researchers together to exchange ideas and present their latest findings. The results are published in a proceedings that is typically peer-reviewed but may not have high scientific quality. For example, a conference publication may offer a pioneering idea but lack sufficient validation. In contrast, journals usually demand measurements or other proof of the idea, requiring a lengthier review process. As a result, journal papers are more mature but less current than conference publications.
Problem
With the advent of the Internet, finding conference proceedings and journal papers has become a much simpler task. Spiders such as CiteSeer and Google Scholar, as well as publisher databases from IEEE and Springer, can find relevant publications with a simple keyword search. Some sites offer vital statistics, such as the number of times a paper has been cited, to help readers judge the importance of the work.
Assessing the quality of conferences and journals is not so easy, however. Unlike the impact factor for individual papers, there is no established metric for evaluating the venues in which those papers appear. The average acceptance rate (number of papers published divided by number of papers submitted) is one possibility, but such data is rarely reported. Consequently, the quality of most conferences and journals is represented only by a vague notion of reputation, distributed mainly by word-of-mouth among the research community.
Making matters worse, some conferences have been accused of being fake,
lacking any form of peer review and accepting all submissions (even randomly-generated papers) simply to make a profit. Journals, too, have been known to spam researchers with offers to publish in exchange for a fee. Given the key role that conferences and journals play in the integrity of research, these trends are disturbing.
Yet even legitimate conferences and journals may be hard to find. Searching the web can help, but it may overlook new or esoteric venues. For a more comprehensive search, professional organizations provide complete lists of the conferences they sponsor, but these too are limited. For instance, the ACM conference database does not list IEEE events, while the IEEE database does not list ACM events. And neither web site has any knowledge about conferences outside of their respective fields.
Solution
Research Planet aims to solve these problems by providing a centralized, independent, cross-discipline source of information and discussion about conferences and journals. Designed to make the life of a researcher easier, it offers:
- A searchable database of conferences and journals with filtering by acceptance rate, submission deadline, and other criteria
- A global map to locate nearby conferences
- A calendar of events, available for importing into Apple iCal, Google Calendar, and other applications that support the iCalendar standard
- A forum for discussing conferences and journals
- Customizable web feeds for keeping informed of new conferences, journals, and other updates to the Research Planet database
Together, these features help researchers find the best place to publish their work.