From: Tristan.Miller@dfki.de   
      
   Greetings.   
      
   I recently read about SCIgen, a program that generates random computer   
   science research papers [1]; one of these random papers was actually   
   submitted and accepted to a conference, WMSCI 2005 [2].  Further   
   investigation of this conference revealed that it's not highly regarded in   
   the academic community.  Many academics believe that it exists solely to   
   make money for its organizers, and thus rarely rejects papers [3].  It   
   also charges acceptance fees for its papers and doesn't actually require   
   authors to show up to present their work, so to me it's pretty obvious   
   that it's nothing more than a vanity conference.   
      
   But this got me thinking, among legitimate conferences with peer review,   
   how does one assess their quality and prestige?  For any given paper one   
   can write, there might be a half dozen or more conferences which are   
   appropriate to submit it to, at least from a thematic point of view.  How   
   should one decide which conferences are good, and which are not so highly   
   regarded, or even viewed negatively as an excuse to pad one's publication   
   list?  I can think of a few things off the top of my head, but would   
   appreciate further comments.   
      
   1) Conferences organized by major science associations (ACM, IEEE, ACL,   
   NIST, etc.) are generally better than those which are not.   
      
   2) Conferences which are sponsored by major businesses (IBM, Microsoft,   
   major book publishers), governments, or universities are generally better   
   than those which are not.   
      
   3) Conferences with famous invited speakers and organization/editorial   
   committee members are generally better than those with relative unknowns.   
      
   4) Conferences with low paper acceptance rates are generally better than   
   those with high acceptance rates.   
      
   Anything else one should consider in choosing a conference?  Are there are   
   websites or publications which review and rate scientific and technical   
   conferences to separate the highly prestigious from the   
   mediocre-but-still-respectable from the vanity-publishing crud?  Or at   
   least those that track hard data such as acceptance rates?   
      
   On a related note, any advice on evaluating journals would be appreciated.   
      
   Regards,   
   Tristan   
      
   References:   
   [1]    
   [2]    
   [3]    
      
   --   
   Tristan Miller, Research Scientist [en,(fr,de,ia)] | tristan.miller@dfki.de   
   German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence | Tel:  +49 631 205 3440   
   http://www.dfki.uni-kl.de/~miller/                 | Fax:  +49 631 205 3210   
      
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