<p>It depends. If you write a paper and exhaustively include all of the relevant materials, then you should submit the paper to a journal (if you think the journal you choose is more valuable then a conference on the basis of impact factor, reputation and other metrics). If you only describe part of the work, then it may be better to submit to a conference and later, when you have new/updated results, then you may consider submitting again to a journal. What constitutes a significant difference is of course highly variable and depends on your particular work. A very rough rule of thumb is that journal versions differ for at least 30% from corresponding conference versions. However, there are exceptions. And, finally, you should carefully decide the venue. Especially in TCS, a conference may be extremely valuable, in some cases even more than a journal. I do not think that the review process applied in some highly valued conference is worse than the average review process applied in journals. This is strictly dependent on the particular conference or journal, and on the reviewers an editor finds available. </p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-11-27T15:19:28.187Z
"A very rough rule of thumb is that journal versions differ for at least 30% from corresponding conference versions." — This is not a universal rule of thumb; the fraction of required new material is highly field-dependent.  In theoretical computer science (STOC/FOCS/SODA/SOCG/etc), that fraction has historically been indistinguishable from 0%.  In other fields (economics, for example), the fraction is much closer to 100%.
Jeffε
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-11-27T15:22:45.720Z
Indeed, I stated immediately after: "However, there are exceptions".
Massimo Cafaro
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-11-27T15:25:00.957Z
I don't think an entire field of study should be considered an "exception", especially in an answer to a question about publishing *in that field*, posted in a forum *devoted to that field*.
Jeffε
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-11-27T15:42:49.780Z
@Jeffe: I did not want to start a debate about this, and I do not want to start an harsh debate right now. Simply stated, I do not think (this is of course my humble opinion) that we are talking, as you said, of an entire field of study. Please note that, coincidentally, even Dave Clarke stated the same 30% percent. This is (merely) our experience. I understand of course that yours may be different. This forum is a wonderful place that gathers so many interesting but different experiences: the key point, at least to me, is that I can learn from many different people.
Massimo Cafaro
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-11-27T21:02:16.203Z
@JɛﬀE: I don't want to start another debate in the comments, but does that mean we should always publish a journal version even though we have nothing new to say (w.r.t. the conference paper)?
Anthony Labarre
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-11-27T23:31:05.820Z
@AnthonyLabarre it means that if the conference version is an extended abstract, does not have full proofs or can benefit from better presentation, you can fix these issues and submit to a journal. Of course you can do that with ArXiv, but a journal provides a review of the paper in its full form.
Sasho Nikolov
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-11-27T14:54:43.457Z
2011-11-27T14:54:43.457Z
Massimo Cafaro
<p>I am recently getting my papers rejected from journals (i.e., TALG) on the mere basis of not having a significant difference between the journal and proceedings (i.e., SODA) version.</p>

<p>The main reasons for me to submit to a journal is its thorough review process.
Other than that, SODA's 20 page limit is more than enough for all that I want to say. In fact, David Johnson has repeatedly asked the SODA crowd to not "save stuff for the journal version".</p>

<p>Any advice?</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-11-27T14:59:44.610Z
I am quite annoyed by this policy of additional X% in a journal version because, I think, conferences and journals should provide different services: announcement of a result vs a thorough check of correctness. At some point, I considered sending to conference a final version with 2 pages even when the full version (~15 pages) was already available.
someone
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-11-27T15:06:18.223Z
Can you provide more detail without breaking anonymity/confidence?  Did *referees* recommend rejection, or was the rejection instigated by the editor?  If referees are recommending rejection without novel content, you're hitting a real community value, not just a journal policy; your best best is to either add new material, or to ignore David Johnson and abbreviate your future SODA papers.  If rejection was not recommended by the referees, then a discussion between the TALG editorial board and the SODA steering committee is in order!
Jeffε
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-11-27T15:09:29.560Z
Also, I agree with @someone that a "X% new material" journal policy is stupid.
Jeffε
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-11-27T21:01:10.510Z
There is a trivial solution: Just re-write your paper for the journal version. 100% new text, 0% new results ≈ sufficiently different. Re-writing from scratch almost always helps a lot with the presentation.
Jukka Suomela
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-11-28T10:40:57.750Z
how about another trivial solution: write the proofs in the conference paper with "(extended abstract)" written after the title, and write all proofs in a very sketchy/informal way. Maybe that won't work with SODA because 20pages double column is in a lot of cases enough.
Marcos Villagra
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-11-28T19:42:02.610Z
We don't like duplicates, be it here in cstheory or TALG. If you have already published a clean and self-contained version of your paper in SODA, there is no point resubmitting to a journal for the sake of going through a thorough review. Today conference papers are as accessible as journal papers. Also, what you publish in conferences must be correct and on the other hand, the mere fact that a result gets published in a journal does not by itself add to its merits or make it bulletproof. Just spend the extra time producing new research.
Mahdi Cheraghchi
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-11-28T22:30:57.707Z
MCH: It is often the case that what is published in conferences includes bugs that are found and repaired in journal refereeing. That improvement to the literature benefits us all, but is unavailable to those like the original poster (and he or she's not the only one I've heard of in this predicament) who are shut out of journal publication by having made the "mistake" of putting full details in their conference versions. Conference reviewing is not an adequate substitute: it focuses on interestingness rather than accuracy and often has no process for ensuring that authors fix their papers.
David Eppstein
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-11-30T00:01:52.880Z
@MCH The institutions using ISI rankings (e.g. most 3rd world countries where the government feel they need a measure more "objective" that asking peers to congratulate or not their scientists) refuse to consider conference papers as publications: in this case, it is not the choice of the author to decide if a SODA publication is "enough" or not.
J.y B.y
<soft-question><research-practice><conferences><journals>
Required delta between proceedings and journal versions
Algorithm
# Required delta between proceedings and journal versions

(Asked by: username_0 on 2011-11-27)

I am recently getting my papers rejected from journals (i.e., TALG) on the mere basis of not having a significant difference between the journal and proceedings (i.e., SODA) version.

The main reasons for me to submit to a journal is its thorough review process.
Other than that, SODA's 20 page limit is more than enough for all that I want to say. In fact, David Johnson has repeatedly asked the SODA crowd to not "save stuff for the journal version".

Any advice?

**Tags:** soft-question, research-practice, conferences, journals

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: I am quite annoyed by this policy of additional X% in a journal version because, I think, conferences and journals should provide different services: announcement of a result vs a thorough check of correctness. At some point, I considered sending to conference a final version with 2 pages even when the full version (~15 pages) was already available.  
> **username_2**: Can you provide more detail without breaking anonymity/confidence?  Did *referees* recommend rejection, or was the rejection instigated by the editor?  If referees are recommending rejection without novel content, you're hitting a real community value, not just a journal policy; your best best is to either add new material, or to ignore David Johnson and abbreviate your future SODA papers.  If rejection was not recommended by the referees, then a discussion between the TALG editorial board and the SODA steering committee is in order!  
> **username_2**: Also, I agree with @username_1 that a "X% new material" journal policy is stupid.  
> **username_3**: There is a trivial solution: Just re-write your paper for the journal version. 100% new text, 0% new results ≈ sufficiently different. Re-writing from scratch almost always helps a lot with the presentation.  
> **username_4**: how about another trivial solution: write the proofs in the conference paper with "(extended abstract)" written after the title, and write all proofs in a very sketchy/informal way. Maybe that won't work with SODA because 20pages double column is in a lot of cases enough.  
> **username_5**: We don't like duplicates, be it here in cstheory or TALG. If you have already published a clean and self-contained version of your paper in SODA, there is no point resubmitting to a journal for the sake of going through a thorough review. Today conference papers are as accessible as journal papers. Also, what you publish in conferences must be correct and on the other hand, the mere fact that a result gets published in a journal does not by itself add to its merits or make it bulletproof. Just spend the extra time producing new research.  
> **username_6**: MCH: It is often the case that what is published in conferences includes bugs that are found and repaired in journal refereeing. That improvement to the literature benefits us all, but is unavailable to those like the original poster (and he or she's not the only one I've heard of in this predicament) who are shut out of journal publication by having made the "mistake" of putting full details in their conference versions. Conference reviewing is not an adequate substitute: it focuses on interestingness rather than accuracy and often has no process for ensuring that authors fix their papers.  
> **username_7**: @MCH The institutions using ISI rankings (e.g. most 3rd world countries where the government feel they need a measure more "objective" that asking peers to congratulate or not their scientists) refuse to consider conference papers as publications: in this case, it is not the choice of the author to decide if a SODA publication is "enough" or not.  

---

## 1 answers

### Answer by username_8 on 2011-11-27. Score: 1

It depends. If you write a paper and exhaustively include all of the relevant materials, then you should submit the paper to a journal (if you think the journal you choose is more valuable then a conference on the basis of impact factor, reputation and other metrics). If you only describe part of the work, then it may be better to submit to a conference and later, when you have new/updated results, then you may consider submitting again to a journal. What constitutes a significant difference is of course highly variable and depends on your particular work. A very rough rule of thumb is that journal versions differ for at least 30% from corresponding conference versions. However, there are exceptions. And, finally, you should carefully decide the venue. Especially in TCS, a conference may be extremely valuable, in some cases even more than a journal. I do not think that the review process applied in some highly valued conference is worse than the average review process applied in journals. This is strictly dependent on the particular conference or journal, and on the reviewers an editor finds available.

> **Comments:**
> **username_2**: "A very rough rule of thumb is that journal versions differ for at least 30% from corresponding conference versions." — This is not a universal rule of thumb; the fraction of required new material is highly field-dependent.  In theoretical computer science (STOC/FOCS/SODA/SOCG/etc), that fraction has historically been indistinguishable from 0%.  In other fields (economics, for example), the fraction is much closer to 100%.  
> **username_8**: Indeed, I stated immediately after: "However, there are exceptions".  
> **username_2**: I don't think an entire field of study should be considered an "exception", especially in an answer to a question about publishing *in that field*, posted in a forum *devoted to that field*.  
> **username_8**: @Jeffe: I did not want to start a debate about this, and I do not want to start an harsh debate right now. Simply stated, I do not think (this is of course my humble opinion) that we are talking, as you said, of an entire field of study. Please note that, coincidentally, even Dave Clarke stated the same 30% percent. This is (merely) our experience. I understand of course that yours may be different. This forum is a wonderful place that gathers so many interesting but different experiences: the key point, at least to me, is that I can learn from many different people.  
> **username_9**: @JɛﬀE: I don't want to start another debate in the comments, but does that mean we should always publish a journal version even though we have nothing new to say (w.r.t. the conference paper)?  
> **username_10**: @AnthonyLabarre it means that if the conference version is an extended abstract, does not have full proofs or can benefit from better presentation, you can fix these issues and submit to a journal. Of course you can do that with ArXiv, but a journal provides a review of the paper in its full form.  

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