Status Report on The VLDB Journal

Kyu-Young Whang

VLDB 2005 PanelDatabase Publication

Practices

*Jointly prepared by Tamer Özsu, Andreas Heuer, and Holger Meyer

August 31, 2005 2Status Report on VLDB J.

Editorial Board Current Editors-in-Chief

M. Tamer Özsu (coordinating EIC) Elisa Bertino Kyu-Young Whang

New editors-in-chief Elisa Bertino (new coordinating EIC) Klaus Dittrich (a new EIC) Kyu-Young Whang

36 editors - Americas: 16, Europe: 13, Asia: 7 Tenure is 6 years. 1/3 retire every two years

Topical coverage, in particular in emerging areas, is considered

August 31, 2005 4Status Report on VLDB J.

Special Issues VLDB Conference special issue

Around six best papers per year from the VLDB conference

Thematic issue 2005: Data Management, Analysis

and Mining for the Life Sciences (4/21)

Terry Gaasterland, H.V. Jagadish and Louiqa Raschid

August 31, 2005 5Status Report on VLDB J.

Special Issues (cont’d) Earlier thematic issues

2004: Stream Data Management (5/23/2) Joseph Hellerstein and Johannes Gehrke

2003: Semantic Web (6/20/4) Yelena Yesha, Vijay Atluri, Anupam Joshi

2002: XML data management (6/25) Alon Halevy and Peter Fankhauser

2001: E-services (7/19) Fabio Casati, Dimitrios Georgakopuolos, Ming-

Chien Shan 2000: Database support for the Web (5/14)

Paolo Atzeni and Alberto Mendelzon 1998: Multimedia (6/33)

M. Tamer Özsu and Stavros Christodoulakis

August 31, 2005 6Status Report on VLDB J.

Partnership with ACM Started in January 2003

ACM provides the full-text of the VLDB Journal to subscribers of the ACM Portal/Digital Library

ACM markets the VLDB Journal to its members at a price comparable to ACM’s own journals

Journal Statistics

August 31, 2005 8Status Report on VLDB J.

1st Round Turnaround Time and Overall Turnaround Time 1)

1) Measured for all rounds that were initiated in a given year (i.e., for both original submissions and revisions)

(months)

First Round Overall

Year

Submitted Med Max Med Max

2002 4.1 13.0 4.0 14.8

2003 5.1 13.9 3.9 13.9

2004 4.6 12.8 4.0 12.8

August 31, 2005 9Status Report on VLDB J.

Acceptance Time 2)

2) Time from initial submission to accept decision

(months)

Year Initially

Submitted Min Med Max

2002 5.2 9.1 30.0

2003 5.9 8.1 20.6

August 31, 2005 10Status Report on VLDB J.

End-to-End Time 3)

3) Time from initial submission to publication

45.2

34.4

26.4

63.6

34.2

73.5

48.0 50.7

28.9 26.423.4

27.0

18.9 21.814.9 16.9 15.1

19.2 16.8 17.1

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003

Year Published

Mo

nth

s

max

avg

August 31, 2005 11Status Report on VLDB J.

Number of Submissions

9 10

29

4035

20 2015

62

35

58 55 55

65

78

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004

Year Submitted

Nu

mb

er o

f S

ub

mis

sio

ns

August 31, 2005 12Status Report on VLDB J.

Acceptance Rate 4)

4) Percentage of those manuscripts submitted that year that were ultimately accepted

33.3

4034.5

40

51.5

40

25

33.3

40.3

54.3

46.649.1 47.3

23.1

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003

Year Submitted

Per

cen

tag

e

August 31, 2005 13Status Report on VLDB J.

Number of Articles per Year

7

1517

1918

2019

1819

18

21 21 21

0

5

10

15

20

25

1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004

Year Published

Nu

mb

er

of

Art

icle

s

August 31, 2005 14Status Report on VLDB J.

Subscriptions

202 239 261 246 264 274 270 284222 205

53 59

54 48

31

71 80568080123

121 73

050

100150200250300350400

'96 '97 '98 '99 '00 '01 '02 '03 '04 '05 (6mo)

Springer-Institutional Springer-PersonalACM-Institutional ACM-Member

333

August 31, 2005 15Status Report on VLDB J.

Paper Downloads (full-text)

849 1,790

28,254

6,414

9,060

44,761

8319

44,263

0

10000

20000

30000

40000

50000

60000

7/00-6/01

7/01-6/02

7/02-6/03

7/03-6/04

7/04-6/05

Springer LINK ACM DL

52,582

August 31, 2005 16Status Report on VLDB J.

How do we do? Quality

Has the highest impact in ISI citation index ranking in the category of “Computer Science, Information Systems”

VLDB J.(4.545), TOIS(3.533), Information Systems(3.327), TODS(1.957), TKDE(1.223), etc.

Erhard Rahm’s study shows significant increase in references after 2000

The paper downloads have increased substantially

August 31, 2005 17Status Report on VLDB J.

How do we do? (cont’d) Review process

Review times are still long, with significant variability

We are trying hard to shorten it

Accessibility Presence in ACM Digital Library helps

enhance accessibility

August 31, 2005 18Status Report on VLDB J.

Discussion Point

Journals vs. Conferences

August 31, 2005 19Status Report on VLDB J.

Conferences Fast dissemination is the biggest merit We are concerned about “papers being lost in the noise”

(Good papers are rejected) But, we also have to worry about incomplete/incorrect

papers being accepted (Bad papers are accepted) Papers claim fancy things, but there is insufficient or

faulty proof that they work; experiments are not credible

This problem is becoming more serious as the review quality of the papers is degrading

Problems: Many papers tend to be incorrect or incomplete

Reasons: Conferences lack the processes of revision and rebuttal

August 31, 2005 20Status Report on VLDB J.

Journals handle these problems more properly by interactions between the authors and reviewers through a thorough revision process (typically, two rounds)

Authors have good chances to have potentially incorrect reviews rectified through a rebuttal process

These processes are essential since correctness and completeness are of prime importance for archival journals

Bad side: slow dissemination By the time you are rejected in two years, someone else

has published an incomplete version of a similar idea in a conference

Journals

August 31, 2005 21Status Report on VLDB J.

Inherent Differences Conferences

fast dissemination allowing some immaturity

Journals archival purposes requiring correctness and completeness

August 31, 2005 22Status Report on VLDB J.

Bridging the Gap between Journals and Conferences

Journals Trying to shorten the review time On-line availability helping fast

dissemination Conferences

Allowing revisions (e.g., rolling over some rejected papers to the same referees)

Allowing rebuttals (e.g., permitting author feedback as in SIGMOD 2005)

We are making some progress, but complete merger remains a major challenge

Thank You!

August 31, 2005 24Status Report on VLDB J.

Top five papers

All papers

Number of References 5)

5) Prepared by Erhard Rahm

August 31, 2005 25Status Report on VLDB J.

5 year average

10 year average

Number of References (cont’d)