I have a couple of CCR thoughts, based on that last few CCRs and
triggered by the editor's message in the October issue.  Well, and
Christophe said he wanted comments ...

(1) Reviewed Articles vs. Editorial Zone

    I am sometimes left wondering what the difference between the
    "reviewed articles" and the "editorial zone" really is.  Sometimes
    it is obvious.  The "10 papers" series (which I like a bunch!) is
    clearly an editorial contribution, as is something like kc's call
    for measuring a day in the Internet's life in the October issue.  I
    think these sorts of things are a fabulous addition to CCR.
    However, some of the items in the editorial zone seem like maybe
    they ought to be in the reviewed papers section.  E.g., the "probe
    gap" paper in the current issue (on quick look) seems to be more of
    a paper than an editorial.

    I am not as concerned with the label that we put on these papers as
    to how they are being judged for publication and how they are
    approached by readers.  It seems confusing to me.  Are we creating a
    way for people to publish sub-par papers as "editorials" right next
    to better reviewed papers?  Maybe we could at least indicate the
    editorial nature of things in the title of a paper so long-term it
    is clear when reading / citing these papers?

    (Note: I am **not** suggesting that the probe gap paper is in any
    way sub-par, it was just an example.  **Not**.)

    How is the classification made?  Do authors indicate which category
    they'd like (sort of what I get from the guidelines on the web, but
    not terribly clear)?  If not, then how is the decision made?  If so,
    is the author's choice reviewed at all?  (I.e., "you say you want an
    editorial, but this looks more like a paper that needs reviewed to
    us".) 

    It is also not clear to me what criteria are being used to judge an
    editorial contribution as fit to print.  E.g., I know of rejected
    editorial contributions that, while maybe not perfect, did try to
    convey technical thoughts to the community and here I see 5 pages of
    dead tree in the October issue that--while amusing--will not really
    move us forward.  If I had an editorial contribution rejected
    recently I think I'd be a bit torqued at the current issue.

    Also, a nit: I see there is no page limit for editorial
    contributions on the web.  I have heard anecdotes of people being
    hassled for the length of small-ish (< 5 page) editorial
    contributions---even though longer papers appear in the editorial
    zone (excepting things like the re-print of Paxson's paper, which I
    understand is a different animal).

    In general, I'd like to see more clarity on this subject.

(2) Not Many Papers

    As this issue's editorial notes there are not many reviewed papers
    this time around (2).  The good news is that is not the lowest this
    year (with the April issue containing only one!).  The year's
    average is about 3 papers / issue.  Christophe notes that there were
    13 papers submitted for the October issue (taking into account the
    one that was withdrawn).  My read of his comments is that we're
    rejecting reasonably good papers because authors cannot address
    reviewers comments in less than a week.  This leads to a few
    thoughts:

      + My take is that we seemingly *have* lost some reasonably decent
        papers because authors cannot meet an "under one week" deadline.
        That is a real shame, I think.  To me that says there is some
        information that with a little effort would be good to get out
        into the community in a timely fashion and yet by rejecting the
        paper we're forcing authors to find another venue and undergo
        another review cycle to get the information into the community.
        That hardly seems to help the overall notion of timely
        dissemination.  That's just a shame.

        (No, I did not have any papers under submission (and, hence,
        rejected) for this issue.)

      + The "less than one week" notion in Christophe's editorial is at
        odds with the "two week" guideline on the web page.  We should
        at least be up-front with people in the submission guidelines.

      + But, really, "less than one week" or "two weeks" are both
        extremely short.

      + And, so, in addition to it sounding like we have lost reasonable
        papers because of this short turn-around, I also wonder if we
        have (or will) lose submissions because of it.  We're all quite
        busy and hearing that we might be under the gun for some unknown
        amount of work might just make folks aim elsewhere.

    Can't we fix this fairly easily?  Why can't we let authors slip one
    issue?  That still seems like "timely dissemination" to me because
    it'll cost more than that to use another venue for a reasonable
    piece of work that needs some buffing.  Or, maybe even better, just
    backup the deadlines a month so "less than one week" turns into 4-5
    weeks.  That is, instead of a 3 month cycle we go to a 4 month
    cycle.  This will overlap things a bit, but somehow with 14
    submissions / issue (or even double that), a fraction of those
    accepted and 13 editors this overlap doesn't seem like it would be a
    big deal.

I hope those comments are somehow useful.

allman