Thoughts on Paper Publishing in the Digital Age

What role should journals and conferences play in the age of arxiv, twitter and other yet-to-be-invented digital wonders? Detecting among many colleagues a general impatience with the status quo, I wrote this article to generate more public discussion. It is addressed solely to colleagues in theoretical computer science, not other fields. I also don’t address legal issues such as copyright, costs, and free access because these have been extensively discussed elsewhere. Despite its small size, theoretical CS has been remarkably successful. An incredible edifice of ideas was created together with an open culture that values the need to address papers and talks to nonspecialists. This allows ideas and techniques to jump rapidly across subspecialities. We should think hard about how to best continue that culture in the digital era. (Impact on promotion/tenure systems also must be carefully weighed.) Below I will survey the major proposed approaches and their pros and cons, and my own thoughts on them. Anybody who has investigated this topic quickly discovers that it suffers from the boolean algebra obstacle: Given n binary options, you will find supporters —and good arguments—for all possible 2n combinations. There is likely no universally accepted solution. I therefore propose starting a specific public process for continuing this discussion.