TinyTOCS as an Experimental Laboratory

TinyTOCS has a unique opportunity to experiment with changes to the academic publishing model due to its high profile and high-quality student PC. However, TinyTOCS reiterates many of the shortcomings of the traditional publishing model [2], including a multi-month long review cycle, a closed and opaque peer-review process, and arbitrary content limitations. Instead, we argue that TinyTOCS should take a truly bold approach and serve as a testbed for experimentation. Specifically, we encourage the committee to embrace several radical changes to traditional publishing. First, separate program committee certification from publication: let authors publish immediately and then certify work later. Adopt a model of real-time, unblinded reviews (i.e., let PC and community members retweet papers to “accept” them, and let the community’s interest in the work speak for itself). This can cut review time from months to minutes, as well as prevent anti-champions from burying interesting work. Lastly, remove arbitrary page and accept rate limitations. By adopting these positions, TinyTOCS can make the publishing process more open, transparent, and community-based. BODY When rethinking academic publishing, don’t retrofit a cathedral onto what should be a bazaar [1].