Oded Goldreich has started a site in which he is going to collect selected recent papers in theoretical computer science.
He introduces this project with very interesting reflections on the matter of scientific exchange and communication:
My impression is that FOCS and STOC do not function any more as forums devoted to the presentation and exchange of ideas (but rather function as “weight-lifting competitions”). The question is what can be done to serve the need for the lost forums. One answer is provided by various personal blogs in which various researchers present their own choices of (relatively) recent works that have drawn their attention.
My problem with many of these blogs is that they cover the obvious (i.e., they all focus more or less on the same “hot results” that draw everybody’s attention). I would like to contribute to the project of regaining forums devoted to the presentation of ideas in a different way; specifically, by calling attention to works that have fascinated me although they were not necessarily labeled as “hot”.
7 comments
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February 17, 2009 at 10:03 pm
D. Eppstein
So where’s the RSS feed?
February 18, 2009 at 7:03 am
Rui Ferreira
@d. eppstein: Exactly the question I was going to ask.
It would be very good to have this done for the several areas o TCS. Is there anyone doing this in other topics? There’s is also citeulike but the authority factor is hard to guess and people hardly review the papers. Interesting initiative anyway.
February 18, 2009 at 7:58 pm
Jonathan Katz
It’s a small sample, but so far all the papers Oded has on his list have appeared in STOC or FOCS. So I’m not sure in what sense these conferences are failing…
February 19, 2009 at 1:00 am
nils runeberg
It is failing in the sense that STOC and FOCS have too many papers and good/interesting ones are hard to find.
February 19, 2009 at 4:39 am
Oded Goldreich
I’m not good in blogs and hacking, so I’d appreciate if anybody that wants to communicate to me sends me email. Now, regarding the first two comments, I’d be happy to provide any automatic servise (I assume that this is what “RSS feed” means), but I have no clue how to do it (I even got help in having the collpasing feature). So if anybody tells me what exactly to do and/or provides a revised source for that page, then I’d be happy to comply…
Oded
February 27, 2009 at 4:53 pm
luca
Oded has added an RSS feed to his “choices” page.
February 28, 2009 at 6:08 pm
Rui Ferreira
A good idea would be to do blog aggregation (also known as planet) to centralize posts on TCS paper reviews. That would be useful! The idea is to create an automatically-updated website with blog like structure having RSS feeds as source (can be a part of a blog having a specific tag) and, obviously attributing credit and links to the authors. This is fairly simple to do and I’m willing to do it. Would you find this interesting? Are there many people reviewing online?