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Sterman's Arguments in Favor of Virtual Proceedings

1996 International System Dynamics Conference Virtual Proceedings

WWW Site with complete conference information:

Call for papers.
Conference location information.
Registration form.
Email links to conference organizers.
Session schedule.
Information on SD '97 in Istanbul.
System Dynamics Society President's Letter.
List of authors and papers to be presented.
Links to full papers, models and related work on authors' servers.

Future Features:

Searchable index (by author, title, content).
Email links to all authors.
Links to other SD-related sites (e.g., a future SD Society page, bibliography, sponsor sites).
Cumulative record of conferences.
Others?

1996: An Experiment

Voluntary supplement to printed proceedings.
Approximately 40 links to authors' sites with full papers or related material.
Broad geographic and institutional representation:
Academic, corporate, government, personal author pages.
Nations: China, Croatia, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Turkey, UK, USA.

Some Basic Arithmetic...

Steady growth in Society and conference attendance.
Even with four page limit, 1996 printed proceedings > 600 pages: Expensive and heavy.
At 10 pages (old limit), would have been > 1500 pages. If full length papers allowed (30 pages), would be > 4500 pages.
Many person weeks of effort by four people required to prepare proceedings: cost is prohibitive.
Extra effort required of authors to prepare short versions of papers.
We can't continue to print meaningful papers of all presenters on paper.

A Proposal for 1997 and Beyond

As the web becomes cheaper and more widely accessible:
Virutal proceedings become main record of conference - no separate printed proceedings.
One page abstracts are basis for paper acceptance and also can be printed as guide to conference for participants (aids in the selection of sessions to attend).
Society administrative office maintains server, updates content.

Benefits:

Substantial cost and time savings.
Reduced conference preparation cycle time for organizers and authors.
Easier to recruit local conference organizers since burden of job is reduced.
Proceedings more widely accessible, current, and useful.
Access to full length papers maintained while still including everyone accepted.
All postings of papers to virtual proceedings subject to review and approval of program committee and can be counted as publications on CVs.

 

 

Last modified: February 17, 2001