Dear Everybody,

 The quality of papers in conferences is often discussed, with single-track high-rejection rate conferences priding themselves for the moral high ground. The issue is sometimes discussed within the ranks of IAPR with respect to ICPR acceptance rates. It is all very well to insist on high standards and high rejection rates, (as long it is not your paper that is rejected), but who can choose the thresholds in our classification task? Who will train the network and take care of the outliers? Who can read the future and harden the fuzzy boundaries? And who could say with confidence what may or may not lead to what? Could Einstein have produced his work on his own? Didn't he need the armies of researchers like you and me who tried hundreds of things and failed before him? Can you grow a tree with a single root and a single branch that will bear the golden apple one day?

  Of course, not every student who fails at the University becomes an Einstein and not everybody who is rejected by his fellow scientists and commits suicide is a Boltzmann. But for me, there is nothing more inspirational than sitting in a conference venue hearing a seemingly uninteresting paper. It gives me the chance to relax and wonder. It is impossible to say which paths the thought takes when it is occasionally prompted by the right words as the mind wakes up to listen from time to time. A paper which lacks scientific professionalism, is not necessarily void of ideas. A new idea, buried in an otherwise unprofessionally written paper may be the seed of the hundreds of ideas of tomorrow. A conference that brings together people from a diversity of interests is bound to be big and multi-track but it is also the place where cross fertilisation of ideas may take place. Why then so much enthusiasm for single track conferences with 20% acceptance rate? Do their organisers feel that they have nothing to learn from the plebeian 80%? Do they really think that only their piers can trigger the magic button in their heads that will set in motion the gears of inspiration that will produce the golden apple at the end?

 

Maria Petrou

 PS That was a broad hint to the organisers of the 14th ICPR so that they do not reject my paper!