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Publishing is a central point of Computer Science (well, probably any science), so should this site allow questions about publication issues (this could include any sort of publication, e.g. conferences, theses, journals, ...) that are directly related, and specific to, Computer Science?

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general questions about publishing are probably more suitable for Academia, but if it is CS specific then I don't see any reason to make them off-topic. – Kaveh Mar 6 '12 at 19:21
@Kaveh: General questions, yes. But specific CS related questions may be, well, too specific for academia. – bitmask Mar 6 '12 at 19:23
Is this on topic at CSTheory? – Kevin Mar 6 '12 at 19:27
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@Kevin, yes, they are on-topic on Theoretical Computer Science (as long as they are in the scope: theoretical and research-level). ps: I think a more appropriate example to follow for Computer Science is Mathematics. – Kaveh Mar 6 '12 at 19:29

3 Answers

up vote 3 down vote

Publishing is a central point of computer science research. I believe Theoretical Computer Science allows questions about the theoretical CS academic community, so questions specifically about publications in TCS could go there. For general questions about academic matters, including publication, ask on Academia. Even if the question is domain-specific, that is an appropriate venue.

I don't think questions about publication should be on-topic here. This is a site about computer science, not about the social processes around research on computer science.

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up vote 2 down vote

It's my impression that this site was designed to fill the gap between SO (a professional CS community/programming community) and the theoretical CS Stack Exchange site, which is for "research-level questions in theoretical computer science." Therefore, the purpose of this site seems more for undergraduates, for whom publishing is decidedly not a concern. I say publishing questions should go to http://cstheory.stackexchange.com (if they'll welcome them) or the Academia SE site mentioned earlier.

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Their FAQ doesn't say anything explicitly about pubs, a search shows a few questions about it. We'll see about getting an opinion from the mods there. – Kevin Mar 6 '12 at 19:30
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not every question about publishing is research-level or theory related. – Kaveh Mar 6 '12 at 19:31
@Kaveh could you provide an example where publishing is not research-level (whether it is theoretical or not is immaterial, I think)? – Rafe Kettler Mar 6 '12 at 19:32
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@Rafe, let me think (it might be difficult to find a good example). But if it is not theoretical then it is not suitable for cstheory. By the way, I don't see why we would like to forbid such questions as long as they are not causing a problem. – Kaveh Mar 6 '12 at 19:36
up vote 2 down vote

Publishing your findings in the most general sense is an integral part of knowledge aggregation and transfer. I think we should support people as best we can with that, as long as the question deals with a specific, computer science related issue (say, for instance, notation or which prior knowledge to assume).

General questions about academic publishing should probably go to academia.SE, though.

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