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Can we improve the journal review process in computer science?

As in all scientific disciplines, peer review plays a core role in computer science research. But one aspect that sets apart our discipline from others is that most areas of computer science are driven by conference rather than journal publications. This has been discussed numerous times, and whether our community should change its publication culture is a controversial subject; just Google "conferences vs. journals in computer science" if you are not familiar with this debate. One key advantage of conference publications is their quick reviewing cycle, which is often assumed to be in conflict with a careful, high-quality reviewing process. While the high reviewing load and the tight deadlines imposed on program committee (PC) members of top conferences do indeed endanger the peer review process, I argue that the conference reviewing process is in many ways of higher-quality than that used by journals. I will discuss two such aspects below. (1) Conference reviewing puts a