30th International Conference on
Very Large Data Bases
 
Royal York Hotel
29 August - 3 September 2004
Toronto, Canada

 

 

GUIDELINES TO FOLLOW IN PREPARING PAPERS

 

 

Broadening Strategy

VLDB Conferences are striving to broaden their scope and coverage. Broadening is discussed further on the VLDB Endowment Web site. Consequently, VLDB 2004 encourages papers that are on a broader range of topics than those traditionally considered to be the domain of "database systems"; on riskier and more novel challenges, as opposed to incremental improvements on existing results; from a broader range of contributors (e.g., people developing and deploying database technology and those outside the field who pose new requirements and challenges); and in novel formats such as reports on case studies, systems development and testing, and product evaluations relative to new application requirements. A paper's contribution to Broadening is not a substitute for technical depth or density. However, among papers that the program committee considers equal in merit based on technical quality, it will favor papers that contribute to Broadening over those that do not.

The inverse of Broadening is Specificity. VLDB 2004 discourages incremental research on topics of interest to a small audience ("delta-X papers"). That is, the standards for novelty and technical depth increase for papers that address a problem that has been much studied, is of minor importance, and is of interest only to a few people who have dug very deeply into the problem.

Author Responsibilities

It is the author's responsibility to make the paper readable, relevant and interesting before submission for consideration by referees. This includes legibility of diagrams and quality of English.

Duplicate Submissions

Duplicate submissions are not allowed for VLDB conferences. A VLDB conference submission is considered to be a duplicate submission if there is another paper with all of the following properties:


1. the paper and VLDB submission have at least one author in common;
2. the paper is more than 4 pages long, when formatted for the VLDB Proceedings;
3. the main technical content of the paper substantially overlaps that of the VLDB submission;
4. the paper is published or under consideration to be published in a
refereed journal or proceedings (electronic or printed) that is generally
available (e.g., not limited to conference attendees).


Authors submitting papers to VLDB conferences are expected to agree to the following terms:

"I understand that the paper being submitted must not contain substantial overlap with any other paper currently submitted elsewhere. Furthermore, previously published papers with any overlap are cited prominently in this
submission."

Duplicate submissions will be rejected. Questions about this policy or how it applies to your work should be directed to the technical program chairperson, M. Tamer Özsu (tozsu@db.uwaterloo.ca).

Registering an Abstract

Once a research paper has been prepared, the authors must register their intention to submit it by recording the abstract at the research paper submission site by 27 February 2004 (9:00PM Pacific Standard Time). By doing so, authors obtain a reference number that will be used to identify the paper during refereeing. Without a registered abstract, papers may not be processed correctly.

When the abstract is registered, the submission site will also solicit information about the contact author. This information will be used forVLDB administration purposes (e.g., to notify authors of the outcome of the submission). If an author has to change the contact information, he or she should e-mail the area program chair. This is a manual procedure, so please choose contact information that will be stable over the period of paper processing.


Submitting Your Paper

Papers must be electronically submitted. Authors are responsible for ensuring that the submitted material is on time (no extensions will be given) and complies with the size constraints (long papers will not be refereed). The deadline for the submission of final version of papers is 5 March 2004; 9:00PM Pacific Starndard Time. Every paper should have a cover page (not counted in the page count) that:


- Identifies the contact author.
- Gives his or her address for correspondence (e-mail, conventional mail and telephone).
- States the reference number (see Registering an Abstract).
- Indicates the topic area ("core database technology" or "infrastructure for information systems") and the category ("research" or "vision"). See below for a discussion of Vision papers.
- Gives the title and full list of authors (marking any author that is on any VLDB 2003 program committee).
- Indicates the topics relevant to the paper, selected among those present in this topic list.

This cover page is redundant information if the abstract has been registered using the database as requested (see Registering an Abstract). However we would like this extra information to simplify the administrative processing of your paper.


Papers must be in PDF. It is essential that they print without difficulty on a variety of printers using Adobe Acrobat Reader. Therefore, authors must be sure that any special fonts are included, etc. It is the absolute responsibility of the authors to ensure that their submitted paper is in PDF and will print easily. Authors must upload the PDF of papers to the research paper submission site by 5 March 2004 (9:00PM Pacific Standard Time). The file must be named by the reference number allocated when the abstract was submitted (e.g., 789.pdf; see Registering an Abstract).

Vision Papers

VLDB occasionally publishes vision papers, which provide a medium for discussion of expected technological, economic and social developments and their impact on databases. Successful vision papers are highly novel and are usually controversial. They are inevitably speculative. However they are expected to present clearly a technically convincing argument of relevance to the database community. For example, they may argue for a very different technical approach to a well known problem or for database research on a problem that currently gets no attention at all. They are normally written by authors who are very experienced in the database industry or in database research, or have some other deep experience which they bring to bear on database issues. Papers in this category help to formulate directions in which the database industry or database research
should develop. Insight and perspective are particularly highly valued.

Vision papers should be submitted as research papers to the research paper submission site. They should conform to all research paper guidelines and be clearly labeled as a Vision Paper on the cover page.

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