[Linux-aus] Minutes of Council Meeting 03 June 2014

[Glen Turner]

I think the simplest way forward here is to approach an academic 
publication to work with LCA.

The person would present their work at LCA and would be published in the 
academic publication as a "paper presented at linux.conf.au". If there are 
enough papers, then there would be an "linux.conf.au proceedings" section 
or edition.

Note that the very top tier of journals will not do this. They will always 
insist that a paper presented at a conference use the feedback from that 
conference to improve the paper. So you need to be prepared for the most 
excellent papers not to wish to appear in the proceedings but to make a 
bid for publication in a top-tier journal; and if you insist on papers 
appearing in the LCA Proceedings, for the academic not to present at LCA. 
That is, peer review is a two-edged sword as far as attracting academics.

The journal's usual reviewers would do the peer review. What LCA brings to 
the table is up-to-the-minute content.

Someone could write an overview article for the journal (note carefully: 
"article" not "paper") describing advances of interest to computer science 
academics. There is no doubt in my mind that such advances exist. You 
could readily outsource that authorship to the staff of lwn.net.

Of great value in bringing closer together Linux practice and academic 
concerns would be review articles for the specialist journals describing 
the developments of interest. For example in my own field of computer 
networking, a review of networking presentations at linux.conf.au would 
certainly find room in SIGCOMM's Computer Communication Review, which is 
the work-in-progress publication of academic computer networking.

Finally, you shouldn't assume there is a huge gap between Linux practice 
and academic networking. In my own field Linux is the operating system of 
choice for developing new networking technologies and academic 
practitioners are scarily across the most obscure details of the Linux 
networking stack.

Best wishes to all,
glen

-- 
Glen Turner <http://www.gdt.id.au/~gdt/>