TQC 2014!

While many of us are just recovering from QIP, I want to mention that the submission deadline is looming for the conference TQC, which perhaps should be called TQCCC because its full name is Theory of Quantum Computation, Communication and Cryptography. Perhaps this isn’t done because it would make the conference seem too classical? But TQQQC wouldn’t work so well either. I digress.
The key thing I want to mention is the imminent 15 Feb submission deadline.
I also want to mention that TQC is continuing to stay ahead of the curve with its open-access author-keeps-copyright proceedings, and this year with some limited open reviewing (details here). I recently spoke to a doctor who complained that despite even her Harvard Medical affiliation, she couldn’t access many relevant journals online. While results of taxpayer-funded research on drug efficacy, new treatments and risk factors remain locked up, at least our community is ensuring that anyone wanting to work on the PPT bound entanglement conjecture will be able to catch up to the research frontier without having to pay $39.95 per article.
One nice feature about these proceedings is that if you later want to publish a longer version of your submission in a journal, then you will not face any barriers from TQC. I also want to explicitly address one concern that some have raised about TQC, which is that the published proceedings will prevent authors from publishing their work elsewhere. For many, the open access proceedings will be a welcome departure from the usual exploitative policies of not only commercial publishers like Elsevier, but also the academic societies like ACM and IEEE. But I know that others will say “I’m happy to sign your petitions, but at the end of the day, I still want to submit my result to PRL” and who am I to argue with this?
So I want to stress that submitting to TQC does not prevent submitting your results elsewhere, e.g. to PRL. If you publish one version in TQC and a substantially different version (i.e. with substantial new material) in PRL, then not only is TQC fine with it, but it is compatible with APS policy which I am quoting here:

Similar exceptions [to the prohibition against double publishing] are generally made for work disclosed earlier in abbreviated or preliminary form in published conference proceedings. In all such cases, however, authors should be certain that the paper submitted to the archival
journal does not contain verbatim text, identical figures or tables, or other copyrighted materials which were part of the earlier publications, without providing a copy of written permission from the copyright holder. [ed: TQC doesn’t require copyright transfer, because it’s not run by people who want to exploit you, so you’re all set here] The paper must also contain a substantial body of new material that was not included in the prior disclosure. Earlier relevant published material should, of course, always be clearly referenced in the new submission.

I cannot help but mention that even this document (the “APS Policy on Prior Disclosure”) is behind a paywall and will cost you $25 if your library doesn’t subscribe. But if you really want to support this machine and submit to PRL or anywhere else (and enjoy another round of refereeing), TQC will not get in your way.
Part of what makes this easy is TQC’s civilized copyright policy (i.e. you keep it). By contrast, Thomas and Umesh had a more difficult, though eventually resolved, situation when combining STOC/FOCS with Nature.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *