CORE Conference and Journal Rankings

Three arguments that I have observed from the students' side are as follows:

1. Publishing in IEEE or ACM conferences bring more credibility and weightage to their work

2. Number of publications determine his/her weightage in getting good positions

3. Journals are superior over Conference papers

Unfortunately, all of the above arguments are correct by a tiny fraction (say, 1%), and incorrect by a large fraction (say, 99%). Let me defend my arguments by introducing you to CORE conference and ranking list.

Please note that the entire content in this draft is my personal opinion, which in turn is based on my past experiences and discussions with other top researchers. The motivation of this draft is to encourage students to work hard and publish good scientific papers in reputed conferences and journals.

Introduction to CORE conference and journal rankings

COmputer Research and Education (CORE) is a widely accepted conference and journal ranking list. CORE ranks conferences and journals in A*, A, B and C, categories. Your publications in A* and A are generally considered significant contributions and are given high weightage. Henceforth, please aim to publish papers in A* and A rank conferences/journals. More information on CORE can found here: https://sites.google.com/site/wwwcoreedu/conference-portal.

To the best of my knowledge, all top universities and institutions in Japan and all around world accept CORE conference and journal rankings. In this context, if you want to pursue higher studies in top most universities, publishing papers in CORE rank A*/A conferences will give you an edge over others.

Argument 1: Publishing in IEEE or ACM conferences bring more credibility and weightage to oneself

For every one good IEEE/ACM conference, there are hundreds of not so good (or low-level) IEEE/ACM conferences. In this context, the terms “IEEE” or “ACM” do not necessarily have to denote a major conference. Any conference receives global credibility and weightage based on the program committee members. As CORE takes into the account the program committee members for ranking a conference/journal, it can help you in attaining global credibility and weightage to your publications.

Example: Let Person-1 has a publication in ACM SAC 2020, while Person-2 has a publication in Springer PAKDD 2020. The CORE rank for ACM SAC and PAKDD are B and A, respectively. Thus, the publication of Person-2 is given more weightage although Person-1 has an ACM publication.

Key takeaway to students: Always aim to publish in high ranked conferences. Completely ignore the tails such as IEEE/ACM/Springer etc.

Argument 2: Number of publications determine his/her weightage in getting good positions

Unfortunately, this is a misconception. Your weightage actually depends on the conference ranks of your publications.

Example: Let Person-1 has only one publication in a CORE RANK A* conference. Let Person-2 has 100 publications in CORE RANK B conferences. Irrespective of the number of publications of Person-2, Person-1 will be given more weightage or priority.

Key takeaway to students: Forget the number game. Play the quality game. Minimize sending papers to workshops. It is because they consume a lot of time, and more important, does not carry much weightage. Overall, workshop papers have very little returns on your investments.

Argument 3: Journals are superior over Conference papers.

The above argument is true for basic sciences, sociology, and related fields. It is because of the acceptance rate of the conference papers in these fields in around 80%. However, the above argument is highly incorrect for computer science. Due to fast spaced research, huge competition (nearly 1000 papers are submitted to top-tier conferences), and very less acceptance rate (10% to 20%), Conference papers are treated on par with the journals.

As all conferences are not equal, all journals are also not equal. Consequently, your publications in Rank A*/A conferences will be considered superior over low-level journal publications.

In many Universities, computer science is just a branch. Consequently, many universities give priority to journals over conferences. In this context, an important question that comes in the mind of students is ”what if my University gives priority to journals over conferences?” Fortunately, this is not a big problem if you are publishing papers in good conferences. It is because papers published in high ranked conferences are easy to get accepted in good journals.