IACR related discussions - Recently Updated Pages

Should IACR hold electronic elections?

shaih — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 08:51:39 CST

The IACR currently uses a paper-based remote-voting system (with double envelopes) for the election of members to its board of directors.

Should the IACR switch to an electronic voting system? What are the pros and cons of switching? And if we switch, what system should we use?

At the bottom of this page I attach an email correspondence regarding these questions. Please express your opinions on this page.

Update (December 2008): The IACR board is debating a move to electronic voting. After hearing some presentations in August 2008, it set up a list of Requirements and Evaluation Criteria for potential e-Voting systems. You can use this space to comment on these requirements, or to express your opinions on the systems that were presented.

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shaih — Mon, 25 Dec 2006 21:31:04 CST

The International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR) is a non-profit scientific organization whose purpose is to further research in cryptology and related fields.

This site is meant to serve as a stage for discussions on IACR-related topics. However, the IACR neither maintains this site nor endorses the opinions on it. This site is maintained by Shai Halevi, and the opinions on it belong to their respective individual contributors.

Current discussion topics

Participating in the discussion

There are two ways to contribute to the discussions on this site:

One option is to add comments to existing pages, using the "add comment" link at the bottom of each page. To use this option one needs to have an account with wetpaint.
Alternatively, one can "apply to be a writer" on this site. Writers can edit the content of pages or even add new ones. My current plan is to add as a writer any IACR member who asks to be one.

Anyone is encouraged to contribute to the discussions on this site. The only request that I have is that contributions be related to the discussion topics.

Shai Halevi, Dec 22, 2006

IACR electronic publishing

mccurley — Sun, 24 Dec 2006 01:15:41 CST

The world of scholarly publishing has changed in reaction to the invention of the Internet, but in my opinion not fast enough. During my tenure as president of IACR we managed to at least secure copyright for publications in IACR proceedings and the journal of cryptology, but to this day I feel that we did not accomplish enough.

My concern is that our current model of using a commercial scientific publisher does not adequately serve the interests of science. In particular there are a large number of people who do not have free access to our publications, and it creates an insular society when our publications are not widely available to non-members. In the long term I expect that all of scientific publishing will gravitate to a free model of publishing, but the change may take some time.

The e-print archive has shown that it is easy to build and maintain an electronic archive of literature. If we apply our standard reviewing and refereeing process to an electronic mechanism, it seems that we would create a better environment for distribution of our science. I'd like to hear from others what concerns they have about a move to completely free electronic publishing, and how should IACR proceed in the years to come.