The impact of conference ranking systems in computer science: a comparative regression analysis

Nowadays, conference publications have gained importance both quantitatively and qualitatively. People are seeking ways to distinguish the quality and impact of different conferences. Some bibliometrics like conference impact factor have been proposed to assess them. Meanwhile, associations in some countries have implemented several projects to build conference ranking systems that classify conferences based on certain quality measures. The Computing Research and Education Association of Australasia and China Computer Federation lists are two such well-known and widely used conference rating systems. They can serve as a guide when researchers need to publish their work. At the same time, they can influence researchers’ publication decisions. In this paper, we try to find out how publication patterns in different countries have been influenced by these two lists as well as by some other factors. A random-effect Negative Binominal Regression Model is used to identify the level of the impact caused by different factors.