A Decade of Database Research Publications

Sherif SakrNational ICT Australia

University of New South Wales, Australiassakr@cse.unsw.edu.au

Mohammad AlomariSchool of Information Technologies

University of Sydney, Australiamiomari@it.usyd.edu.au

ABSTRACTWe analyze the database research publications of four ma-jor core database technology conferences (SIGMOD, VLDB,ICDE, EDBT), two main theoretical database conferences(PODS, ICDT) and three database journals (TODS, VLDBJournal, TKDE) over a period of 10 years (2001 - 2010). Ouranalysis considers only regular papers as we do not includeshort papers, demo papers, posters, tutorials or panels intoour statistics. We rank the research scholars according totheir number of publication in each conference/journal sep-arately and in combined. We also report about the growthin the number of research publications and the size of theresearch community in the last decade.

1. INTRODUCTIONThe database management technology has played a vitalrole in the advancements of the information technology field.Database researchers are one of the key players and mainsources to the growth of the database systems. They areplaying a foundational role in creating the technological in-frastructure from which database advancements evolve. Theimpact of research scholars in the community is often mea-sured by their number of publications in top-tier researchvenues and the number of citations they receive, i.e. howfrequently their publications are referenced by other publi-cations (e.g. H-index [?], g-index [?]). In principle, thereis a direct relationship between the tier rank of a researchvenue and its number of citations which is commonly deter-mined as the impact factor [?]. The success of a researchscholar in publishing his research results in a top-tier venueincreases his chances of having his work being widely re-ceived by his peers in the community and consequently tobe more frequently cited by them.

In general, achieving an accurate, fair and insightful citation-based analysis is a very challenging task due to the difficultyof parsing and extracting the citation meta data from theresearch articles. Recently, some online services have beenintroduced to capture the citation information of research

publications (e.g. MS Libra1, Google Scholar2). However,the information provided by these services suffer from someanomalies such as: incompleteness and duplication. There-fore, preparing a high quality citation information for a poolof research publications requires an extensive amount ofmanual labor work. Moreover, citation-based analysis meth-ods tend to consider only the explicit citation relationshipsas indicated in the reference parts of the articles. In practice,it is impossible for authors of any article (including this one)to cite all the related publications of their work but they arenormally only able to cite only a fraction of them. Therefore,the final decision of selecting the set of papers to be refer-enced usually depends on many scientific and non-scientificfactors. For example, it has been shown that citations tendto have problems like biased-citation, self-citation, or pos-itive vs. negative citation [?, ?]. One common situationis that article introductions are usually citing related sur-vey papers. Therefore, survey papers usually have citationcounts that are many times more than any original work inits corresponding topic (e.g. according to Google Scholar, atthe time of writing this paper, the two surveys: [?] has 883citations and [?] has 2169 citations). Some studies have alsoshown that different citation choices correspond to differentcitation impact [?].

Complementary to a previous work which mainly consid-ered ranking the research scholars based on their citationcounts [?], in this paper, we focus on ranking the researchscholars by the count of their research publications in top-tier venues. We selected a set of top-tier database researchvenues which are generally considered as the most repre-sentative, influential and prestigious in the database com-munity. In particular, we analyzed the database researchpublications of four major core database technology confer-ences (SIGMOD, VLDB, ICDE, EDBT), two main theoreti-cal database conferences (PODS, ICDT) and three databasejournals (TODS, VLDB Journal, IEEE TKDE) over a 10years period (2001 - 2010). In general, we believe that re-search fields are better presented by their own venues ratherthan by multi-disciplinary venues. Therefore, we did notinclude some important conferences (e.g. CIKM, WWW)and journals (e.g. Information Systems) in the scope of thisstudy.

In principle, some could argue that the number of publica-tions may have become a less insightful or less significant

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metric due to the explosion of the number of conferencesand journals in recent years [?]. Therefore, to remedy thisargument, we considered only top-tier venues which are well-known with their very low acceptance rates. These presti-gious venues are conducting highly selective review processesthat mainly aims of ensuring that they are turning out highquality papers. Hence, these papers are usually expectedto attract considerable attention (and citations) from otherresearchers in the community [?]. In fact, the distribution ofour selected venues (6 conferences and 3 journals) is compat-ible with the fact that database researchers - and computerscientists in general - are considering prestigious conferencesas favorite tools for presenting original research work in con-trast to the general case of many other scientific disciplineswhere journal papers are routinely considered to be supe-rior than conference papers [?, ?]. For example, it has beenshown that the two top database conferences (SIGMOD andVLDB) receive many more citations per paper than the twotop database journals (TODS and VLDB J.) [?]. In prac-tice, the general culture in the computer science communityis that journal papers are used to present deeper versions ofpapers that already have been presented at conferences. Oneof the main reasons behind this is that the review process ofjournal papers are usually very long. The turnaround time(the interval between the submission date of a manuscriptand the date of having the editorial decision) for confer-ences is often less than a third of that of journals [?]. Sincethe field of computer science research tends to be fast paced,conferences provide a great chance for timestamping the lat-est research findings earlier which allows the knowledge tobe publicly shared more rapidly.

In general, we are witnessing a continuous growth in thedatabase field. That is mainly due to the continuous intro-duction of new application domains (e.g. web applications,mobile applications, cloud computing, sensor networks) withvarying features and requirements on their data manage-ment aspects. In practice, data has become mobile, flexible,mirrored in a variety of logical and physical forms, evolv-ing, being concurrently modified and replicated, dynami-cally generated and later reintegrated in very large reposito-ries for further analysis and processing [?]. Therefore, thereare many more researchers are entering the field to tacklethese challenges and hence more research papers are beingpublished. In this paper, we also study the growth rate onthe size of contributing research community and the numberof research publications in the last decade.

The input data of this study has been extracted from theXML records of the famous DBLP computer science bibli-ography3. Our analysis considers only regular papers as wedo not include short papers, demo papers, posters, tutorialsor panels into our statistics. We made the detailed resultsof our study accessible on the web4

2. STUDY RESULTS2.1 Top Publishers of Database Research VenuesAs we previously stated, in this study, we focus on measuringthe number of publications in top-tier publication venuesas one of the main indicators to evaluate the impact of aresearch scholar in the community and the quality of his

3http://dblp.uni-trier.de/xml/4http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/∼ssakr/DBStatistics/index.html

research production. In this paper, we present the mostimportant results of our study. For full detailed results, werefer the reader to the web page of this study.

Figures 1, 2, 3 illustrate the top publishers of the databaseresearch venues during the period between 2001 and 2010.Figure 1 represents the top publishers of the core databasetechnology conferences: VLDB (Figure 1(a)), SIGMOD (Fig-ure 1(b)), ICDE (Figure 1(c)) and EDBT (Figure 1(d)).Figure 2 represents the top publishers of the theoreticaldatabase conferences: PODS (Figure 2(a)) and ICDT (Fig-ure 2(b)). Figure 3 represents the top publishers of the maindatabase journals: VLDB journal (Figure 3(a)), TODS jour-nal (Figure 3(b)) and TKDE (Figure 3(c)). The researchscholars in these figures can be indicated with one of thefollowing two symbols:

• The (+) symbol indicates that the research scholarappears on the correspondingly top publishers list ofthe same research venue for the former decade (1991 -2000).

• The (*) symbol indicates that the research scholar ap-pears on the ultimate top publishers list of the sameresearch venue in all of its editions since its origin.

For example, in Figure 1(a), Divesh Srivastava and H. V.Jagadish are indicated that they appear in the top publish-ers of the VLDB conference since its origin (1975 - 2010).However, only H. V. Jagadish is indicated that he appearson top publishers list of the VLDB conference on the formerdecade. Figure 4 illustrates aggregate lists of the top pub-lishers for database research venues according to their focus:core database technology conference (Figure 4(a)), theoreti-cal database conferences (Figure 4(b)) and database journals(Figure 4(c)). Several remarks can be observed from the re-ported results for these database research venues. Some keyremarks are given as follows:

• There are distinctly 42 (non-distinctly 72) researchscholars in the top publishers lists of the four coredatabase technology conferences. There are distinctly34 (non-distinctly 41) research scholars in the top pub-lishers lists of the three main database journals. Incombination, there are 63 distinct research scholars onthe seven venues. These results show a clear overlapbetween the list of these top database research venues.

• Three research scholars appear on the top publish-ers list of all core database technology conferences.Namely, Philip S. Yu, Nick Koudas and Yufei Tao.In addition, Philip S. Yu appears on the top publish-ers lists of the VLDB journal and TKDE. Yufei Taoappears on the lists of the TODS and TKDE whileNick Koudas appears only on the list of TODS.

• Six research scholars appear on the top publishers listof three (out of four) core database technology con-ferences. Namely, Divesh Srivastava, Beng Chin Ooi,Surajit Chaudhuri, Jiawei Han, Jeffrey Xu Yu and H.V. Jagadish. In addition, Beng Chin Ooi appears onthe lists of the VLDB Journal and TKDE. Jiawei Hanappears on the top list of TKDE. Jeffrey Xu Yu ap-pears on the top list of the VLDB Journal. SurajitChaudhuri and H. V. Jagadish appears on the top listof TODS.

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Figure 4: Aggregate Lists of Top Publishers for Database Research Venues

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Figure 6: Growth in Number of Authors

• Eight research scholars appear on the top publisherslist of two core database technology conferences. Namely,Kian-Lee Tan, Anthony K. H. Tung, Haixun Wang,Dimitris Papadias, Jeffrey F. Naughton, Raghu Ra-makrishnan, Divyakant Agrawal and Samuel Madden.In addition, Dimitris Papadias appears on the top pub-lishers lists of TODS and TKDE.

• There are 32 distinct research scholars in the top pub-lishers list of the two theoretical database conferences(PODS and ICDT). Seven research scholars appear onthe lists of both conferences. Namely, Leonid Libkin,Marcelo Arenas, Phokion G. Kolaitis, Yehoshua Sagiv,Benny Kimelfeld, Christoph Koch and Ronald Fagin.

• Seven research scholars have joint appearance on thetop publishers list of at least one of the theoreticaldatabase conferences in addition to another appear-ance in at least one the top publishers list of a coredatabase technology conference or a main databasejournal. Namely, Victor Vianu (ICDT, TODS), PhokionG. Kolaitis (PODS / ICDT, TODS), Ronald Fagin(PODS / ICDT, TODS), Johannes Gehrke (PODS,SIGMOD), Wang Chiew Tan (PODS, TODS), DanSuciu (PODS, VLDB) and Wenfei Fan (PODS, VLDB).

• Ming-Syan Chen has the highest total number of pub-lications in the major database journals in one year.In 2008, he has published 9 papers (5 papers in TKDEand 4 papers in VLDB Journal).

• Philip S. Yu has the highest total number of publica-tions in the major database conferences in one year. In2009, he has published 13 papers (6 papers in VLDB,5 papers in ICDE and 2 papers in SIGMOD).

• Divesh Srivastava is the top publisher in the aggre-gate list of all core database technology conferences(Figure 4(a)). He published 67 papers in total with anaverage of about 7 papers per year. On the other side,he published only 5 papers in the main database jour-nals. Therefore, he does not appear in the aggregatelist of the main database journals (Figure 4(c)). Tenresearch scholars appear in both of the aggregate listsfor top publishers on core database technology con-ferences and database journals. Namely, Philip S. Yu(with total of 88 papers), Nick Koudas (71 papers), Ji-awei Han (71 papers), Surajit Chaudhuri (69 papers),Yufei Tao (69 papers), H. V. Jagadish (62 papers),Dimitris Papadias (60 papers), Jeffrey Xu Yu (53 pa-pers), Minos N. Garofalakis (45 papers) and XueminLin (42 papers).

• Yannis Papakonstantinou and Dan Suciu had at leastone paper in each of the studied nine major databasevenues in the last decade.

• Table 1 shows the most important co-authorship re-lations between research scholars in the top lists ofthe database research venues. For example, Yufei Taoand Dimitris Papadias have participated in the co-authorship of 34 regular paper in the different databaseresearch venues. The degree column (Deg.) indicatesthe number of the research scholars participating inthe relationship.

2.2 The Growth in number of Publications andDatabase Community Size

The topics of the database field is continuously growing.Therefore, there are more researchers who are entering the

Deg. Authors # Pub.2 Yufei Tao and Dimitris Papadias 342 Divesh Srivastava and Nick Koudas 332 Divyakant Agrawal and Amr El Abbadi 302 Vivek R. Narasayya and Surajit Chaudhuri 222 Beng Chin Ooi and Anthony K. H. Tung 162 Haixun Wang and Philip S. Yu 162 Xuemin Lin and Wei Wang 162 Xuemin Lin and Jeffrey Xu Yu 143 B. Gedik, P. S. Yu and K. Wu 93 D. Agrawal, A. El Abbadi and A. Metwally 7

Table 1: Top Co-authorship Relationships

research community and more research papers are beingpublished [?]. In our study, we determined the numberof regular publications for all of our considered publicationvenues for the ten years period of 2001 - 2010. Moreover,we determined the number of unique authors for the publi-cations of each venue as a measure of its contributing com-munity size. Figure 5 presents an overview of the growth inthe number of publications in the database research venueswhile Figure 6 presents an overview of the growth in thenumber of unique authors (participating community size).Combining the results of both figures show that the numberof research publications and unique authors in core databasetechnology conferences and database journals has on averagenearly doubled in number. On the contrary for the theoret-ical database conference (PODS and ICDT), there was noclear increase either on the number of publications nor onthe number of authors. They kept having an average ofaround 30 papers and 75 authors per conference over thewhole decade.

In principle, the number of regular research publications forcore database technology conferences cannot continue grow-ing in proportion to the size of the community. Therefore,most of the conference have introduced other forms of pub-lications such as: posters, short papers and demo papers inorder to provide a chance for a wider part of the communityto present their work and to continue attracting and focusingthe researchers to participate in a small set of top confer-ences as there are always limits on the number of conferencesthat researchers can attend. For example, the 2002 editionof the ICDE conference first introduced the acceptance ofdemo papers, the 2003 edition introduced the acceptance ofposter papers and the 2009 edition introduced the accep-tance of 4 pages short papers. We believe that having morejournal papers could be a good solution to absorb this con-tinuous increase of research publications without the need toincrease the number of conferences or to increase the numberof accepted papers in the current conferences.

One of the main reasons behind the increase in the numberof publications in the database community is the continuousintroduction of new research challenges which is relevant tothe scope of the community. For example, XML has startedto be introduced as a hot research topic for the databaseresearch community in the early of the last decade. Moroet al [?] referenced a list of more than 100 publications ina survey paper that provides an overview of some of thework that have been done in different aspects for XML datamanagement. Recently, the topic of large scale data man-agement on cloud computing and parallel data processing

(e.g. MapReduce) have been introduced and they attracta lot of interest from the database research community [?].As a consequence, a new series of research conferences, theACM Symposium on Cloud Computing, has been started in2010 [?]. This series is co-sponsored by the ACM SpecialInterest Groups on Management of Data (ACM SIGMOD)and on Operating Systems (ACM SIGOPS). The conferencewill be held in conjunction with ACM SIGMOD and ACMSOSP Conferences in alternate years.

3. CONCLUSIONSResearch is a competitive endeavor. Research scholars usu-ally have multiple goals to achieve and it is therefore reason-able that their impact must be judged by multiple criteria.We believe that ranking of research scholars based on thecount of their publications in top-tier research venues can bean insightful indicator in a comprehensive assessment pro-cess. Other important factors such as: invitations to pro-gram committees of prestigious conferences, membership oneditorial boards of high quality journals, grant funding andawards can be also good indicators for evaluating the impactof research scholars.

In this paper, we presented a detailed study for the publica-tions of 6 major database conferences and 3 major databasejournals in the period between 2001 and 2010. The resultsof our study reveals the fact that the number of researchpublications pear year and the community size has nearlydoubled through the last decade. The results also show aconsiderable overlap between the top publishers lists of thecore database technology conferences and the database jour-nals. The results are also compatible with the fact that theresearchers in the database community tend to prefer pub-lishing their work in prestigious conferences rather than inmajor database journals. The average publication rate fortop publishers in conference venues highly exceed their av-erage publication rate in the major database journals. Inprinciple, we believe that conference publications will re-main as an attractive way to gain a quick publicity for newresearch findings. However, the number of conferences orthe number of accepted publications per conference can notcontinue increasing as this will limit the value of these venuesgradually. Therefore, we believe that journal papers will re-main as the best way to document and archive significantpieces of research which can not fit within the 12-page limitof conferences. The community should continue pushing to-wards achieving the switch to the culture of highly evaluat-ing the journal papers over the conference papers [?]. Oneof the valuable trials in this direction is the introduction ofthe The Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment (PVLDB)5

which aims of providing journal-like experience to authorsof the VLDB submissions.

5http://www.vldb.org/pvldb/