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Reviewer: David E. Ross

Almost a fourth of the main text of this report is devoted to defining its subject. Experimental computer science and engineering (ECSE) is the activity of creating and experimenting on (or with) computational artifacts—hardware, compilers, systems, applications, and so on. The emphasis of the report is on how academic researchers in ECSE obtain tenure and on why computer science is so unlike other disciplines that unique deviations from the tenure process generally followed for other disciplines should be allowed. The assertion of uniqueness is weak. Biochemistry, linguistics, cosmology, and history are as different from each other as from computer science. Each has problems with evaluating candidates for tenure. Each suffers from pressures to publish or perish, including pressures to publish in forums that might not be ideal for the specific discipline (as the report cites for computer science, where the preferred forum appears to be conference proceedings, whereas tenure committees prefer journals). Each is affected by general (rather than tailored) standards involving lengths of evaluation periods, numbers of successful graduate students, and other factors cited in this report. A case to modify tenure standards for computer science can be sustained only if each academic discipline has its own unique standards. Besides arguing for distinct treatment of tenure-track researchers, the report has several other flaws. It asserts a strong separation between theoretical and experimental computer science, which, if true, would result in the sterility of the former and the aimlessness of the latter. Although it denies attempting to downplay the necessity for academicians to teach, it repeatedly cites how teaching loads detract from research. Finally, by focusing on academic careers, the report neglects the possibly more viable choice of pursuing ECSE careers in non-academic organizations. A new economic, political, and social reality has appeared. Severely reduced US government expenditures for research and similarly reduced state expenditures for non-instructional programs in higher education will soon make the arguments and conclusions of this report obsolete. Research and experimentation in computer science will soon become the responsibility of industry. Academic careers will be limited to those who teach.