Talk:List of important publications in computer science/Archive 1

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The layout of this page sucks rocks through a very small straw. If no-one objects I'm going to take out all those horrible tables. --Phil 13:08, Feb 11, 2004 (UTC)

I agree that tables are problematic and will make editing more complicated. Yet I think that it is a good way for displaying the information. Maybe the page should be split - a stable part in tables and a variable part in text. This bit by User:62.90.40.50

I have now re-formatted the page and added wikilinks to all the authors. However these are not uniform and therefore difficult to complete. I reckon we can also link to the source publications. Next time around, maybe. --Phil 16:45, Feb 13, 2004 (UTC)

Well done, Phil! It does look better now. We might consider two things: 1. Should the publication them self be in the table of contents? It makes the table be very large. 2. In the academic refernce witing convetion it is common to wrtie the auhtor with the publication (as in the original way). I think that we should do it too.

Isn't the title of this article just a tad POV? RickK 06:36, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Sorry, RickK - what is POV?

POV means "Point of View". Our policy is Neutral Point of View, and the use of the term "important" in this title means that publications not listed on this page are not important. We shouldn't be making such value judgements. RickK 06:51, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

List of influential publications in computer science/List of noted publications in computer science? Dysprosia 06:53, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I'd like the refer both to the name of the list and its content.

A list of important publications is defiantly subjective. Yet, writing a publication in the list doesn't mean that the others are not important. There are many other important publications. I plan to add more myself.

I am sure that many people will have different points of view about the importance of any publication in the list and others that should be there. I try to include in the list publications that 90% of the expert in the topic will agree on their importance. I wish the create a list of publications that a professor will recommend on to a research student. One of the goals of the list is the help people learn topics that they are not familiar with. One should be able to get few points to start with.

Most of the papers have many citations in other publications (see http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/cs ) which are another indicator of their importance. Note that the number of citation alone is not a good measure of importance. It is biased due to time – new publication has much more citations. It is also biased due to topic – popular topics lead to more citations.

The most citied publication there is: M.R. Garey and D.S. Johnson. Computers and Intractability: A Guide to the Theory of NP-Completeness. Freeman, New York, 1979.

This is defiantly an important publication and it is included in the list. Yet the most important part of this book is a long list of NP-Complete problems. It is hard to claim that this paper is more important than Cook's paper that invented NP-Completeness.


I try to reduce the amount of subjectivity by splitting the papers by topics and importance type. This way one should not decide whether complexity is more important than databases. Papers might be important due to many aspects – the relational database scheme change the database world (impact) but the concept of Public-Key cryptography was a much bigger break through.


As for Dysprosia recommandations: Some papers are important though their influation is limited – most of the work on theoretical foundations of computer scinence didn't have much influence outside the community but they are very important. Saying that a publication is noted might be inteperted as if the others are not noted and even more subjective. We can use "list of publication in computer science" but since there are a lot of such publication the importance is implicit.


Maybe we should extend the introduction and explicitly explain the list goals and construction method.

Probabilistic networks (?)

Description: This book introduced Bayesian methods to AI.

Importance: Topic creator, Influence

I removed the above entry since I couldn't find a book in this name by Judea Pearl. When the right name is found, the entry can be returned. APH 10:39, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

At Bookfinder.com I found Probabilistic Reasoning in Intelligent Systems: Networks of Plausible Inference
Softcover, ISBN: 1558604790 Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann Pub, 1988
Bookfinder Bubba73 14:11, August 3, 2005 (UTC)
Thanks. I'll return it. APH 06:28, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Unformated reading in artificial intelligence

I moved this list from the Artificial intelligence article, figuring it would be more appropriate having it here. (I am trying to clean up that article.) Unfortunately it is not in the right format... --moxon 13:02, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm removing this list from the article and putting it in the talk page. In one year, no one has added justification for them, and I find the importance of most of these publications to be questionable.

  • Gödel, Escher, Bach : An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter
  • Understanding Understanding: Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition by Heinz von Foerster
  • In the Image of the Brain: Breaking the Barrier Between Human Mind and Intelligent Machines by Jim Jubak
  • Today's Computers, Intelligent Machines and Our Future by Hans Moravec, Stanford University
  • The Society of Mind by Marvin Minsky, ISBN 0-671-65713-5 15 March 1998
  • Perceptrons: An Introduction to Computational Geometry by Marvin Minsky and Seymour Papert ISBN 0-262-63111-3 28 December 1987
  • The Brain Makers: Genius, Ego and Greed In The Quest For Machines That Think by HP Newquist ISBN 0-672-30412-0.
  • What Computers Still Can't Do: A Critique of Artificial Reason by Hubert L. Dreyfus ISBN 0-262-04134-0.
  • Cummins, Denise, Cummins, Robert (1999). Minds, Brains, Computers: The Foundations of Cognitive Science - An Anthology. Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 1-55786-877-8.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Dyson, George (1998). Darwin Among the Machines: The Evolution of Global Intelligence. Perseus Books, US. ISBN 0-7382-0030-1.
  • Bishop, Chris (1995). Neural Networks for Pattern Recognition. Oxford.
  • Negnevitsky, Michael (2004). Artificial Intelligence: A Guide to Intelligent Systems. Addison Wesley. ISBN 0-321-20466-2.
  • Newborn, Monty (1997). Kasparov Versus Deep Blue: Computer Chess Comes of Age. Springer-Verlag New York Inc. ISBN 0-387-94820-1.
  • Norvig, Peter, Russell, Stuart J. (2002). Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach (International Edition). Pearson US Imports & PHIPEs. ISBN 0-13-080302-2.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Penrose, Roger (2005). The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds and the Laws of Physics. Owl Books (NY). ISBN 0-8050-7853-3.
  • Sejnowski, Terrence J., Churchland, Patricia S. (1994). The Computational Brain. The MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-53120-8.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

-- SpuriousQ 01:30, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Useful resource for editors

A useful resource for editors of this page is this link to a list of the most cited articles and books in computer science [1] GabrielF 07:00, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Hi Gabriel,
The list you gave (and the entire citeseer site) are a very useful resource, both for idea for important publication and for the publications' texts. However, that list should be used with care. Note what is written above in this talk page about the most cited publication "Computers and Intractability: A Guide to the Theory of NP-Completeness.". APH 07:44, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

New Category

The list omits publications on programming language design. Here is a list of publications compiled by Benjamin Pierce that could be incorporated in the future: [2] Brothers 20:51, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Standards in all the Wikipedia:WikiProject Science pearls articles

List of publications in biology was put up for deletion at AfD but survived the process as there was no consensus. However, as someone who has been concerned with this Wikipedia:WikiProject Science pearls project for some months now, I am concerned. There is indeed a case that the material here is not free of a POV. How do we determine importance? Earlier this year the participants on List of publications in chemistry debated this and decided on two matters. First, they tightened up the criteria for inclusion, in particular insisted that publications that were important as an introduction had to have had a wider importance such as altering the way all future text books were written or altered the way the subject was taught. Second, they decided that all new entries should be raised for debate over a 10 day period on the talk page to determine whether they should be kept or deleted. Most existing entries were debated and several were deleted. This has worked reasonably well although it would be better if more people had participated. It is clear enough that it is not, for these articles, sufficient to allow anyone to add entries, as only very obvious nonsense is likely to be deleted. Each entry needs the consideration of several editors. I urge all interested in this project to look at what the chemists here have done and consider whether something similar or even better can be used on all pages in the project. I am putting this paragraph on all the other talk pages of this project. --Bduke 08:32, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

The Pragmatic Programmer

The criteria for entries

Please take a look at a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Science pearls#Header template to all project list pages on rewording the template that generates the header to this list of publications to make the criteria for entries to the list rather tighter and better reflecting the notability criteria of WP. The motivation is to better take into account comments that have been made when some of these lists have been proposed for deletion. --Bduke 00:33, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

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