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Peer Review: Trust and Prejudice

Author:
Mauro Pezzè
USI Università della Svizzera Italiana, Lugano, Switzerland
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Published: 12 October 2020 Publication History

Abstract

A sound review process is critical in contemporary scientific communities. The current discussion on peer review in the software engineering community is centered mainly around conferences, and focuses mostly on 'implementation' issues, like blind reviews, rebuttals, deadlines, with little attention to the ultimate goal of the review process, the external conditions that bias the process, and the role of journals.
In this short note, I would like to remind the community that review is a means not the goal. I overview the goals of reviews, discuss process and environment biases, highlight advantages and limitations of the current approaches, compare the review processes of conferences and journals, and present my vision about a possible healthy evolution of software engineering conferences and journals.

Reference

[1]
V. Garousi and J. M. Fernandes. 2017. Quantity versus impact of software engineering papers: a quantitative study. <italic>Scientometrics</italic> 112, 2 (August 2017), 963-1006. <pub-id pub-id-type="doi" xlink:href="10.1007/s11192-017-2419-6" assigning-authority="crossref">10.1007/s11192-017-2419-6</pub-id>.

Cited By

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  • (2021)Pains and Gains of Peer-Reviewing in Software Engineering (5)ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes10.1145/3468744.346874746:3(14-14)Online publication date: 14-Jul-2021
  • (2021)Pains and Gains of Peer-Reviewing in Software Engineering (4)ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes10.1145/3437479.343748046:1(8-8)Online publication date: 1-Feb-2021

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Published In

cover image ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes
ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes  Volume 45, Issue 4
October 2020
27 pages
ISSN:0163-5948
DOI:10.1145/3417564
Issue’s Table of Contents
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 12 October 2020
Published in SIGSOFT Volume 45, Issue 4

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Cited By

View all
  • (2021)Pains and Gains of Peer-Reviewing in Software Engineering (5)ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes10.1145/3468744.346874746:3(14-14)Online publication date: 14-Jul-2021
  • (2021)Pains and Gains of Peer-Reviewing in Software Engineering (4)ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes10.1145/3437479.343748046:1(8-8)Online publication date: 1-Feb-2021

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References

References

[1]
V. Garousi and J. M. Fernandes. 2017. Quantity versus impact of software engineering papers: a quantitative study. <italic>Scientometrics</italic> 112, 2 (August 2017), 963-1006. <pub-id pub-id-type="doi" xlink:href="10.1007/s11192-017-2419-6" assigning-authority="crossref">10.1007/s11192-017-2419-6</pub-id>.