Reviewer #2 Must Be Stopped!: Or, The Art of Providing Good Reviews
Article No.: 4, Pages 1 - 2
Abstract
Love it or hate it, the peer review process (whether open, blind, or even double-blind) has become the standard and accepted way of assessing the quality of papers before publication, be it for a conference, journal, or book. Indeed, forming the program committee is an essential part in any conference organisation and a good program committee may well be the differentiator from peer conferences. However, we have all been the recipients of a less than stellar/helpful review: from the snarky ones to the one-liners, these reviews can be demoralising and can give the peer-review process a bad reputation! The scope of this tutorial is then to encourage researchers to become more involved in the peer-review process by joining program committees and encourages good practices to collectively strengthen the quality of the peer-review process.
The program committee consists of a group of individuals who voluntarily review the papers vetting papers such that those selected for publication are not only relevant to the field, but also provide novel insights to problems within the field. A truly excellent review, whether recommending acceptance or non-acceptance, motivates the authors to do more in the area their submission addresses. Individuals that form part of a program committee tend to be experts in their field such that they can provide constructive critique of the submitted papers. But while it is easy to rely on well established researchers, it is also important that program committees are refreshed with new and young researchers as this keeps the research community moving on-wards. Additionally, like any good mentor/mentee relationship, younger reviewers may be better able to point out "blind spots" to compelling new research that authors more "set in their ways" might have missed/omitted.
The tutorial will be divided into two parts. In the first part, we will provide an overview of the reviewing process, tips on how to read a paper for review, use tools such as Google Scholar to verify references and novelty, as well as tips on writing the review to provide constructive criticism while avoiding falling into pitfall of becoming the infamous Reviewer #2. We will provide sample reviews from reviewers who have won "best reviewer" awards at conferences similar to DocEng.
The second part of the tutorial will take a more practical approach as participants will be able to carry out a mock review of a paper. Throughout the tutorial, the DocEng reviewing process will be used as an example. Participation and discussions from attendees will be encouraged!
This tutorial is intended for young researchers who are interested in starting to review papers, more mature researchers interested in improving the quality of the peer-review process, as well as anyone interested in finding out more about the reviewing process adopted at DocEng, and even potentially becoming part of the DocEng program committee.
Recommendations
2008 Reviewer Thanks
IEEE Pervasive Computing thanks the reviewers who helped identify the best submissions this year.
Interfaces Outstanding Reviewer Award
Interfaces has instituted a new “Editor-in-Chief” award to recognize outstanding reviewers. The award recognizes reviewers for their sustained contributions to the journal by submitting timely, high-quality reviews that help authors improve their ...
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August 2023
187 pages
ISBN:9798400700279
DOI:10.1145/3573128
Copyright © 2023 Owner/Author.
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: 22 August 2023
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- Refereed limited
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DocEng '23
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Acceptance Rates
DocEng '23 Paper Acceptance Rate 9 of 27 submissions, 33%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 194 of 564 submissions, 34%
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