Paper Review

basic format of introduction, related work, approach, implementation, experiments, summary,


"Reviewing the paper" means reading to a level that you
understand what the authors did, why it's interesting, and why it's
important. As part of your review, you should note these things.

you should spot what is good about the paper and
highlight that in your review.

Sometimes the idea is bad/wrong/already-been-done. And that's
fine - the paper can't be accepted. But read the paper looking
for a reason to accept it, and don't reject it unless that
reason doesn't exist.

Related to this is when you write your review, write with the
mind set "how to improve this paper" rather than "here's a list
of things that are wrong with this paper."


If there is something so critical that it
MUST be included, suggest something to remove/reduce so that
the authors can kept to the page limits.


In particular, be sure to cover the following in your written
comments; some of this material will be in response to questions
on the review form, but regardless it should all be covered
somewhere in your review:

1. Outline the paper.

2. Highlight the contribution of the paper, both what
the authors perceive it to be and what you perceive
it to be, as well as how significant it is.

3. State your recommendation and why.

4. State ways to improve the paper, but don't ask too
much (see both the previous and next sections).


"The authors should include the following references."

"The grammar needs to be improved."

"The figures are poor quality."

No paper is perfect. There will be details that are wrong, often
of the above variety, but sometimes of a bit more substance ("the
authors give the wrong formula for X"). These are not reasons
to reject a paper


Here's a list of miscellaneous things to watch out for in your
reviews.

A. Do not say "the authors should add additional references on X"
without actually listing those references. If you're enough of
an expert to make the judgement, then you should be enough of
an expert to explicitly list those references and state why
they should be added.

B. Usually you get to rank the paper on a scale like 1 to 5 as
to whether or not the paper should be accepted. Around 2/3
your rankings should be 1 or 5, around 1/3 should be 2 or 4,
and you should rarely, rarely, rarely give a rating of 3,
which should be considered a reject anyway.

D. Don't be insulting, be positive. Other review guidelines
usually state the former; I've never seen an insulting review,
but I guess it happens. In general, write your entire
review in a tone of having accepted a paper, even when
you're not recommending acceptance.


Your criticisms should be directed at the paper, not the author. "The paper did not cover…" is preferred to "The authors did not cover…"