|
Submissions to TACO are reviewed with criteria traditional to
the process of selecting significant, archival articles.
I. Refereeing Papers Submitted to TACO
II. Instructions for Referees
III. Guidelines for Composing the Review
IV. Overall Recommendation
I. Refereeing Papers
submitted to TACO
Papers must be of high quality and fall within the scope of the journal.
There are four main ingredients to an acceptable paper:
- high technical
quality;
- high relevance
and interest;
- high novelty
and significant contributions;
- effective presentation.
Few papers excel in
all of these, but a substandard level in any of the four ingredients is
sufficient ground for rejection. Many papers require substantial revisions
before acceptance, and reviewers should not hesitate to recommend that a
paper be rejected pending changes that are required for completeness,
correctness, or to substantially improve clarity. For the reviewers, all
items in the Review Form should be carefully considered.
Rarely do all reviewers
agree on a submission, so the detailed evaluation of the merits and
deficiencies of a paper is needed. If you like the paper immensely,
do not assume other reviewers will feel the same way. Describe in detail what you
think is important about it and how it will contribute to theory or practice.
If you are sure the paper should be
rejected, you should explain why, politely, but in detail, because other
reviewers may recommend acceptance. Often, first submissions receive
a Revise and
Resubmit recommendation; for the authors of these papers, your detailed
comments will be of tremendous use in guiding the revision of their work.
Even if the paper is not accepted, the work
may be published elsewhere, and the authors will still benefit from your
constructive suggestions.
The tone of your review is important. When you write an anonymous
review, you are acting as a representative of our field and this
journal. It is always possible to be constructive and firm without being
hostile.
II. Instructions for
Referees
A. One of TACO's
Associate Editors will email you, asking you to review a submission.
Email the Associate Editor back, letting him/her know whether or not
you will review the submission. If you agree to complete the
review, the Associate Editor will assign you to the submission in
Manuscript Central.
B. Go to
Manuscript Central (http://acm.manuscriptcentral.com) and click on
"Referee Center." Under "Manuscripts Pending Review," click on
the title to view the submission.
The Associate Editor asking you to review the paper will create an
ACM Manuscript account for
you if one does not already exist.
If you already have an account, then
the paper to review should appear under your existing account.
To retrieve your account name and password, at the ACM manuscript
login prompt, choose the "check for existing account" and enter
the email address used to send you the request for the review.
This will then send to you your login and password.
C. Download
the submission. Spend sufficient time with the submission to evaluate
its overall quality, novelty, and contributions.
E. When you are
ready to submit your review in Manuscript Central, return to your
"Referee Center." Click on the "Review" button, and then the "Score
Manuscript." Complete the online reviewer form, and submit your
review. Please construct your review around the questions below.
You might find it useful to construct a review in a word processor and
then copy and paste it into the comments box. Or, you may choose
to upload the file itself. You may leave the review open if you
are not finished submitting your review, or submit your review to the
Associate Editor.
III. Guidelines
for Composing the Review
The review form
contains an area for confidential comments to the Editors. All
private information and questions are clearly marked. These remarks (as
well as referee information) are strictly confidential and are not sent to
the author.
The overall recommendation should be based on the following five
criteria:
- Relevance:
How relevant is the submission to the
Topics covered by TACO.
- Originality/Novelty:
How innovative is the research being presented? If the research was
previously published in a conference, the submission must include 25% new
material.
Is the submission significantly different or better than previously 'published'
material?
- Importance:
How important is this area, and the presented solutions. Were significant
contributions made?
- Technically Sound:
Is the submission technically sound? Are the concepts correct and accurate?
Does the submission operate correctly? Is the technique complete?
- Clarity:
Are the techniques presented clearly? Is it well written?
Please make comments
that are as constructive as possible. Authors spend significant time
to create and submit their paper. Your comments should be meaningful
and respectful.
IV.
Overall Recommendation
For the overall recommendation there are four options: Accept, Minor
Revision, Major Revision, and Reject.
Accept - An Accept with no revision means that the submission is
perfect and there are no suggestions for improvement. The paper is
ready for publication.
Minor Revision - A Minor revision should only be used for papers that
have a clear contribution, and there are only small changes that need
to be made to make the paper ready for publication. A minor revision
usually means that only textual changes are needed. If changes to the
methodology is needed or simulations need to be run, then major
revision should probably be given, unless it is felt that the authors
probably already have the additional data or the results can be
gathered very quickly.
Major Revision - Major revision means that the submission has
a clear contribution and there is enough evidence in the current
submission to demonstrate that contribution. Major revision should
only be used if the paper excels in (1) relevance and interest to
TACO's audience, and (2) the submission has significant contributions
and/or is novel, and either technical quality and/or presentation
needs major revision. For technical quality, this means that a few
experiments or comparisons may be needed to complete the publication
to make it journal quality. BUT the evaluation of the contribution of
the paper should not be resting upon the outcome of these additional
results. If the paper is missing important results to evaluate its
contribution, then the paper should be classified as Reject. A paper
classified as major revision is "conditionally accepted" based on
adequately making the suggested major revisions. Therefore, there is
a very high probability, but not 100%, that the paper will be
accepted.
Reject - This rating is used when the submission is off topic
for TACO, it is an incremental contribution over prior art, or a more
complete submission is needed to better evaluate the ideas presented.
This classification is also used by a reviewer when a paper shows that
it might have a potential contribution and the topic is of interest to
TACO, but not enough information is provided in the submission to
determine this. Papers in this category often need more comparisons
to prior work to determine if the proposed approach advances the state
of the art, or needs a major rewrite to allow certain points of the
paper to be understood. The authors can revise, run new experiments,
and decide to potentially submit to TACO as a new submission, or to a
different conference or journal at a later date.
A reviewer suggesting Major Revision or feels that the paper should be
Rejected and then resubmitted to TACO needs to provide an itemized
list describing exactly what the authors need to address in their
revision for it to be acceptable.
|