Abstract
This chapter presents various loosely organized practical tips and tricks on how to properly review a paper taking into account the principles of the previous chapter. All tips and tricks are elaborated, and many are illustrated with excerpts of actual reviews (of course, all identifying details have been removed). A few of these are taken from the comments given by Ph.D. students participating in earlier editions of the OnTheMove Academy [the OTMA (http://www.onthemove-academy.org/) is a highly tutored and interactive (some might call it “shepherded”) workshop where Ph.D. students present their work, receive critical comments and tailored suggestions on their paper and poster and writing and presentation skills, and participate in a peer reviewing exercise; background material (e.g., general tips and tricks, an example poster template) and a comparison with other Ph.D. workshops are available (cf. http://www.onthemove-academy.org/index.php/otma-downloadables)] reviewing exercise. Also, some anecdotal background is given to better illustrate the dilemmas a reviewer sometimes faces. Some excerpts constitute bad practice and, hence, are not to be “adopted.” A reader of this chapter should end up sufficiently “armed” to autonomously perform good scientific reviews.
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Notes
- 1.
Another, equally reprehensible, reason is that, e.g., workshop organizers stimulate people to submit “something” that will be rejected anyhow but that helps to obtain a high rejection rate. A high rejection rate is reputation-wise interesting or simply imposed by a publisher and/or conference steering committee.
- 2.
Due to the low score of this unprofessional reviewer, the paper was the first paper in rank that failed to pass the acceptance threshold. However, an improved version was accepted the subsequent year.
- 3.
In all fairness, the Ph.D. students did also include extensive summaries of each paper, but the summary was only a description, not an assessment, and hence useless as a review.
- 4.
In some cases, mainly journal paper reviews, authors are expected to explain in a separate letter to the editor (and reviewers) how they have taken the comments by the reviewers into account. They can thus argue about the validity of the references suggested by reviewers and defend themselves for not including the suggested references anyhow.
- 5.
Also see the COPE guidelines: http://publicationethics.org/text-recycling-guidelines
- 6.
For example, a technical report on the researcher’s website or a workshop publication on the CEUR site is usually not considered as normal publications.
- 7.
How many paragraphs, and in which sections, have been copied/pasted? Are many sentences literally repeated? What is the proportion of new vs. old information? Etc.
- 8.
Copy/paste repetitions in introductory sections could “enjoy” a more permissive attitude than repetitions in the discussion or result sections. In some non-Western cultures (self) plagiarism seems to be more frequently applied and apparently treated more forgivingly (which nevertheless cannot be accepted!).
- 9.
- 10.
Some chairs or editors apply this trick as well in order to reach the minimum number of reviewers for a paper if there are not enough “original” reviews.
- 11.
For example, by adapting some settings of the reviewing system as not to disclose the identity of reviewers to the other reviewers.
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© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
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Spyns, P., Vidal, ME. (2015). Tips and Tricks. In: Scientific Peer Reviewing. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25084-7_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25084-7_3
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