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Paper reviewing

Questions for any research paper

  1. What is the problem that the paper is trying to solve? Why is it important?
  2. To solve the problem, a good paper must provide an insightful observation that eventually would lead to the solution. What’s the most important observation that this paper makes?
  3. What’s the proposed solution? How does the paper leverage the above insight to devise the solution?
  4. What are the advantages of the solution?
  5. What are the disadvantages of the proposed solution? How would you improve this work to avoid the disadvantages?

You have two main jobs as a reviewer

  1. Determine whether the authors’ claims are supported
  2. Help the journal editors make their decision

Requirements

  1. The study presents the results of original research.
  2. Results reported have not been published elsewhere.
  3. Experiments, statistics, and other analyses are performed to a high technical standard and are described in sufficient detail.
  4. Conclusions are presented in an appropriate fashion and are supported by the data.
  5. The article is presented in an intelligible fashion and is written in standard English.
  6. The research meets all applicable standards for the ethics of experimentation and research integrity.
  7. The article adheres to appropriate reporting guidelines and community standards for data availability.

Review

summary of the research review: summary: this paper demonstrates...

In your own words, summarize what the manuscript claims to report. This shows the editor how you interpreted the manuscript and will highlight any major differences in perspective between you and the other reviewers.

Give an overview of the manuscript’s strengths and weaknesses. Think about this as your “take-home” message for the editors.

End this section with your recommended course of action.

summarize your overall impression

authors need to do :

  • Major issues are the essential things the authors must address before the manuscript is considered further. Make sure you focus on what is fundamental for the current study. In other words, it’s not helpful to recommend additional work that would be considered the “next step” in the study.
  • Minor issues are still important but are smaller in scope and don’t affect the overall conclusions. Use this section to mention things like including additional references, clarifying the language, or adding more context.

NO ADDITIONNAL WORK or future work

other points: miscellaneous remarks

no typos

Examples

Key strengths:

  1. The idea of finding a critical path for each class is interesting
  2. Easy to read and understand
  3. The paper is well written and the figures are clear

Key weaknesses:

  1. There is no baseline model for comparison which leads to difficulty in evolving the applicability of the model
  2. The number of operation and connections in comparison to a model which does not use these new techniques are not mentioned in the paper.
  3. It is not obvious what the difference is between this paper and reference 1 in the paper
  4. The overhead of finding a critical path with three metrics are not mentioned in the paper.

Elsevier Checklist

DO

  • Summarize the article in a short paragraph. This shows the editor you have read and understood the research.
  • Give your main impressions of the article, including whether it is novel and interesting, whether it has a sufficient impact and adds to the knowledge base.
  • Ideally when commenting, do so using short, clearly-defined paragraphs and make it easy for the editor and author to see what section you’re referring to.
  • Assess whether the article conforms to the journal-specific instructions (e.g. the guide for authors).
  • Give specific comments and suggestions about e.g. title, abstract: Does the title accurately reflect the content? Is the abstract complete and stand-alone?
  • Check the graphical abstracts and/or highlights.
  • Keep your comments strictly factual and don’t speculate on the motives of the author(s)
  • Carefully review the methodology, statistical errors, results, conclusion/discussion, and references.
  • Consider feedback on the presentation of data in the article, the sustainability and reproducibility of any methodology, the analysis of any data and whether the conclusions are supported by the data.
  • Raise your suspicions with the editor if you suspect plagiarism, fraud or have other ethical concerns, providing as much detail as possible. Visit Elsevier’s ethics page or consult the COPE guidelines for more information.
  • Be aware of the possibility for bias in your review. Unconscious bias can lead us all to make questionable decisions which impact negatively on the academic publishing process. Read further to find out more about this important subject and to view resources on how to identify and tackle bias.

DON’T

  • Feel the need to comment on the spelling, grammar or layout of the article. If the research is sound, but let down by poor language; recommend to the editor that the author(s) have their paper language edited.
  • Make ad-hominem comments.
  • Dismiss alternative viewpoints or theories that might conflict with your own opinions on a topic: when reviewing, maintain an open perspective.
  • Share the review or information about the review with anyone without the agreement of the editors and authors involved. According to COPE guidelines, reviewers must treat any manuscripts they are asked to review as confidential documents. This applies both during and after the publication process unless the journal employs open peer review.
  • Suggest that the author includes citations to your (or your associates’) work unless for genuine scientific reasons and not with the intention of increasing citation counts or enhancing the visibility of your work (or that of your associates).