Peer Review Process

Terminology

Conference Paper: This is a peer-reviewed research paper describing an original research contribution and published in the conference proceedings. 

Application 

All conference papers are subject to peer review. 

Publications  

All conference papers which have passed peer review and have been accepted by the conference chairs will be published in the conference proceedings.   

Initial Screening

The scientific committee will screen the initial submissions (1000 word abstracts) of contributed papers. At their option, chairs may choose to reject these submissions for any reason, but the primary reasons for rejection at this stage are (a) subject does not match conference themes and topics; (b) in appropriate, unprofessional, unethical, or dishonest material; (c) duplicate submissions; (d) abandoned submissions; (e) multiple submissions from same presenter; (f) obvious poor quality; (g) reasonable suspicion of machine-generated text; (h) need to limit acceptances because of conference space constraints. Chairs may also transfer papers between themes at this stage. 

Conference organisers will then invite authors of selected abstracts that have passed the initial screening to submit a conference paper for peer review. 

Conference Paper Peer Review 

Conference chairs act as editors. They will assign peer reviewers to assess the quality of the conference papers and manage the peer review process for each paper. Peer reviewers are generally selected from the International Scientific Committee who are scientists, engineers, or researchers with technical expertise in the conference topic. Peer reviewers must be considered technical experts in their field, hold a PhD, and have published peer reviewed scientific works previously. Each work must be reviewed by a minimum of two peer-reviewers. 

A “single-blind” peer review system is used, in which the peer reviewers have access to the identities of the authors, but the authors are never given the identities of the peer reviewers. This is consistent with most journal peer review procedures in our field. 

Peer reviewers will be given a set of quality criteria that may include scientific and technical quality, quality of writing, originality and novelty, appropriateness for the conference topic and theme, interest to the community, and other factors of merit. Peer reviewers are expected to be rigorous and critical in their technical assessments and adhere to the highest standards in the field in order to ensure high quality. Peer reviewers are asked to comment on their assigned conference papers and issue a recommendation to the conference chairs based on this quality criteria. 

Reviewers may recommend one of the following:    

Accept Paper: No technical changes are necessary before publication. Only typographical, spelling, grammar, or other minor changes are necessary which do not require technical review. 

Accept Paper with Revisions: Some technical issues need to be addressed either through technical changes to the manuscript or through rebuttal to reviewer comments. The reviewer does not believe the issues are significant enough to require additional technical review by the reviewers. The reviewer has provided enough commentary such that the editor can decide if the minor issues have been addressed in a future revision.

Reject Without Reconsideration: The technical issues are so significant that it is unlikely that an acceptable manuscript could be produced by the deadline; or, the manuscript is out of scope, inappropriate, or computer generated.  

Peer reviewers may be asked to provide numerical scores or rankings, as well as provide written comments intended for the chairs and/or the authors. Peer reviewers are encouraged to provide specific and constructive feedback that will aid the authors in improving the work and provide advice to the chairs. 

The conference chairs are responsible for making the final decision on each paper and are not required to follow the recommendations of the peer reviewers in making these decisions. It is possible that conference chairs will choose to not accept some papers that still pass through rigorous technical peer review, especially when limited by available space or when papers do not sufficiently promote conference objectives. Conference chairs may also transfer papers between themes as desired. 

Conflicts Of Interest And Ethical Guidelines 

The chairs, scientific committee and peer reviewers must ensure they do not have a conflict of interest that may bias their decisions, such as ensuring that authors are at “arm’s length” and have no financial conflicts of interest. Peer reviewers and chairs must disclose if they have such a conflict of interest with a specific submission, and if so, a different reviewer should be assigned to handle that submission. To help determine conflicts of interest, and for all other ethical guidelines, we use the Systems and Control Transactions ethical guidelines described at: psecommunity.org/contributor-guidelines