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  • From: "Giorgos Cheliotis" <giorgos AT smu.edu.sg>
  • To: <commons-research AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Commons-research] Reviews
  • Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2008 00:57:58 +0800

Hi to all again,
 
some of us (mostly Philipp and myself) have been discussing how to best organize the reviews for the academic program of the workshop being planned for the iSummit.
 
Fist of all, what I have proposed on the draft CFP is to ask for the submission of only extended abstracts, not full papers. Naturally it's better to have full papers than just abstracts, but requesting for abstracts only would help focus the workshop on the presentation and critique of work in progress and would leave the presenters more room with respect to how they wish to present their work.
 
If we stick with the above plan, then it follows that reviews will not be as thorough as they would be when reviewing full papers. Reviews would have to be based on whether the topic and method of investigation are original and relevant, and whether the work looks promising sand is likely to instigate fruitful discussions at the summit. These are to some extent subjective criteria (let's not forget that all academic reviews are relatively subjective), but I feel that this is not a bad thing. We will need to use some judgment in order to ensure a good mix of presentations.
 
Is everyone on this list fine with the above, or do you feel that we should request for full papers (even if these are "working" papers)?
 
Also, the review process I have suggested would be closed, like all academic reviews that I am aware of. The purpose of keeping reviews closed is to allow reviewers total freedom to express their views, without the risk of damaging the author's public reputation in case these reviews are negative. In the case of reviewing abstracts, reviews will likely be quite short anyhow and they will be communicated to each respective author individually, but they could still range from very positive to very negative.
 
Philipp has been suggesting an open review process. This can be understood in two ways:
 
(a) The general public can vote for favorite abstracts. This is reminiscent of reality tv shows and might be an interesting experiment, but I understand that this is not what Philipp has in mind).
 
(b) The reviews are made by the program committee, but are published online along with the abstracts. This might be doable, but I wonder what would be the benefit of such an approach. I see the potential danger of either reviewers holding back on their comments because they would not want to embarrass anyone, or of authors being publicly humiliated by the publication of potentially very negative reviews.
 
I would now join Philipp in inviting others to join in and participate in the discussion.
 
Giorgos
 



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