Guidelines for Reviewers

Introduction

Peer review is an essential procedure aiming at ensuring the scientific quality and integrity of scientific publications through independent reviews from experts.

For conferences, the form and extent of a peer review varies significantly. This document provides guidance for the reviewers of the submissions for the CEAS EuroGNC conference. Contrary to many conferences, at CEAS EuroGNC conferences full-drafts are expected from the authors of regular (non-invited) papers. These full-draft papers are reviewed by at least two reviewers.

Here is the review model used for the CEAS EuroGNC conference:

  • Preprint reviews of full-draft papers (extended abstract in specific categories such as invited papers or student posters): The full-draft papers are not published openly. Only the final
  • Single-blind reviews
    The reviewers know the identity of the authors but the authors do not know the identity of the reviewers. The reviewers should not reveal themselves to the authors (not even many years later) and avoid giving away information in their review, which would allow deducing their identity or those of their employer or research group.
  • Mediated via conference editorial chairs
    The reviewers do not interact with each other, do not know the identity of the other reviewer(s), and the interactions with the authors are mediated by the conference editorial chair(s).
    As part of this mediation, the conference editorial chair(s) can take measures to ensure a fair, honest, and unbiased assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the manuscript such as but not limited to asking reviewers for clarification, questioning inconsistencies withing parts of the review, correcting typos, filtering out / or tempering inappropriate feedback (e.g. comments that are unnecessarily hurtful, negative, denigrating, discriminatory), or asking reviewers to rephrase their comments to provide a more constructive feedback with more actionable suggestions for improvement for the authors.
  • Reviews are not published
  • The review process is facilitated by the CEAS GNC TC and the local organising committees (e.g. through setting and providing technical support for the platform used)
  • The reviews are owned by the respective reviewers and the CEAS GNC TC

Step-by-Step Procedure and Instructions

Upon receiving the review assignment, the reviewers should…

  • Read the ethics rules for CEAS EuroGNC conferences -> https://eurognc.ceas.org/publication-ethics/
  • Check and report potential conflict of interests
    As soon as the reviews are assigned to the reviewers, the reviewers must check whether any potential, real or perceived, conflict of interest exist and report them without delay to the conference chair team. Whenever the reviewers are unsure, they should seek guidance from the conference chair team and/or the publications ethics chair.
  • Assess own competencies for reviewing the assigned paper(s)
    The editorial chair team has a fairly good knowledge of the competencies / specialties of the technical committee members. However, a mismatch between paper and reviewer can happen.
    The reviewers are asked to assess their competencies for reviewing the assigned papers as soon as possible and to report cases for which they lack the required competencies without delay.

During the Review

  • For ensuring review traceability, the reviewers are not allowed to involve colleagues in their reviews.
    If reviewers are not able to perform their duty as reviewer and would like to suggest another competent individual as alternative reviewer, they should contact the conference chair team which will consider their suggestion and decide to invite or not the suggested alternative reviewer.
    If accepted, the alternative reviewer will be assigned the review.
  • Reviewers are not allowed to disclose the paper and any related materials (including supplementary materials and the reviewer’s own review) or content and ideas extracted from them.
  • Throughout the review, reviewers should keep in mind that they are assessing a draft paper and that the final paper will be submitted several months later. Consequently, the review of EuroGNC papers is not a simple pass or fail assessment, but aims at:
    • sorting out flawed papers (e.g. lack of relevance, not sound, conclusions pushed without the evidence to back them up) and
    • helping the authors improving their work by making constructive comments and suggestions.
  • The reviews for CEAS EuroGNC are structured in four parts
    • A summary of the review serving as general comment and highlighting the main positive and negative points of the reviews in a concise manner
    • Detailed comments on specific parts, equations, sentences, figures of the paper
    • Answers to the evaluation criteria (series of multiple-choice questions)
    • Confidential comments for the conference chair team (not disclosed to the authors)
  • The multiple-choice questions indicate the qualities that are desired and the potential flaws that reviewers should look for and should assess.
    The reviewers are advised to read these questions and the possible answer before starting the review.
    IMPORTANT: The answers to these questions will be used to help down-selecting the papers that are worth considering for the next round of the best paper award selection, thus reviewers should really try to be as objective as possible and to be neither stricter nor more lenient than the other reviewers: this would only distort the results!
  • Reviewers should proof-read their review and double-check the consistency of the answers to these questions and the comments made, before submitting the review.
  • The content of the review should not reveal or help determining the reviewer’s identity (for example: the review should not mention specific results, experiences, facilities which would help determining which organisation or research group the reviewer is part of / working with).
  • Confidential comments to the conference chair team should not be a place for denigration or false accusation, done in the knowledge that the authors will not see these comments.

After the Review

  • The reviewers should not disclose to anyone the content of their reviews nor that they were did this specific review, but they can archive a copy of their EuroGNC reviews.
  • The reviewers must delete the paper and any supplementary material after completing the review.
  • During the conference, the reviewer should not ask questions to the presenters which may lead to think that they had prior knowledge of the paper. For example, if they ask questions, the phrasing of these questions should be carefully chosen, so as to avoid repeating similar comments, statements, or expressions which may have been included in the review.
  • A thank you note thanking all reviewers (who agree to be included) at once will be published with the proceedings.