Reviewing


Remarks on Reviewing

Reviewing is essential to the academic life of a discipline. It's everyone's responsibility to do it, and to do it well. In computer graphics, the standards are remarkably high, and if you're a graphics researcher, you should do your part.

Most graphics papers are reviewed by somewhere between 1 and 5 people; the average is probably 2 or 3. I therefore figure that you should, in fairness, review about 4 times as many papers as you submit, with a bias in favor of senior people (i.e., senior folks should do more reviews than junior ones do). If you have not reviewed at least 4 times as many papers as you've submitted, perhaps you should offer your services as a reviewer to the editor of one or more journals. Then you'll have a new way to spend the time you used to waste on complaining about slow reviewing -- helping to reduce the problem.

Reviewing is also routinely abused: people submit not-yet-ready papers to conferences to get the benefit of the reviewers' work. This is wrong. When I am asked to review a paper that falls into this category, I decline to provide anything except a low score.

Conferences/Journals That I Support by Reviewing

Requesting That I Do a Review

If you want me to review something, first send me email with the abstract of the paper so that I can determine whether I have the time and expertise required; I will not review papers, grant proposals, or anything else sent to me without such a prior contact.