[Journal] Reviewers assigned

[Tyler Mitchell (OSGeo)]

Very good comments to receive back, thank you Thierry.  Helena also  
mentioned to me the idea of having a checklist or areas to be  
reviewed.  I'm really new to the peer review process, so I see this  
first attempt as a major learning curve.  I know many of you are more  
familiar than I am and I hope we can use your advice for moving forward.

If you, Helena, or someone else would like to have increased  
privileges on the website, you could review these reviewer options  
and see how much is available off-the-shelf or if we might want to  
add some more to the system.  I'm not so sure on the ranking concept  
you mentioned and whether it might exist already in some respect.   
I'm pretty comfortable with adding new fields of information to the  
application, but want to make sure I wouldn't be duplicating effort.

Does this make some sense?

Tyler

On 4-Mar-09, at 1:42 PM, Thierry Badard wrote:

> Tyler Mitchell (OSGeo) a écrit :
>> I have went through all the articles and ensured that they now  
>> have reviewers (one is waiting for an update first).  I see only  
>> one editor had done this already - could the others let me know if  
>> the process is too confusing for you to select reviewers?  I've  
>> given them until 27-mar-09 to complete the reviews.
>> Reviewers - let me know if the process is unclear to you - you  
>> should have received an email inviting you to review.
>> Best wishes,
>> Tyler
>
> Hi Tyler and others,
>
> The process is fine for me. I have received the review request. I  
> have accepted it (an email was sent to the editor) and I have  
> downloaded the paper. All works fine and is relatively simple and  
> easy.
>
> Nevertheless, I have a question ... Is there a document (I do not  
> succed in finding such a document yet) that specifies what kind of  
> review is expected? At present, the review form is composed of only  
> two fields that enable the submission of comments both to the  
> authors and to the editor but nothing specifies precisely which  
> aspects of the paper must be assessed. I am reviewer for several  
> international conferences and journals and the review criteria  
> generally differ from one journal to another, from one conference  
> to another. So I am wondering what are the points we have to assess  
> for the OSGeo Journal. Do we have to produce a deep scientific  
> evaluation of the paper or only provide the authors with some  
> general comments and advices to strenghten their paper so that they  
> submit a final version which is globally acceptable for publication  
> in the Journal?
>
> I am wondering if the set up of an enhanced version of the review  
> form or the specification of commonly accepted criteria could help  
> in this task? For instance, for some journals or conference, we  
> used to assess the following points:
>
> - Scientific or technical quality
> - Evaluation of work impact and contribution
> - Originality and novelty of the subject
> - Meaningful objectives or hypotheses presented
> - Relevance to the topics of interest of the journal
> - Title is accurate and concise
> - Paper is clear and concise
> - Introduction gives overview of problem in context
> - Objectives are clearly stated
> - Conclusions are clearly stated
> - References are complete and accurate
> - Figures / captions / tables are of good quality and complete
> - English quality
>
> Each point is not necessarly relevant for the OSGeo Journal and  
> some are maybe lacking but this list could be a first proposal to  
> refine. Each point could be evaluated by a 1 to 5 mark (1= poor, 5  
> = excellent), hence comments provided to the authors must detail  
> the reasons of each mark and clearly explain the weakness of the  
> paper and ways of improvment. I think it will help in structuring  
> the review and help in reviewing/assessing the different papers in  
> an equal manner among all the reviewers.
>
> With the overall recommendation, I will also be interested in  
> adding a field wich allows to specify the deegree of confidence the  
> reviewer has in his/her assessment. It should help the editor in  
> processing reviews where two or more reviewers are contradictory.
>
> My 2 cents.
>
> Th.
>
> -- 
> Prof. Thierry Badard, Ph.D.
> ____________________________________________________________
>
> Professeur au Département des sciences géomatiques
> (http://www.scg.ulaval.ca)
> Chercheur régulier au Centre de Recherche en Géomatique
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> industrielle en base de données géospatiales décisionnelles
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> (http://standards.scg.ulaval.ca)
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> (http://oxygene-project.sourceforge.net &
>  http://www.geokettle.org)
> Membre votant de la fondation OSGeo
> (http://www.osgeo.org)
>
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Tyler Mitchell
Executive Director
Open Source Geospatial Foundation
tmitchell at osgeo.org
P: +1-250-277-1621
M: +1-250-303-1831