Reviewer Guidelines
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Thank you for agreeing to be a reviewer for ECIS 2023. In this document, we outline the community expectations around being a reviewer. One of the most important points concerns the deadlines for the review process (see below).
You have been invited to be a reviewer because you are a member of the academic information systems community. Normally, you have a Ph.D. in Information Systems or a related field of relevance for the paper(s) you are reviewing.
Occasionally, you may be a ‘researcher-in-training’ and have not yet been awarded your Ph.D. In such cases, you would typically be in the last year of your Ph.D. program, and have substantial expertise in the domain of the paper, so that you are able to provide detailed feedback to the authors on their research.
If you have any questions about your suitability as a reviewer, please reach out to the Associate Editor (AE), or Track Chairs (TC), who invited you.
Reviewing for ECIS is a serious matter. Reviews determine, whether a research paper should be published, which in the long term has an impact on authors’ professional advancement in the field.
You should not review a paper if you have any conflict of interest with this paper (and/or its authors). Please check the papers that have been assigned to you within 2 days of the assignment and let the AE know if you have a potential conflict of interest with the paper(s) assigned to you.
While the review process is double-blind, and papers will not be assigned to reviewers from the same institution, you may recognize the work of a close colleague or a prior collaborator (someone you have worked with in the last 5 years). Again, you should bring the discovery of any potential conflict of interest to the attention of the AE who assigned the paper to you. The AE will then determine how best to proceed.
It is expected that all participants involved in the review process support the confidentiality of the submitted papers and their authors, the reviewers’ identities, and the entire review process. This also means that you cannot use any insights from the paper(s) you have reviewed until the (accepted) paper has been presented/published in the proceedings.
Although author details should not appear in the paper, occasionally this does happen. In such cases, let your AE know and they will determine how to proceed.
To ensure the integrity of the review process, please do not ‘reallocate’ the paper to a colleague. Instead, any such requests should be handled through the AE for the paper. They will be able to add the new person to the paper through the PCS system. This is also the process to be followed if you feel someone else would be a more appropriate reviewer for a paper you have been asked to review.
Please submit your reviews on time. The conference organization process is operating on a very tight schedule and we require (all of) your review(s) by January 15, 2023 the latest. Thank you in advance for submitting your review(s) by this date.
Each review should start with a short summary of the paper. Subsequently, the review should present the paper’s strengths (i.e., the positive aspects). However, the review should also provide constructive feedback that aids in improving the paper. The review should explain the identified issues of the paper (i.e., what the issues are and WHY they are an issue) and should make clear and constructive recommendations for improvement.
Please remember: reviewers make recommendations (e.g., “I recommend that this paper is accepted for the conference”) rather than the final decision, which is made by the program chairs in consultation with the track chairs.
When making your recommendation, please bear in mind the timelines involved: authors will receive notice of (conditional) acceptance of their papers by February 28, 2023, and will need to submit their final papers by March 30, 2023. Therefore, papers that need more substantial changes should not be recommended for acceptance.
Research-in-progress (RIP) papers may not have data to report on at the point of submission (as data collection is still in progress). As the research is in an earlier stage, you may wish to provide more developmental and constructive comments to RIP papers.
Remember, the review you write serves two purposes. First, it will help AEs and Track Chairs make decisions on which papers to include in the conference program; and second, it will provide feedback to the authors about what is good about the paper and areas where it might be improved.
As a consequence, we would expect reviews to be at least 500 words in length and written constructively. (If in doubt, think about how you would feel if you received your review). The review(s) you write will be read by the AEs, track chairs, and conference chairs; consequently, a hastily written review will send signals to the community you are a part of.
Please be developmental, constructive, and positive in your review(s). Keep in mind that we are reviewing papers, not authors, which you might want to reflect in the language you use (rather than “the authors do/are...”, why not say “the paper does/is...”). Also, remember that many Ph.D. candidates and other early-career scholars submit to ECIS. For some of them, your review may be the first feedback they receive on their work.
All papers submitted to ECIS need to contain original work and must not be published in or submitted to other conferences, workshops, books, or journals. Thus, neither plagiarism nor self-plagiarism is acceptable. All papers need to provide a substantial, novel contribution to the existing body of knowledge. Any signs of (self-)plagiarism need to be reported to the AEs who in turn should inform both the Track Chairs and the Program Chairs. Reports of potential (self-)plagiarism will be investigated.
If you have any questions or issues with the system, please reach out to the AE, or the Track Chairs, for help.
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The 31st European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS) | Kristiansand, Norway