Check your papers for conflicts
As soon as you get your reviewing assignment, please download your papers and go through them to make sure that there is no obvious conflict with you (e.g., a paper authored by your recent collaborator from a different institution). If you feel you are in conflict with a paper, please let the program chairs know right away.
What to look for
Look for what’s good or stimulating in the paper. Minor flaws can be corrected and shouldn’t be a reason to reject a paper. We recommend that you embrace novel, brave concepts, even if they have not been tested on many datasets. For example, the fact that a proposed method does not exceed the state of the art accuracy on an existing benchmark dataset is not grounds for rejection by itself. Acceptance and rejection decisions should not be determined solely by the method’s raw performance. Rather, it is important to weigh both the novelty and potential impact of the work alongside the reported performance. Each paper that is accepted should be technically sound and make a contribution to the field.
Blind reviews
Authors were asked to take reasonable efforts to hide their identities, including not listing their names or affiliations and omitting acknowledgments. This information will of course be included in the published version. Reviewers should also make all efforts to keep their identity invisible to the authors. For example, don’t give away your identity by asking the authors to cite several of your own papers.
An important general guideline is to make every effort to treat papers fairly whether or not they know (or suspect) who wrote them. Reviewers should not search for the authors of a paper, and complain that the paper is not anonymous if they happen to find them.
In line with common practice in the community, ArXiv papers are not considered prior work since they have not been peer reviewed. Therefore, you should review your PSIVT 2019 papers independently as if the ArXiv papers didn’t exist. Citations to these papers are not required and failing to cite or beat performance of arXiv papers are not grounds for rejection.
Be specific
Please be specific and detailed in your reviews. In the discussion of related work and references, simply saying “this is well known?or “this has been common practice in the industry for years?is not sufficient: cite specific publications, including books, or public disclosures of techniques. Similarly, claims in a review that the submitted work “has been done before?must be backed up with specific references and an explanation of how closely they are related. At the same time, for a positive review, be sure to summarize what novel aspects are most interesting in the strengths. Be specific when you suggest that the writing needs to be improved. If there is a particular section that is unclear, point it out and give suggestions for how it can be clarified. If you think the paper is out of scope for PSIVT’s subject areas, clearly explain why in the review. Then suggest other publication possibilities (journals, conferences, workshops) that would be a better match for the paper.
Be professional
Belittling or sarcastic comments have no place in the reviewing process. The most valuable comments in a review are those that help the authors understand the shortcomings of their work and how they might improve it. Write a courteous, informative, incisive, and helpful review that you would be proud to add your name to (were it not anonymous). Avoid referring to the authors by using the phrase “you? These phrases should be replaced by “the authors?or “the paper? Referring to the authors as “you?can be perceived as being confrontational, even though you do not mean it this way.
Writing technical reviews
We volunteer our time by reviewing papers that are written by other researchers in our field. We recommend that you approach your reviews in this spirit of volunteerism. Your reviews make you a gatekeeper in helping decide which papers are ready for publication. Just as important, however, is to provide feedback to the authors so that they may improve their work. Try to write your review in a way that the authors can benefit from. We suggest reading a paper and then thinking about it over the course of several days before you write your review. Please keep in mind that short reviews are unhelpful to authors, other reviewers, and chairs. If you have agreed to review a paper, you should take enough time to write a thoughtful and detailed review.
The tone of your review is also important. A harshly written review will be disregarded by the authors, regardless of whether your criticisms are true. If you take care, it is always possible to word your review diplomatically while staying true to your thoughts about the paper. Put yourself in the mindset of writing to someone you wish to help, such as a respected colleague who wants your opinion on a concept or a project.
Your main critique of the paper should be written in terms of a list of strengths and weaknesses of the paper. Use bullet points here, and explain your arguments. Your discussion, sometimes more than your score, will help the authors, fellow reviewers, and chairs understand the basis of your opinions, so please be thorough. Your reviews will be returned to the authors, so you should include specific feedback on ways the authors can improve their papers.
Handling papers not in your specific area
PSIVT involves the very broad topic of image and video technology. Paper assignments are done by the chairs who rely on their knowledge of your work. It is very likely you will be assigned a paper that may be slightly out of your specific research area. In such cases, we ask that you do the best you can to review the paper. We trust your ability to distinguish between good papers and those that are not yet ready for acceptance.
When you are done
Submissions should be treated as confidential. When you have finished with your review, you should destroy any paper manuscript and/or supporting material you received.