ACM Transactions on Asian Language Information Processing
Papers must be of high quality and fall within the scope of the journal. There are four main ingredients to an acceptable paper:
Few papers excel in all of these, but a substandard level in any of the four ingredients is sufficient ground for rejection. Many papers require substantial revisions before acceptance, and reviewers should not hesitate to recommend that a paper be rejected pending changes that are required for completeness, correctness, or to substantially improve clarity. For the reviewers, all items in the Review Form should be carefully considered. The most important elements of the review are the Recommendation and the Detailed Evaluation.
Rarely do all reviewers agree on a submission, so the detailed evaluation of the merits and deficiencies of a paper is needed. If you like the paper immensely, do not assume other reviewers will. Describe in detail what you think is important about it, how it will contribute to theory or practice. If you are sure the paper should be rejected, you should explain why, politely but in detail, because other reviewers may recommend acceptance. Often, first submissions receive a Revise and Resubmit recommendation; for the authors of these papers, your detailed points will be of tremendous use in guiding the revision of their work.
The tone of your review is very important to our effort to create a community of scholars and practitioners. When you write an anonymous review, you are acting as a representative of the information processing professional field. It is always possible to be constructive and firm without being hostile. Keep in mind that often the problem could be primarily in communication. Even in the worst case, where the work cannot be salvaged, one can explain how better to design related research.
Last update: May 4, 2000.