Guide to Reviewers

ICOMS Asset Management Conference Sydney June 2009

INFORMATION FOR REVIEWERS

Thank you for agreeing to help review papers for ICOMS09. The committee is very appreciative of the contribution to the success of the Conference made by the judgement of its reviewers. If you have any queries after reading the instructions, please email us, or call the secretariat on 03 9830 4899.

Each paper will be reviewed by 3 independent persons and the amalgamated results used by the Technical Review Committee in making their decision as to whether a paper should be accepted.

Ethical aspects

Reviewers are not to forward the papers to any other person without the permission of the ICOMS08 technical committee or secretariat. If a Reviewer has a personal bias with respect to a paper she/he should not undertake the review. Names of reviewers, grades, specific comments and individual reviewer evaluations will remain confidential.

Operational Issues

Communication among Program Chairs, Program Committee members, Reviewers and authors will be effected by e-mail, whenever possible.

GUIDELINES FOR COMPLETING REVIEWS

Reviews are to be submitted online at: ICOMS section of www.amcouncil.com.au

Some suggestions on how to prepare a good paper should be considered when undertaking the review.

(A) Scoring of papers

Reviewers are requested to grade each paper by answering a number of questions relating to its:

Scope
Significance
Originality;
Quality;
Clarity.

For each question, the reviewer must select one of the following responses:

(a) Strongly agree

(b) Agree

(d) Somewhat disagree

(e) Disagree

(f) Strongly disagree

(g) Neither agree, nor disagree

These classifications should be interpreted as follows:

Strongly agree	The paper is outstanding in all aspects covered by this question, and/or substantially exceeds my expectations for this type of work.

Agree	The paper is very good in all (or outstanding in most) aspects covered by this question and/or exceeds my expectations for this type of work.

Somewhat agree	The paper is reasonable in most aspects covered by this question, does not have any obvious and related shortfalls and/or meets (but not exceeds) my expectations for this type of work.

Somewhat disagree	This paper has some minor shortfalls in aspects covered by this question that should be addressed and/or falls slightly short of my expectations for this type of work.

Disagree	This paper has some reasonably significant shortfalls in aspects covered by this question that should be addressed and/or falls short of my expectations for this type of work.

Strongly Disagree	This paper has very major, or a large number of, shortfalls in aspects covered by this question that must be rectified and/or falls significantly short of my expectations for this type of work.

Neither agree nor disagree	I do not have an opinion on this aspect of the paper.

(B) Additional Comments

Reviewer’s comments on the paper may be used by the Technical Committee to explain how individual reviewers interpreted and/or applied ratings.

Comments from all reviewers will be amalgamated and, if appropriate, sent back to authors as anonymous feedback. For accepted papers, comments help authors to prepare their presentations; for rejected papers they constitute relevant feedback to refine or redirect future work. It is also possible that authors be asked to make changes to their paper prior to final submission, as directed by the comments.

Reviewers should explicitly state if they wish that specific comments are not passed back to authors.

Reviewers are to select one of the following options:

(a) Accept as is

(b) Accept with minor revisions (detailed in the comments)

(d) Reject, due to significant deficiencies that cannot be easily rectified

(D) Award recommendation

This year, prizes will be awarded for the best conference paper. A reviewer’s YES/NO answer to this question will help define which papers are shortlisted for consideration by a common panel