Your investment of time and expertise as reviewer of HKSRA conferences are highly appreciated.
Review Responsibilities & Ethics
When invited to review a paper, the reviewers are expected to respond the invitation in a timely manner.
The reviewers should keep all details of the peer review process confidential,and the manuscripts should not be viewed by anyone else except from the reviewer themselves.
If any conflict of interest is detected, it should be revealed to the editor timely. Also, the reviewer should not be inclined to those in favor of their interest.
The reviewers should reach out to the editors when there exists any confusion about the paper (e.g., some part of the paper is beyond their expertise).
The reviewers should reserve sufficient time for the peer-review process. They should reach out to the editors without delay when there’s problem submitting before deadline
Authors can lodge rebut on the peer-which can lead to second round review. A maximum of two rounds of peer review per manuscript is normally provided.
Editor will make the final decision of the acceptance or rejection of the paper after revision.
Peer Review Report
Peer review is deemed as an important skill and service to the scientific communities. Review report is the document written by the reviewers to reflect their objective comments and constructive suggestions. A well-organized review report is the guarantee of the quality of peer review. As peer reviewers, you will receive invitations to review papers of your research field. Once accepting the invitation, you are expected to provide good review which will help authors improve their work by revising according to the suggestions, and help the editor make the acceptance or rejection decision. The review requires not only expertise and knowledge in the field, but also the ability to give unbiased and constructive feedback.
In the review report feedbacked to the editor, reviewers should give a summary of the main strengths and issues of the paper, and give concise comments and suggestions on the content of the paper.
While reading through the paper, ask these questions to yourself:
1. Does the paper fit in area of research of the conference?
2. Does the paper introduce an idea that appears novel or might stimulate discussion of important issues or alternative points of view?
3. Does the paper have a considerable contribution to a certain area of research?
4. Does the paper have a logic structure?
5. Does the paper include an appropriate methodology with valid and reproducible data analysis?
Considerations regarding the presentation of the paper:
1. The title should clearly and concisely express the content of the paper.
2. The abstract should be well organized, coherent, and clearly written. The background, purpose, methods, and results of the research should be clearly summarized in the abstract.
3. The introduction should correctly highlight the current concerns in the area, specify the research objectives.
4. The methods, data, statistics used should be clearly interpreted and validated.
5. The results should be clearly presented, sufficiently avoiding misinterpretation, assumptions and speculations.
6. The conclusions should be correctly and logically explained, avoiding misinterpretation, too general or biased information.
7. The tables should be correctly named and numbered. The data presented in tables should be correctly valued and interpreted in the paper.
8. The graphs and figures should properly illustrate the discussed subject?
9. Do the graphs and figures correctly indicate the measuring units and the source. The graphs and figures should be correctly named and numbered.