Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!kth!draken!torkel
From: torkel@nada.kth.se (Torkel Franzen)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.prolog
Subject: Re: Referees
Message-ID: <848@draken.nada.kth.se>
Date: 15 Mar 89 17:48:23 GMT
References: <1199@cmx.npac.syr.edu>
Reply-To: torkel@sics.se (Torkel Franzen)
Organization: Swedish Institute of Computer Science
Lines: 25

In article <1199@cmx.npac.syr.edu> hamid@hilbert.logiclab.cis.syr.edu (Hamid Bacha) writes:

*   It is clear to me that the referee either did not bother reading the paper,
*   or did not understand it. ...
*   In light of this experience, I was wondering how many other people may have
*   been subject to this type of refereeing, and whether there is any mechanism
*   in place to weed out bad referees. 


  No doubt most people who have submitted a few papers to conferences
have had similar experiences. It is of course particularly galling
since you have no opportunity to rebut comments which you regard as
ill-conceived or incompetent. Given the flood of papers to conferences,
and the fact that it is often very hard work to make a fair evaluation of
a submitted paper, I think it's very unlikely that the situation will
change. We'll just have to grin and bear it when referees make stupid
comments and try to remember our reaction when we act as referees
ourselves.

  I do have one suggestion. It is customary for the author to be known to the
referee and the referee unknown to the author. I think it should really be
the other way around. The referee shouldn't be influenced by the name and
status of the author, and he should only make comments that he is prepared
to back up. Of course such a reversal of the current practice would no doubt
make it a great deal more difficult to find referees...