Peer Review for Magazines: Reviewer Center

To guarantee fairness to the author, the reviewer for a paper submitted to the IEEE Computer Society should abide by a number of guidelines including, but not limited to, the following:

• Respond within the allotted time.
• Provide sound, constructive reviews.
• Assume that papers submitted for publication are not meant to be public.
• Do not use material from a paper you have refereed.
• Do not share material from a paper you have refereed with others.
• Do not distribute copies of a paper you have been asked to referee unless the material is already public.
• Tell the associate editor, guest editor, and editor in chief if there are any conflicts of interest involved in refereeing a paper.

DO

• Keep your review objective.
• Pay attention to organization and technical content by commenting on the technical significance and accuracy of the work.
• Identify and note the type of manuscript (research, tutorial, survey, or case study).
• Comment on the appropriateness of methods, analyses, results, and conclusions.
• Suggest specific improvements; identify specific areas that can be removed.
• Recognize that IEEE Software has a word limit of 4,700 words, including 200 words for each figure and table.
• Look at the references for appropriateness; IEEE Software generally accepts 10–15 maximum.
• Reject manuscripts that require extensive revision.
• Reject manuscripts with trivial or insignificant results and minor contributions to the subject area even if they are well written.

DON'T

• Review manuscripts you find personally objectionable.
• Review manuscripts that are not interesting to you.
• Correct grammar, spelling, and voice. Accepted articles will be edited.
• Identify yourself or your own work.
• Include personal comments and biases about the author and subject matter.
• Reject manuscripts that require simple reorganization.
• Reject large papers that try to do too much. Instead, point out which parts are most important and describe how to revise the manuscript to give it focus.

The keywords linked to each paper are taken from the ACM taxonomy. (This is an extended version of the ACM Computing Classification System; Copyright ©2003 ACM, used with permission.) Keywords should closely reflect the topic of the paper and optimally characterize it. They link papers to appropriate reviewers. You should add other keywords if you feel they help to further identify the paper's topic.

We encourage you to enter a minimum of two keywords that reflect your expertise when updating your User Information in ScholarOne Manuscripts. There is no upper limit.

Articles submitted to IEEE Software  should not exceed 4,700 words, including all text, the abstract, keywords, bibliography, biographies, and table text. The word count should include 200 words for each table and figure.

Thank you for your interest in becoming a reviewer. All article submissions to IEEE Software are peer-reviewed, so it is only through the efforts of volunteers like you that we are able to maintain the magazine's quality.

We assign five to seven reviewers per submission according to the article's topic. If you happen to be one of them, we will send you an email request. You are free to accept or decline any request. Usually, we expect you to finish the review within three weeks.

Please go to our online peer review system, ScholarOne Manuscripts, and check whether you already have an existing account with the IEEE Computer Society (because you have volunteered in some capacity in the past). If you have an account, please check that the information is up to date, especially that we have the correct keywords representing your expertise areas. This is how we match reviewers to submissions. If you do not have an account, please create one. We look forward to having you participate in IEEE Software's peer review process.

If you have any questions or problems with the system, please contact us at software@computer.org.

If the author provided a previously published conference paper, please check the submission to determine whether a sufficient amount of new material has been added to warrant publication in IEEE Software. New results are not required; however, the submission should contain expansions of key ideas, examples, elaborations, and so on, of the conference paper.

You may use the public comments section of the review form to address the author about his or her submission.

We hope that you'll be able to submit your review within the given time frame assigned by the publications coordinator (normally three weeks). The complete review process varies from four to six months, and your timely participation is integral to helping us meet our goals.

The peer review process allows IEEE Computer Society publications to continually present the highest-quality articles to its readers and maintain our reputation for quality and integrity. We appreciate your willingness to volunteer your time and expertise on behalf of IEEE Software.