[AISWorld] Sound conference desk rejection policy

[Manuel Mora]

Dear colleague Cecil Huang,
This is a great topic. My two cents contribution: 1) IT area has exploded
in topics and subtopics and there is a scarcity of reviewers; 2) asking to
authors from the same track for being reviewers plus final and fair
decision from track chair can help to cope with scarcity problem; and 3)
desk rejection is still valid for really low-quality papers that track
chair can identify and avoid wasted time from reviewers. Thanks, Manuel Mora
On Feb 26, 2017 1:05 PM, "Cecil Eng Huang Chua" <aeh.chua at auckland.ac.nz>
wrote:

> What's interesting about this post is that I have received several
> personal emails rather than posts to ISWorld.  As some people have
> explicitly asked me not to repost their mails, I won't do so.
>
>
> The correspondence I have received has been of the following forms:
>
>
> (1) Interesting question. Complex issue.
>
> (2)​ War stories of how some editor had to ask many people before someone
> would finally review for them.
>
> (3) Comments about how some people write a lot of papers, but won't review.
>
> (4) I used to oppose desk rejections until the day I became an editor.
>
> (5) The issue of trust- if you appoint editors you need to trust them to
> desk reject appropriately.
>
> (6) Recommendation that journals adopt fee-based submission policies and
> actually pay reviewers.
>
> (7) Requests for an update on the conversation.
>
>
> I do think we should bring the issue out in the open and discuss it.  It
> affects all of us, and a public discussion would better inform policy.
>
>
> Cecil Chua
>
>
> On Fri, Feb 24, 2017 at 1:37 PM -0500, "Cecil Eng Huang Chua" <
> aeh.chua at auckland.ac.nz<mailto:aeh.chua at auckland.ac.nz>> wrote:
>
>
> I would like to start a discussion on desk rejections at conferences.  I
> want to start this, because I am editing/have edited for two conferences
> now where the editor instructions were “no desk rejects.”  A desk rejection
> occurs when either the track chair or associate editor rejects a paper
> without sending it to reviewers.
>
> I suspect a proper policy is not “no desk rejects.”  It isn’t “give editor
> all the power to desk reject they want” either.  I am hoping that we will
> make some of the issues transparent so we can develop good policy.
>
> An argument in favor of desk rejection is the total uncompensated manpower
> required for conference reviewing.  The typical conference structure is
> track chair, associate editor, and two reviewers.  So, each fully reviewed
> paper receives 4 man-review units of effort.  If there are 50 papers per
> track (yes, some tracks have hundreds of papers- bear with me), that’s 200
> man-review units in each track.  If there are 15 tracks, that’s 3000
> man-review units.  At just 5 major conferences  (ICIS, AMCIS, ECIS, PACIS,
> ACIS), that’s 15000 man-review units, and we have more than just 5 major
> conferences.  Desk rejections can shave a lot of uncompensated man-review
> units from this.
>
> A counter argument is that one can get authors of a track to review for
> the track.  I would note that if the editor feels a paper is of desk
> rejection quality, that the authors may not be competent to review.
>
> An argument against desk rejection is conferences are about providing
> feedback to authors.  However, this requires uncompensated time from
> reviewers.  In many of our premier conferences, there’s a pre-submission
> game where the track chairs try to “reserve” as many reviewers/AEs as
> possible.  We wouldn’t have that game if there wasn’t a shortage of
> reliable reviewers.  Indeed, there probably aren’t more that 5000 active
> researchers in the IS field at any one time- see above 15000 man-review
> units.  Everyone gets involved in the reviews.  It is unfair to favor
> authors who benefit from reviews rather than reviewers who are harmed (by
> having to spend uncompensated time) when they have to do reviews.
>
> Frankly, our community seems to underappreciate reviewers.  For the above
> conservative 15000 man-review units, we maybe give 5 best reviewer awards,
> which are often paper certificates with no money attached.  Best paper
> authors receive shiny plaques and often a cheque.  We could argue reviewer
> competence is recognized because reviewers are invited to become track
> chairs and editors.  To this, I would note the pyramidal structure of
> conference/journal organization-many reviewers, few board positions and the
> fact that appointment to boards is not explicitly based on reviewing
> competence and is often based on getting papers accepted.  Also, it is not
> clear to me that being appointed to boards is necessarily a reward.
>
> So, that’s my discussion seed.  I’d like to hear your thoughts.
>
> Cecil Chua
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