[AISWorld] Sound conference desk rejection policy

[John Artz]

Dear Colleagues,

I would like to argue both sides of this issue. On one hand, I think desk
rejections are not only the right but the responsibility of the editor. I
tend to readily accept review requests and have often sent the editor a
strongly worded note for wasting my time with a junk paper that should have
never gotten past the editor's desk. Getting too many junk papers makes a
reviewer less likely to accept the task of reviewing a paper thus making
reviewers even more scarce.

On the other hand, conferences can be a different story. I have sent papers
to "nurturing" conferences with ideas that are "not ready for prime time"
in order to get feedback on an idea in progress. I think we need outlets
like this for emerging ideas and budding researchers. Having said that, I
also think that the conference committee should decide whether a conference
is to be "prestigious" or "nurturing" and make sure everybody knows its
intent.

John






*John M. Artz, PhDWebpages: http://home.gwu.edu/~jartz
<http://home.gwu.edu/%7Ejartz>Email: jartz at gwu.edu <jartz at gwu.edu>*
*It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most
intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change. - Charles Darwin*

On Sun, Feb 26, 2017 at 2:29 PM, Manuel Mora <dr.manuel.mora.uaa at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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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> > AISWorld at lists.aisnet.org
> >
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