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Reviewer Guidelines

IJIS publishes original papers which contribute new results in areas of the computer science. Our primary requirement is that accepted papers make a significant contribution to our knowledge of Computer Science. In order to provide quality feedback to our authors, it is important that all reviewers keep the aims and objectives of IJIS in mind throughout the review process.

Timelines

It is important when invited to review a paper for IJIS that you not only reply quickly but you complete your review on time. IJIS has a policy of returning the reviews of referees to authors within two months of their papers being received and the receipt being acknowledged. To comply with this we ask that you respond to the request to act as a reviewer within 10 days, and to complete the entire review within 40 days.

Quality of Review

Besides being timely, reviews for IJIS should be of high quality. They should make clear to the author just what constitutes a contribution to the filed, where his or the paper succeeds in this and where it fall short. It is important in his respect that the authors feel they have really benefited from the reviews they receive from IJIS.

Some suggestions for reviewers for IJIS

Be constructive: Even if the paper is not good enough, it is still important that reviewers provide positive feedback, telling the author how the paper could be improved, not just where it falls short. If the problems cannot be rectified in the present paper, suggest how it can be done in further research, which could well be submitted to IJIS.

Be specific: It is essential that you tell authors exactly what they are doing right and precisely where they are going wrong, in your opinion. Typically, the more particular you can be, the more useful your advice will be. Typically, authors tell us they prefer feedback to be in the form of numbered paragraph, each covering a definite and different point.

Consider contribution: Whereas academic rigour and coherence are important, we like our reviewers at IJIS to asses the overall contribution the paper makes to the literature. At IJIS we want the papers we publish to be interesting, relevant and to advance our readers’ understanding of important issues in management. We want them to feel that reading a paper in IJIS is a worthwhile exercise, that doing has really extended or advanced what they know abut something important in management.

Remember you are not a copy editor: Occasionally at IJIS you will be asked to review a paper by an author whose first language is obviously not English. In these cases you to remind yourself that your job is not to improve grammar or spelling, but to comment on the ideas and arguments about management that are in the paper. At IJIS we have an editor who can improve the English of the authors, without altering the content of the paper at all. Leave it to her as much as possible.

Be consistent: IJIS requests that reviewers give feedback to authors in line with the reviewers’ recommendations to the editor. One of the worst errors from our point of view is for referees to make favourable comments to authors whilst advising against publication to the editor. This places the editor of IJIS in the difficult position of having to reject papers despite apparent positive reviews from the referee to the author.

IJIS’s policy of ‘double blind ‘reviewing means that neither the author nor referee know of the identity of each other. To make this effective, the referee should not discuss the paper or the fact they are referring it with anyone other than the editor until the paper has been accepted or rejected. Finally, please do not put recommendations on the review you intend for the author. These should be communicated only to the editor of IJIS, who is responsible for the final publication decision.