Pains and Gains of Peer-Reviewing in Software Engineering (2)

Abstract

The standard approach for evaluating scientific contributions by software engineering venues is peer-reviewing. Papers submitted for consideration by a venue are sent to peers (i.e., expert colleagues in the field), who carefully read them and provide corresponding evaluation reports, i.e., the peer reviews. Peer-reviewing comes in various alternative forms, as discussed in the teaser column of this series [1]. The teaser also pointed out some questions currently motivating discussion within the software engineering community: Which is the "best" among currently adopted peer-reviewing alternatives? Would it be better to have zero-blind, single-blind, or double-blind reviews? How many, and which stages should be involved in the process of peer-reviewing? Are currently adopted peer-reviewing processes sustainable in the long run? These are just a few examples of questions setting up the discussion, with many other questions outside there and yet to come.