SoCG'08 scoring instructions

24th Annual Symposium on Computational Geometry


Topics - Criteria
Instructions to sub-reviewers - Ethical Issues - Instructions to PC members

Topics of the conference

See the call for papers.

Criteria

When grading a paper, you must address the following (interrelated) issues. A paper with high grade should score high on several of the parameters below.
Note that these criteria apply to both theoretical or applied/engineering/experimental papers.

Relevance
In what respect is the paper relevant to computational geometry? Is it directly relevant for the design, use, analysis, or implementation of geometric algorithms? Or may it have indirect implications for the development or the theory of algorithms?

Foundational/conceptual contribution
Note things like a new model, new notion, new definition, new approach, novel implementation, novel application. Note the significance and reasons for this novelty (and note the absence of such a novelty!).

Technical development
Does the paper make

Relation to open problems
Does the paper solve completely/partially an open question? How important is this question? (central/important/interesting/legitimate/stupid). How much effort has been invested in solving it and by whom?

Social interest in paper
Is it potentially interesting to the whole community of computational geometry, to a major field (e.g. motion planning), to everyone in a restricted area (e.g. pseudotriangulations), or interesting only to the authors?

How will it contribute?
fertilization, satisfy curiosity, who knows?

Paper type
Is it a

Is the paper

Instructions to sub-reviewers

A PC member contacted you and asked you for a review. You must evaluate the paper and send to this PC member a short written report by e-mail, including a short summary, in a free text format no later than January 13, 2008.
You don't have to split your comments into comments for authors/comments for the PC. The PC is going to take care about feedback to authors. Still, you can write specific comments for the authors about mistakes or suggestions that would help them to improve their paper.

If you wish, but you don't have to, you may also suggest an overall grade (integer between -4 and 4 [-4=absolute reject, 4=enthusiastic accept] and a confidence level of your judgment on a scale between 1 and 3, as indicated below. You may also break down you evaluation by giving a score in each of the following categories:

Technical Strength:
This summarizes the technical contributions, as well as any issues about correctness.
Originality: Does the paper introduce a novel viewpoint or some new technique of general interest, or is it only an application of standard tools?
Presentation: How clearly is the paper written? (And does it promise to make a good talk?) Does it follow the submission quidelines?
Appropriateness: How interesting is the paper to the community? Is it within the scope of the conference?

Score ratings

Grade Interpretation
4 An enthusiastic accept. An excellent paper - advances the field in an important way - well written and makes it easy to understand what the significance of their result is. Everyone should definitely attend the talk. This should be among the top 10% of the papers accepted to the conference. I would fight strongly for this paper.
3 A solid contribution. I feel I learned something worthwhile from this paper. I would want to go to the talk. This paper should be in the top third of the papers in the conference.
2 This will be in the middle third of the papers at the conference. Not a stellar result, but clearly worth accepting.
1 A weak vote for acceptance. A reasonable contribution to an interesting problem - or maybe the contribution is good but the authors don't seem to understand what it is and/or express it well - or maybe it's a good paper, but the subject area is marginal for the conference.
0 Ambivalent. Probably publishable as a journal paper in a medium journal, but a bit too specialized or too incremental for SoCG. Or perhaps it has nice ideas but is too preliminary, or too poorly written.
-1
A competent paper, but not of sufficient interest/depth for SoCG'08. A weak to moderate vote for rejection, but I concede that other people see some merits in the paper.
-2
Too preliminary / badly-written / making-such-a-minor-improvement-on-such-an-esoteric-topic. I would fight to have this paper rejected from the conference.
-3
A poor paper, unsuitable for any journal.
-4
Absolute reject. Trivial and/or non-novel and/or incorrect and/or out of scope.

Confidence ratings

Grade Interpretation
4
Expert. Consider me an "expert" on this paper.  I understand it in detail. I know the field, and I am perfectly sure about my judgement; I have checked and understood all proofs.
3
High. I am fairly familiar with the area of this paper, and have read the paper closely enough to be reasonably confident of my judgment.
2
Medium. I have read the paper carefully and understood the main ideas, but I'm not very confident of my judgment on it.
1
Low. I am not an expert. My evaluation is that of an informed outsider. I have some idea of what this paper is about, but I'm not all that confident of my judgment on it.
0
Null. (to be avoided...!)

Ethical Issues

Submitted papers are confidential. We are not supposed to distribute them, or use them for our research. Similarly, your grades and the deliberations of the committee will be kept confidential.
Submissions should be judged solely on the basis of the submitted extended abstract.
You may have a personal bias on some papers. The reasons are many - personal/professional ties to authors, you or your student is just working on the same problem, etc. Only you can judge such a bias, and decide if you don't feel comfortable grading the paper. In this case, mention a conflict of interest to the PC.

Instructions to PC members

A PC member must carefully fill one review form for each paper that was assigned to him/her, and give it a score with a confidence rating.

(S)he may copy-paste into the reviewing system the written reviews (s)he gets from sub-reviewers, if any, together with their names.
Still, the scores and confidence level (s)he gives to a paper are his/her own scores and confidence level, and (s)he will have to give more details on his/her opinion whenever needed during the discussion phase.

For each submitted paper, one PC member will be in charge of writing the feedback to authors at the end of the review process.



Günter Rote is warmly acknowledged for sharing his SoCG'05 instructions, from which the present instructions are very largely inspired.


Monique Teillaud

socg08-pcchair@sophia.inria.fr