Scientific Peer Reviewing

Peter Spyns is a civil servant working at the Flemish Department of Economy, Science and Innovation. Currently, his major task is to coordinate within the department international policy issues on science and innovation. As such he participates in many high level strategic advisory committees and policy groups at European and Belgian levels. Prior to his work at the Flemish administration, Peter’s career spanned about 20 years as a researcher in both academia and industry. During this period, he regularly acted as a reviewer for conferences and journals. Peter has also co-organized the OnTheMove Academy, a tutored workshop for PhD students, since 2004, which inspired him for this booklet. Maria-Esther Vidal is a Full Professor with the Computer Science Department at Universidad Simón Bolívar, Venezuela, where she leads the Semantic Web Group. She has mentored and advised seven Ph.D. students, more than a dozen of Masters, and more than 100 undergraduates, and has been awarded Best Professor of the Year in 2000, 2004, and 2012. She is part of the editorial board of several highly reputed journals, and her research results have been published in the most prestigious journals and conferences in artificial intelligence, data base systems, and bioinformatics.

"This is an excellent small volume to keep on one's desk and make available to graduate students, post-docs, and junior colleagues, who can get quite excited about being offered the chance to review but also may need guidance. It will also be of use to organizers of panels who request reviews. The points raised in this booklet can help in engaging a poor reviewer. I am sure I will be circulating my copy to many colleagues." (Sara Kalvala, Computing Reviews, computingreviews.com, October, 2016)