Submitted proposals to NIME have been through a peer review process, where 3 international experts have evaluated the submission. The numerical marks, together with the written comments, have formed the basis from which the programme committees have made their decisions on acceptance/rejection. The following numerical marks have been used:

Overall evaluation:

• 3 strong accept
• 2 accept
• 1 weak accept
• 0 borderline paper
• -1 weak reject
• -2 reject
• -3 strong reject

Reviewer’s confidence:

• 4 expert
• 3 high
• 2 medium
• 1 low
• 0 null

And this has been followed by some additional scores:

 

Originality of submission:

• 3 original
• 2 I don’t know
• 1 not original

Relevance to NIME:

• 3 relevant
• 2 I don’t know
• 1 not relevant

Submission category:

• 3 appropriate
• 2 I don’t know
• 1 should be changed

The following guidelines were sent out to the reviewers:

 

 

NIME 2011: REVIEWING GUIDELINES

This guide explains what you need to do in order to assist the chairs in selecting the best submissions. It also addresses the equally important task of providing helpful comments to the submitters.

 

There will be four main evaluation criteria, which will be described in the following sections:

• Overall quality of submission
• Originality
• Relevance to NIME
• Correct submission category

QUALITY: The most important evaluation criterion is the overall quality of the submission. In addition to the score, please summarize your main points so that the panel members will understand your argument quickly. Use the remainder of the review to expand on the summary’s main points and mention other matters.

 

Review criteria include the contribution’s significance, benefit, validity and originality. You do not have to cover every one of these, but avoid devoting the whole review to just one issue. The score should be justified by an explanation of the major strengths/weaknesses of the proposal. While it is important to point out weaknesses and validity issues, it is equally important to identify the contribution of a submission. Ultimately a submission’s acceptance depends on its contribution, not perfection.

Keep in mind that demonstration papers are allowed to be less formal than long/short papers, and have to be reviewed on the potential for a good hands-on experience. However, accepted demonstration papers will be included in the proceedings, and as such they must adhere to the required format.

ORIGINALITY: Please indicate any relevant past work (by the authors themselves or others) against which the submitted work can be judged, whether or not the proposers have cited/mentioned it. Remember that the NIME conference will not publish papers that have been published (or submitted to be published) elsewhere. We also prefer to present artistic works that have not been presented elsewhere, but are not as strict here as for the paper proposals.

RELEVANCE: Many excellent submissions may not be of direct relevance to NIME. Please indicate whether this is the case, and argue for or against an inclusion in the NIME programme.

CATEGORY: You are asked to specify the presentation format you feel is most appropriate for the submission. A paper submitted for oral presentation may be moved to the poster programme. A concert hall performance may be moved to a club venue. The chairs will evaluate your recommendations when making the final programming decisions.

 

The importance of your review:

Please keep in mind that your review is not just a vote for whether a proposal will be accepted or not. In some cases there will be wide divergence amongst reviewers’ numerical ratings of the proposal. In these cases your argument, if clearly and succinctly stated, can ultimately have more influence than the rating alone. So your review need not be of great length, but it has to have a rationale.

You should also think about the review as valuable feedback to a colleague. The feedback will help improve the current submission and also be an inspiration for future work in this area. Please therefore write your review in a polite, temperate language: However much you may like or dislike the proposal, try to articulate any criticism in a manner helpful to the proposer(s) and informative to the chairs.

 

Meeting the Deadline:

The reviewing and selection of NIME submissions take place against very tight deadlines. After all the reviews are submitted the chairs must review them and summarize their overall recommendations. If reviews are delayed, the chairs won’t have sufficient information to make a decision. If you cannot complete a thoughtful review by the review deadline, please contact the chairs as soon as possible.

The tight deadlines of the conference rule out any possibility of checking whether authors make changes demanded by the reviewers. Therefore the decision on whether or not to accept must be made on the basis of what the authors submit for review. Please do recommend improvements, but do not require acceptance to be dependent on these changes to be made.