SysMus08 - Peer Review

This page contains information for authors and reviewers. It should enhance the level of transparency of the SysMus08 review procedure!

In the following, we summarized feedback given by members of the review committee and applicants after completing the review process. This feedback may be useful to future conference organizers:

In general, members of the review committee gave positive feedback. They particularly appreciated the idea of combining “expert” and “general” ratings, the transparency of the review process and the clear instructions given by the organizers.

It was suggested to include a rating about the value of the abstract in terms of its academic contribution.

The length of the abstract (500 words including references) was regarded as too long.

The review committee should decide on whether the proposal should be presented as talk or poster.

Once the review process is completed, it may be useful to all reviewers to have access to other reviews. First, to note if they have been too harsh in the review process, and second to know if other reviewers have done a better job (quality of the comments). This could be useful both for the quality of the reviews and that of the conference.

For non-speakers of English it may have been difficult to give tips on the English.

The reviewers could have been informed early in May when the actual review process would take place.

Here is some feedback from a colleague whose abstract was not accepted. He appreciated the fact that one can learn from this feedback process and that one gets to know why one has not been accepted:

„Mit Bedauern lese ich natürlich meine Ablehnung, aber ich wollte es doch nicht unlassen haben, mich für die Mühen zu bedanken. Es ist bestimmt für Sie (und alle Beteiligten) unglaublich viel Arbeit, die Evaluations alle separat zu verschicken; von anderen Kongressen weiß ich, dass man sich solche Arbeit nicht macht und der Bewerber dann schließlich nach einigen Wochen i.d.R. seine offizielle Ablehnung nur auf Nachfrage bekommt. Von daher ist das hier ein sehr schöner und vor allem auch konstruktiver Ablauf. Sie (und alle Organisatoren und Beteiligten) haben sich dadurch sehr verdient gemacht; wenn Sie sich und den (hoffentlich auch weiterhin noch folgenden) Kongress-Events einen Gefallen tun wollen, dann behalten Sie diesen Modus unbedingt bei, indem Sie jedem Bewerber so eine Chance geben, zu erkennen und zu lernen, warum es diesmal nicht geklappt hat. Denn ich muss sagen, dass ist das erste Mal bei einer Kongress-Bewerbung, dass ich wirklich sicher bin, dass es ein fairer und integrer Prozess gewesen ist. Von mir werden Sie auf jeden Fall zum nächsten Kongress wieder ein Paper erhalten.“

Abstract submissions will be subject to a double-blind peer-review procedure conducted entirely by international students representing the various subdisciplines of systematic musicology.

One of our aims as organizers of a students’ conference is to ensure and enhance the scholarly quality of students’ conference contributions by helping them to improve the quality of their abstracts and to prepare their talks or posters. The feedback delivered by the abstract reviewers should be regarded as constructive feedback and not as personal criticism, which should be also reflected in the type of comments given by the reviewers (preferably based on a mixture of honesty and tactfulness!).

What makes a good abstract? A review of the literature on this topic reveals that authors aiming at writing a good abstract should focus on two main things, namely contents and academic writing style. Indeed, the scientific work behind an abstract is essential; however, the text should also be well written since otherwise the researcher’s ideas may not be communicated to colleagues in the way it deserves. Therefore, a lack of writing skills may often lead to the rejection of an abstract. If you are unsure about your writing skills in English you may browse one of the many available books on academic writing for further advice and help.

We already provided students with useful guidelines about a possible way to structure their abstracts effectively. To repeat, the questions below refer to this structure and the main contents of each section of an abstract:

1. Expert rating by a representative of a subdiscipline of systematic musicology: Abstracts will be independently reviewed by two students specialized in the specific subfield of systematic musicology to which the abstract has been assigned. Reviewers will primarily focus on the academic quality of the research in their ratings.

2. General rating by any member of the review committee: Abstracts will be randomly assigned to two members of the review committee coming from various fields of systematic musicology and not from the specific subfield to which the abstract has been assigned. The focus of their ratings will be on the general impression of the abstract’s academic contents. Students from the field of systematic musicology should be able to judge abstracts coming from various subfields on a general basis.

The overall rating of an abstract will be based on the mean ratings of the two expert ratings (step 1) and the two general ratings (step 2) based on the academic contents. For calculating the average rating the expert rating is counted twice. However, ratings will only be one part of feedback. Reviewers may give written feedback to the author about the academic contents and English writing skills.

One of our aims is to help students who are non-native speakers of English to improve their academic writing skills if necessary. That is why we ask reviewers to comment on the English of the abstract and to suggest improvements. Most importantly, the level of English will not be explicitly rated in our conference. Since we do not want to discriminate against non-native speakers of English, the level of English is secondary in the ratings.

Talks and posters are treated as equal ways of presenting research at SysMus08 (i.e., poster presentations are not considered to be of lower academic quality). Therefore, the weighted mean rating of academic quality has to be above 2.00 for any abstract in order to receive the desired presentation format. The rating scale for academic quality used by the review committee is: 1 = poor, 2 = ok, 3 = good, 4 = excellent.

After the completion of the review procedure, authors will receive four feedback sheets (two expert ratings, two general ratings) and get to know there overall score with a notification of acceptance as oral or poster presentation or refusal.

Before reviewing the abstracts to which you have been assigned, please first read the instructions to authors in the call for paper, as well as the information above and the following instructions.

For your reviews, please use the appropriate forms in Word format (expert rating, general rating), fill them in English and attach them in pdf format to an email to manuela.marin_at_uni-graz.at. The forms (in Word format) will be sent to you in due course and can be found on the website under Downloads. Each abstract has a two-digit code. The documents should be saved in the following format: SysMus_expert_XX or SysMus_general_XX. The XX represents the code of the abstract.

Members of the Review Committee have also been invited to submit abstracts. These will be reviewed anonymously by other members of the same committee or by other scholars contacted by the organizing committee. Any abstract submitted by a member of the organizing committee will be processed confidentially by another member.

Why did you start this project?	Introduction and background
What did you try to do?	Aims and objectives
What did you do?	Methods (main contribution)
What did you find?	Results (main contribution)
What does it mean?	Conclusions and implications