Guidelines for Paper Reviews
The paper reviews should be 1000 words – this is about 2 pages single-spaced in 12pt font – I don’t want anything longer. The important thing is that the review should describe the contributions of the paper and your critique of its contributions. Use your own words, and if you need to quote from the original paper, remember to quote it properly.
The following is the outline of the reviews that I expect. You may also find the following useful:
- [How to read a paper][https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1273445.1273458] by S. Keshav
- [Task of the referee][https://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/1989/CSD-89-511.pdf] by A. J. Smith
- [Efficient Reading of Papers in Science and Technology][https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~hgs/netbib/efficientReading.pdf] by M. J. Hanson and D. McNamee
- [How to review CS papers][https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2425676.2425681] by S. Kalwar
- Tips for writing technical papers by J. Widom
These may be dated, but they are still relevant.
Review Outline
Your review should contain the following (you do not need section headings for these):
- What is the problem? Clear statement of what the paper is solving.
- Why is this problem important? Why do we need to solve this problem? What practical need or a theoretical understanding need is it addressing?
- Is this a novel solution? Why does the world need another solution to this problem (unless it is the first one to solve it)?
- What are the technical challenges addressed and how do the authors solve them?
- What is your view on how effective and efficient the solution(s) are?
- What are 3-4 lines of research you think would be good topics to pursue as extensions to this work. Consider one or two short-term extensions (work that can be done in less than one year) and a few topics of longer term research.
- End the review with one question that you want to discuss after the paper presentation. You get to ask this question to start a discussion after the presentation.