I did some corrections/changes that were requested by the reviewers for a paper that we submitted to Chemeca 2008, which will be held in Newcastle, just north of Sydney. They were 'peer' reviewed, in the sense that other authors who also submitted papers were the peers, which, unlike journal articles, these authors are often other students and researchers who, quite frankly in my opinion, suck at their own work, let alone reviewing others. Journal peer reviewing is typically done by experts/known researchers/respected academics who know what they are doing, know what they are reading, and certainly know what to look for and critique in a paper.
Why am I saying this? Well, each paper gets reviewed by two people, and their comments and recommendations are returned to the organiser/editor before it is passed back to the author. In this papers reviews, one was quite good in terms of asking relevant issues and asking for some minor changes such as captioning, and just a little clarification of something that was a little vague, something that I do admit to. The second reviewer just was fairly clueless. The page limit was supposed to be eight pages. Our paper was already twelve pages. This is actually fairly common. However, they asked us to include a schematic of the spray dryer, which, for anyone who works in the area, or knows about the topic, is not required. They then also asked us for dimensions of the spray dryer, when we were modelling a simulation, i.e. the dimensions were not relevant since we can change them to whatever we wanted. They then also asked us to include a diagram indicating the direction and change in the solids/mass flow. Unecessary once again because it is not relevant to the work being presented. In addition to this, they asked for explanation of a concept that we had done in previous work, which was adequately referenced. Their comment included a statement that said the paper should be self-sufficient, to be more readable by a general audience.
I'm sorry to say, you really have no clue dear reviewer because if all journal and conference articles were written for a general audience, we would never have enough space or time to write it, print it, publish it or present it all. For my papers to be self-sufficient, then does that mean I need to incude a copy of my thesis, all 214 pages of it? To say that is rediculous, and defeats the point of having references, which for those who are not familiar with the background content and material of the work, the onus is upon them to find the references and read through them. There is an introduction to each paper, and this introduction provides sufficient background information for someone who is interested. If you are interested but can't understand the introduction, then it means you're looking beyond your knowledge and should go back a little to the basics by reading the literature referenced. Then come back. That is why research students have to do literature reviews, so they understand the field they are working in, and can contribute in a positive forward manner.
Honestly, I wish I could read the drivel you wrote as your submission to this conference. The last time I went to Chemeca was in 2005, and I peer reviewed two papers for that. Both were quite terrible, and one of them was in fact so bad that my supervisor advised the organiser it be rejected because the content was pointless (co-authored paper we submitted, so we both had to 'review' these papers). Get up to scratch people, produce work that has meaning. Learn how to write and present it. There is no point in doing great work, but having it knocked back because you can't communicate it to your audience. This is exactly why some uni's, including ours, run courses to teach people who are not good at writing these kinds of things, to write better. Go attend some, and also learn what a paper content should be.
/end rant.
Why am I saying this? Well, each paper gets reviewed by two people, and their comments and recommendations are returned to the organiser/editor before it is passed back to the author. In this papers reviews, one was quite good in terms of asking relevant issues and asking for some minor changes such as captioning, and just a little clarification of something that was a little vague, something that I do admit to. The second reviewer just was fairly clueless. The page limit was supposed to be eight pages. Our paper was already twelve pages. This is actually fairly common. However, they asked us to include a schematic of the spray dryer, which, for anyone who works in the area, or knows about the topic, is not required. They then also asked us for dimensions of the spray dryer, when we were modelling a simulation, i.e. the dimensions were not relevant since we can change them to whatever we wanted. They then also asked us to include a diagram indicating the direction and change in the solids/mass flow. Unecessary once again because it is not relevant to the work being presented. In addition to this, they asked for explanation of a concept that we had done in previous work, which was adequately referenced. Their comment included a statement that said the paper should be self-sufficient, to be more readable by a general audience.
I'm sorry to say, you really have no clue dear reviewer because if all journal and conference articles were written for a general audience, we would never have enough space or time to write it, print it, publish it or present it all. For my papers to be self-sufficient, then does that mean I need to incude a copy of my thesis, all 214 pages of it? To say that is rediculous, and defeats the point of having references, which for those who are not familiar with the background content and material of the work, the onus is upon them to find the references and read through them. There is an introduction to each paper, and this introduction provides sufficient background information for someone who is interested. If you are interested but can't understand the introduction, then it means you're looking beyond your knowledge and should go back a little to the basics by reading the literature referenced. Then come back. That is why research students have to do literature reviews, so they understand the field they are working in, and can contribute in a positive forward manner.
Honestly, I wish I could read the drivel you wrote as your submission to this conference. The last time I went to Chemeca was in 2005, and I peer reviewed two papers for that. Both were quite terrible, and one of them was in fact so bad that my supervisor advised the organiser it be rejected because the content was pointless (co-authored paper we submitted, so we both had to 'review' these papers). Get up to scratch people, produce work that has meaning. Learn how to write and present it. There is no point in doing great work, but having it knocked back because you can't communicate it to your audience. This is exactly why some uni's, including ours, run courses to teach people who are not good at writing these kinds of things, to write better. Go attend some, and also learn what a paper content should be.
/end rant.
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