ACM Transactions on Graphics

Thank you for agreeing to review a paper for ACM Transactions on Graphics. The editorial board of TOG is committed to publishing the most interesting and stimulating papers in computer graphics. We do this by reviewing papers with great care and expertise, and carrying out that reviewing and publishing efficiently and rapidly.

Efficient reviewing is essential to the success of TOG. To publish papers in a timely fashion, we allow 30 days from receipt of the paper to prepare a TOG review. It is important that you commit to this timeframe. Otherwise the entire publication pipeline begins to slow down.

Encourage diversity in our published papers and you will help make TOG interesting. We want to also encourage creative and imaginative papers, those that stimulate and provoke as well as enlighten. We will stand in the mainstream, but also welcome papers that are clever, or surprising, or present radical new directions for computer graphics.

Review compassionately and you can make the difference between a mediocre paper lost forever and one that is revised to publication quality and contributes to the field. Please write reviews that are meaningful for the author. Speak in particulars, not generalities. Never characterize the authors. Give constructive criticism when discussing a problem. If there are major flaws, identify them as clearly as possible.

Be positive in order to make the best impact; consider each paper in its best possible sense. Look for the most useful and interesting ideas. Try to make suggestions to the author that will make the paper as good as it can be, whether it is already wonderful or in great need of help.

Protect confidentiality

As a TOG reviewer, you have the responsibility to protect the confidentiality of the ideas represented in the submitted papers. TOG submissions are by their very nature not published documents. The work is considered new or proprietary by the authors; otherwise they would not have submitted it. Protection of the ideas in the paper you receive means:

• Do not show the paper to anyone else, including colleagues or students, unless you have asked them to write a review, or to help with your review.

• Do not show videos to non-reviewers.

• Do not use ideas from the paper to develop new ones, until the paper has been published.

Avoid conflict of interest

Even though you would, of course, act impartially on any paper, there should be absolutely no question about the impartiality of review. Thus, if you are assigned a paper where your review would create a possible conflict of interest, you should return the paper and not submit a review. Conflicts of interest include (but are not limited to) situations in which:

• You work at the same institution as one of the authors.

• You have been directly involved in the work and will be receiving credit in some way. If you're a member of the author's thesis committee, and the paper is about his or her thesis work, then you were involved.

• You suspect that others might see a conflict of interest in your involvement. For example, even though Microsoft Research in Seattle and Beijing are in some ways more distant than Berkeley and MIT, there is likely to be a perception that they are "both Microsoft", so folks from one should not review papers from the other.

• You have collaborated with one of the authors in the past three years (more or less). Collaboration is usually defined as having written a paper or grant proposal together, although you should use your judgment. For instance, being coauthors in either a course or survey paper generally should not in itself lead to a conflict of interest.

• You were the MS/PhD advisor of one of the authors or the MS/PhD advisee of one of the authors. Funding agencies typically consider advisees to represent a lifetime conflict of interest.

• You have unpublished work that would get scooped by the current submission because it tackles the same problem using a similar approach. At a minimum, such a cross-reviewing conflict should be declared to the editor in a private comment.

Remain anonymous

All reviewers are expected to maintain anonymity forever. In particular, it is never appropriate for a reviewer to reveal himself or herself to the authors of an accepted paper, as this could be perceived as an attempt to curry favor. Requesting citations primarily to one's own work may thwart anonymity, so should be carefully considered.

Be professional

Belittling or sarcastic comments may help display one's wit, but they are unnecessary in the reviewing process. The most valuable comments in a review are those that help the authors understand the shortcomings of their work and how they might improve it.

General ACM policies

For more information on specific topics, see the ACM publications policies.