Guidelines for Associate Editors
As an Associate Editor (AE), you are responsible for reading the submission, assigning reviewers, evaluating the reviews and making a recommendation for the acceptance or rejection of the paper. The details of these processes are described below. AEs are anonymous to the authors, and get to view and make decisions about unpublished manuscripts. Please read the Guidelines for Reviewers, since the same basic ethics and guidelines apply also to AEs.
Quality and efficiency in reviewing is essential to the success of ToMPECS. To publish papers in a timely fashion we ask you to respond to all requests to assign reviewers and make recommendations as quickly as possible. Our standard invitation letter to reviewers asks them to return their reviews within Two Weeks. (Under certain circumstances it may be acceptable to agree a slightly longer timeframe with reviewers).
Quick Reject Policy
The Editors-in-Chief make the final Accept/Reject decision on all papers. Sometimes, the Editors-in-Chief reject papers without assigning AE's for the following reasons:
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topic clearly out of scope, irrelevant, or outdated
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work clearly does not meet sufficient standards of novelty or quality of presentation
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plagiarism, self-plagiarism, or simultaneous submission
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manuscript incomplete, overlength, or incorrectly formatted
As an AE assigned to a paper, you can also recommend rejection without further review for any of the above reasons, writing a justification based on your assessment of the paper. The EiCs will make the final decision based on your recommendation, and the authors have the right to appeal such decisions. Our aims in allowing AE's to make such recommendations is to increase quality and to reduce turnaround times and unnecessary work for reviewers. However, we ask you please not to abuse your anonymity as AE to reject papers for other reasons.
Assigning Reviewers
All AE activities take place through the Manuscript Central at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/tompecs.
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to assign reviewers:
in your 'Editor Center', click on 'New Manuscripts: Manage Referees and Make Decisions; in your list of assigned manuscripts, click on 'View Details' to view the submission or assign reviewers; Under 'Associate Editor Actions,' click on 'Assign or Remove Referee'; the right hand portion of the screen will allow you to search for referees you would like to invite; if a suitable referee is found (AEs may also be assigned), click on his/her name, opening a new window with an 'Assign Referee' button; then the main screen will show the referee, which may now be invited by clicking the 'Invite Referee' button; if the referee is not in our database, you may add the referee to the database by clicking 'Add New Referee'; a new window will allow you to fill in the referee details; finish by clicking on the 'Assign Referee' button, and then 'Invite Referee' on the main screen.
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to make a preliminary decision:
For each review you will receive an email notification; when all the reviews are completed, you may make your preliminary recommendation that will be sent to the Editors-in-Chief for approval (this decision should take into consideration your own opinion of the resource as well as the general consensus of the refereeing committee); under "Editor Actions," click on "Make Decisions," and then "Post Decision"; select your decision from the drop down menu; there are four options: please choose Accept only when the submission is perfect and there are no suggestions for improvement; use the Minor Revision option when you feel the resource should be accepted after slight revisions; Major Revision should be chosen when you feel the paper has real potential, but a large component should be redone and should go through another review process; use Reject when the resource does not meet the ACM ToMPECS publication standards; please edit the email for authors, entering your comments below the EiC text and saving; you may also post specific comments to the EiCs using the comment box.
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to handle a revised paper:
For a resubmission of a paper with "Minor Revisions", please check that the authors have completed the necessary corrections and make your decision as above; for a resubmission with "Major Revisions", the original reviewers will be automatically selected, so all you need to do is to invite some or all of them to review the revised paper, then proceed as above.
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For further instructions:
please refer to the ScholarOne tutorial for editors.