SATNAC 2009 Review Process
The Review Process was undertaken by at least
three experienced and well respected individuals. In the blind peer-review
process papers were scrutinised by a panel of South African reviewers,
consisting of mainly respected academics as well as five International experts.
The reviewers were asked to provide specific feedback, both positive and
negative, to the authors. This was the only information from the review given
to authors; all other information was kept confidential.
A formal 'Call for Papers' was issued on 16
February 2009, inviting anyone interested in making a contribution towards the
conference by submitting a paper by 10 May 2009, in categories as specified by
the Organizing Committee. Authors uploaded their papers onto a database and
papers were assigned to the review panel in the field to judge on the possible
acceptability of the submission based upon the scope and depth of the subject matter
to the conference as a whole with the request that the papers should be
reviewed and judged according to a number of criteria.
Reviewers were asked to use a 5 point scale to rate the following
criteria:
- Originality
- References
- Technical Quality
- Presentation style
- Relevance
Reviewers were also asked to give an Overall
Rating and had to qualify their rating by providing a rationale for the Overall
Rating given. This was followed by the Reviewer Comments that would assist the
authors in improving and correcting their papers. Reviewers were asked to be as
comprehensive as possible in this section.
The Reviewers submitted their scoring and
comments onto the database and the Technical Programme Committee drew reports
when required and aggregated the individual scores. Only papers with a combined
value above a certain threshold were accepted. Every paper was reviewed a
minimum three times and the average number of reviews per submission was 4.7
times. Prior to the review process every paper was submitted to an online
plagiarism database and 4 submissions failed and were thus not considered for
the conference.
The reviewers' comments were forwarded to the
author/s with the request to submit a final revised version of the paper by 21
July 2009. Only those papers which were of an acceptable quality as recommended
by the Reviewers are included in the Conference Proceedings as Full Reviewed
Papers.
The review process used is based on what is considered the international
de facto standard for blind paper reviews.
Two page Work-in-Progress papers were also
invited but were not reviewed as rigorously and several were accepted for oral
presentations and some for poster session presentations, although the poster
session papers do not form part of the official conference proceedings.
David Browne
Chairman
Technical Programme Committee
SATNAC 2009