DTRAP Reviewer Guidelines
A journal needs good reviewers to help us determine which of our submissions are the best fit for the journal. Thank you for agreeing to review for DTRAP.
If you are new to reviewing, this guide offers you guidance. It covers the review questions used specifically for DTRAP. However, you could also use the discussion in this guide if you choose to review for other journals. Journals are always looking for reviewers, and it is a good way to contribute to the field of Cybersecurity. (Another ACM journal in this field is ACM Transactions on Privacy and Security.)
These guidelines are not prescriptive. They are not a checklist on how to do a review but more of a general guide. If you are working on a review and you have a question that these guidelines do not answer, please contact the Associate Editor you are working with, or the Editors-in-Chief (EiCs).
First, reviewing is an opinion. DTRAP is asking you for your opinion on the paper you are reviewing. There Is not a right or wrong answer. We are asking you to read this paper and use your expertise to tell us your opinion of it. We want you also to tell the author your opinion of it. This should be respectful because it is not an adversarial process.
Second, we are asking you to help us find the papers that are the best fit for the journal. Not every paper submitted should be published in DTRAP. This does not mean there are bad papers, it just means that either they are not about Digital Threats or there is something wrong with the paper that cannot be fixed in a short time.
Third, reviews should be polite. This is not a forum for a personal attack, this is to allow you to tell the author what you like and do not like about the paper. Be helpful and kind in your reviews.
What Happens After You Complete a Review
First, once completed, the Associate Editor (AE) in charge of the paper takes your review and the reviews from two other people and uses them to determine what will happen with the paper. The AE takes all three decision recommendations under consideration, and then makes the final recommendation to the EiCs.
There are four decision options:
- Reject -- The paper Is not ready for publication and the AE does not think the problems with it can be fixed. It is not necessarily a bad paper, rather there are too many problems with the paper. It could also mean that it is not a good fit for DTRAP. As an extreme example, a paper on the threats of an abacus Is not a digital threat, so that would have to be rejected. (Normally such obvious mismatches would be rejected immediately before getting into the review workflow.)
- Major Revision -- The paper has some good ideas but needs to be fixed. It is possible that when the repairs are completed, the results may change. However, the underlying thesis of the paper will not.
- Minor Revision -- The paper is mostly in good shape, but there are a few things that could be repaired. No questions are raised on the validity of the paper, and when the repairs are made, the results will not change.
- Accept -- The paper needs no changes and is good in its current form.
The final decision is then left up to one of the two Editors-in-Chief.
Reviewing Mechanics
The first step should be to read the paper. Take notes as you do on things you find interesting and things that are concerning. Good questions to ask yourself are: Is this something you can use? What can you learn? What is missing that you would need to use this method? Is there other information missing from the paper?
There is no right or wrong here. You are looking for what concerns you or what interests you. This is information you can use when you are in the process of writing the review.
The DTRAP review form has several questions we would like you to answer. This is not an adversarial process: The author should be able to take your review comments and learn from them how to improve their own work. Good research can move the field forward, and you want to help them do the best research they can.
The review form questions (and what types of responses we are looking for) are:
1. What is the paper about?
This should be a short summary of the paper. Just a couple of sentences that show you read and understand it.
2. What does this paper contribute to the field of Digital Threats? What are the strengths of this paper?
Tell us what you learned from the paper, what you liked, what you took away from it. Details are important. The author should read this and know exactly what they did right in the paper.
3. How can the paper be improved? What are its weaknesses? How can it be strengthened?
Tell us what you did not like about the paper. How can it be improved? What is it lacking? When the author of the paper reads this, they should know what they missed in their research. If you can add citations, that is wonderful. Tell them about a paper they missed or information they lack. If they claim their method is novel yet you have seen it before, tell them that and also where they can read it.
4. Is this paper of potential interest to developers and engineers?DTRAP wants real world results that apply to more than just the laboratory. Does this paper give you something you can use outside the lab? If both the problem and the solution are in the lab only, then please select “no.”
5. What is your recommendation?As noted previously, the AE makes a decision recommendation to the EiCs based on the reviews. They will use what you think of the paper as part of the decision.
Look over what you wrote for the earlier questions. Take those answers and think about them. Yours is not the only review or decision, so do not think you might be the only reason a paper will not be accepted.
If the only way the problems you noted can be fixed is by completely redoing everything, then that paper needs a lot more work than a major revision. It needs to be redone and thus rejected.
6. Finally, we ask if you have any comments to the author.
This information is not required but it can be useful for the author. Is there something about the paper that struck you in particular? Is there something you can tell the author from your own experience that can help them? Think about how you would want to be told how to improve your research and write like that.
In general, be as specific as you can when you write your review. You want the author to read the review and think “Ah, I need to fix this” or “Oh, they liked that! Good!” You do not want to say “This Is not working” without telling the reviewer what “This” is.
Time Frame of Review
DTRAP is committed to publishing quality articles in the field of Digital Threats. To ensure the timely publication of acceptable manuscripts, we request that reviewers complete their reviews within two weeks of receiving a manuscript.
Reviewer Incentives
As an incentive to perform your review, ACM offers free membership to non-ACM members to those who perform three reviews or more (across the board for all ACM journals) within a one-year time frame.