ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems

Downloading the Manuscript

• Click on the button to view, download or print the single PDF file that contains all of the documents submitted by the author(s) for review, including any cover letter.
  • At least one browser – Chrome – by default tries to display this PDF file in a browser window and sometimes reports difficulties (e.g., concerning fonts) that do not normally arise.

    In this case, please access the PDF file in some other way (e.g., by saving it to disk or using a different browser).

• Using the other buttons near the top of the main page is optional and probably not necessary, since all of the documents that you need to review are included in the main PDF file.
  • With the button, you can access HTML versions of the same documents, which may or may not be more convenient for on-screen reading.
  • : a list of links to any “supplementary files” that may have been submitted.
  • : a list of links to all of the original files that are contained in the PDF file (including the main document and any supplementary documents).
  • : A window with the abstract as plain text.
  • : Quick access to three search engines; maybe useful for checking for similar previous publications by the same authors.

(Optional:) Accessing a Previous Version of a Manuscript or Its Decision Letter

(These points apply only if the manuscript is a new version of a previously reviewed paper – a fact which would be pointed out in the reviewing invitation that you received.)

• First, note that you will probably not need to access the previous version or the corresponding decision letter; authors of a new version have been instructed to prepare the new version in such a way that it includes all of the necessary information:

  The cover letter for the new version is supposed to explain precisely, for each relevant recommendation by the editors and the reviewers concerning the previous version, how they changed the manuscript and where the changes are to be found in the new version.

• If for some reason you would nonetheless like to consult the previous version or its decision letter, you can access them as follows:
  1. Click on the tab to access a different panel.
  2. In the section at the bottom, there are two relevant links concerning the previous version:
     • Via , you can access the previous version in a PDF file. (The warning in the previous section about the Chrome browser applies here as well.)
     • Via , you can see the editorial decision letter for that version as plain text.
     • (The part labeled is irrelevant for TiiS manuscripts, since TiiS authors are instructed to write their response in the cover letter that accompanies the new version.)

Preparing to Write the Review

Practical Considerations

• It is best to write your review in an editor or word processor (partly to avoid the danger of losing work by inadvertently navigating away from this web page).
• Please use only unformatted text (i.e., without things like italics, bolding, or bulleted lists) that can be pasted straightforwardly into the field , where you will enter the review when it is finished.
• You can assume that the system will leave line breaks and blank space as they are when you paste the review into the system’s form.

  In particular, it doesn’t matter whether or not there are line breaks within paragraphs, since in both cases the result is handled adequately.

Hints Concerning the Content of the Review

• In general, feel free to express your evaluation of the submission in whatever way seems most natural and effective to you, making use of your expertise in the subject area and of your experience as a reviewer.
• Even if you think the paper is great and should be accepted, please provide enough information and assessments to assure the editors that the paper meets traditionally high ACM journal standards.
• If you believe that changes are required before the paper can be accepted, please describe these in enough detail so that the authors will be able to follow up on your suggestions.
• If you wonder whether the paper is sufficiently relevant to ACM TiiS – or, if it was submitted for a special issue, to the special issue – please note the following points:
  • Before any TiiS submission is sent for review, the editors-in-chief and the associate editor(s) have checked to make sure that it appears to fulfill the basic relevance criteria.
  • If you perceive a relevance problem that might have been overlooked by the editors, please refer to the pages Research Areas and Perspectives on the journal’s website for a characterization of the scope of the journal – or, in the case of a special issue, to the description of the special issue on the page Special Issues – when explaining the problem in your review. You can also write directly to the editors-in-chief or to the responsible associate editor (from whom you received the reviewing invitation) asking for advice before continuing with your review.
• Please don’t spend your valuable time listing typing and editing errors that can be recognized without your specialized expertise.
  • If and when the submission is accepted, the authors will be asked to check the final version carefully for this type of problem; and there will be a subsequent phase of professional copy-editing.
  • On the other hand, it is helpful to point out mistakes like errors in equations if others might lack the knowledge required to notice them.

Optional Checklist

You may find it useful at some point to look through the following list of questions, as a sort of checklist to remind you of ideas that you might otherwise forget to mention. But it is not in general a good strategy to answer these questions one by one in the text of your review.

• Relevance and Nature of the Intended Contribution: What do the authors attempt to contribute with this submission? If the intended contribution were made successfully, would it represent a significant advance in research on interactive intelligent systems (as opposed, for example, to a minor incremental improvement)?
• Success of the Research: Is the work technically sound (e.g., in terms of algorithms, study design, and data analysis)? Were there significant technical aspects that you were for some reason not able to evaluate? (If so, please list these aspects, so that the associate editor can ensure that they have been checked adequately by other reviewers.) Does the paper make a convincing case for the stated conclusions (e.g., in the form of empirical results, formal proofs, or theoretical arguments)? Overall, how significant are the advances that are actually made by this work for research on interactive intelligent systems?
• Quality of the Presentation: Are there significant gaps in the discussion of relevant previous work? Do you see ways in which the clarity of the presentation (e.g., text, figures, and tables) should be improved?

Entering Your Review in the System

Please recommend here one of the five decision possible categories, whose explanations follow:

• No further revisions or review are required before the article appears in an upcoming issue of ACM TiiS.

• If the authors complete the set of “minor revisions” that have been listed explicitly as such by the associate editor, the associate editor will check the revisions. If they are judged to be adequate, the revised article will appear in an upcoming issue of TiiS.
• “Minor” revisions are changes to the manuscript (a) which can probably be completed by the authors with a few days of work and (b) whose success can be checked by the responsible associate editor without consultation of the paper’s reviewers.

• If the authors complete the set of “major revisions” that have been listed explicitly as such by the associate editor, one or more of the original reviewers will check the revisions and report their evaluations of them to the associate editor. If the revisions are judged to be adequate, the article will appear in an upcoming issue of TiiS.
• “Major revisions” are changes to the manuscript (a) which the associate editor believes the authors can probably complete but (b) which are too extensive or substantial to fall into the category of “minor revisions”.

• The authors are encouraged to submit a rewritten version of the manuscript, taking into account the critiques and suggestions of the reviewers and the associate editor. No specific conditions for acceptance of the rewritten submission are listed. If such a submission is made, it will be reviewed in its entirety. The set of reviewers will usually include some or all of the original reviewers.

• The associate editor and the editors-in-chief consider it very unlikely that even a thoroughly rewritten manuscript reporting on the same research could be acceptable for TiiS. The notification letter may include a recommendation about other possible publication venues.

• If the authors later submit a revision, in general a subset of the original reviewers will be asked to review the revision – a task that may or may not be considerably less time-consuming than the original review.
• By agreeing in advance to review a revision, you can help to streamline the management of the revision; but if the request happens to come at an especially bad time for you, you will still be able to decline it.
• You can also choose “No” or simply skip this question.

• You can type or paste in text here if some comment occurs to you that for some reason should not be sent to the authors (e.g., because it reveals your identity).
• But where there’s no need for confidentiality, it’s best to leave this field blank and put all of your comments in the next field.

• Here is where the main review that you have written should be pasted in, as plain text.
• Please check whether it looks as expected in the text box (e.g., making sure that no problems have been caused by special characters in your text).

  What you see is essentially how the review will look to the editors and authors who read it.

• When you are confident that nothing needs to be added or changed, click on the button at the bottom of the main page.

  From that point on, you will be able to view your review but not edit it – unless you write to the assistant to the editors-in-chief ([email protected]) asking to be able to edit it (for example, because the associate editor has asked the reviewers to consider adapting their reviews).