- Jamie Callan. 2012. TOIS Reviewers: October 2009 To September 2012. Abstract: The articles published by ACM Transactions on Information Systems (TOIS) are selected through a peer-review process. Associate Editors on the editorial board recruit reviewers and manage the review process for each article. Reviewers read the article and write reviews that identify the problem that the article addresses, the new methods that are proposed, the quality of the experimental evaluation, and the novel intellectual contributions. Associate Editors contribute an additional review that summarizes the decision process. The quality of a scientific journal depends entirely on the quality of the reviewers and editorial board. It is essential that reviewers and editors be highly-skilled, rigorous, and thorough. However, the TOIS review process is also characterized by substantial mentoring and guidance. The typical TOIS article is revised twice prior to publication. Typically reviewers offer many suggestions about how an article can be strengthened, for example, broadening coverage of related work, adding experiments that address important related questions, narrowing claims, or improving writing quality. Perhaps the most important duty of an Associate Editor is to organize and synthesize the many and varied suggestions into a clear set of instructions about how to improve the article. The mentoring and guidance that our reviewers and editors provide is an important difference between the review processes of journals and conferences. We believe that it produces much stronger articles. The scholars listed below provided reviews to TOIS during the last three years. (Associate Editors are not included, although they occasionally provide reviews, too.) On behalf of the journal and the scientific communities that it serves, I thank them for their service to the journal. The journal would not exist without their effort and dedication. Reviewers with asterisks next to their names (e.g., “John Doe ***”) are noted for their reviewing excellence; the quality of their reviews was in the top 10% of all reviews received by the journal. Their contributions to the journal and the scientific community that it serves are especially noteworthy.
