A message from a tired reviewer...
I am drowning in reviews, and many of us are...
This year I started to keep all my reviews in a folder. Today is the 70th day of the year, and I have already delivered 30 reviews in 2024. This makes one review every 2.33 days. Considering 2.33 pages per review, this sums up to writing a complete review page every single day of the year (including weekends)!
And the ICSE reviews haven't even started yet ...
I enjoy reviewing and discussing reviews with the community, especially all the learning involved in this process. I am also grateful for being invited to so many committees. However, I need time to support my students better and to write my own research; I will have to reduce this review workload.
Currently, I review one journal paper monthly and have been part of committees (or sub-committees) at the following conferences:
ACM-SAC, CAIN, CIbSE, ICSE, ICSE-SEIP, ICSME, EASE, ESEM, PROFES, QUATIC, RE, REFSQ, SANER, SBES (Brazil), SBQS (Brazil), SEAA, SWQD, WSESE@ICSE, ...
Please don't take it personally if I do not accept an invitation of yours from now on; most of the invitations are from close friends within the community, but unfortunately, I still will probably not be able to accept them.
For conferences, I will have to focus on the main global and local ones (for me): ICSE and SBES (Brazil - my local community), and the ones closest to my main subareas of interest: CAIN, EASE, and ESEM. This already makes five conferences, which is fine for me (and more than compatible with the reviews I get for my submissions).
For journals, I will continue reviewing one per month and only for the following: EMSE, IST, JSS, TOSEM, and TSE. This also makes a list of five journals, which I consider enough (those are also the ones I target for publishing).
For Ph.D. assessment boards, I will only accept invitations for research closely related to mine (and that at least cites mine). I have been part of 36 Ph.D. assessment boards all over the world, and I only finished supervising 3 Ph.D. students so far. As with conferences, I currently give the community much more than I ask back.
Furthermore, I will not accept any additional conference organization role until ICSE 2026. I will, of course, deliver co-chairing ISERN 2024 and the EMSE track of QUATIC 2024 (honored to serve both). But from there on, in terms of organization, my complete focus will be on delivering the community the best experience possible at ICSE 2026 in Rio.
Don't get me wrong, I served several conferences on all imaginable organizational roles. I also reviewed a lot for all kinds of workshops and smaller conferences over the years, and I am aware of their importance. But, as I made it to the world's main conference committees within my area (for which I am grateful), I will focus on contributing where I believe to serve best and open space for new members to follow their path.
This reorganization had to be done to protect the progress of my own research group and to allow maintaining healthy relationships with friends and family.
Any thoughts or suggestions on this post are, of course, welcome.
Thank you all for understanding!
#reviewer #science #softwareengineering #peerreview #toughdecisions