Information for Reviewers

Information for Reviewers

A comprehensive guide to the peer-review process at Scalable Computing: Practice and Experience (SCPE).

A Message of Gratitude to Our Reviewers

Rigorous, impartial, and constructive peer review is the absolute cornerstone of high-quality academic publishing. At SCPE, we pride ourselves on maintaining an exceptionally stringent evaluation process to safeguard the integrity of the scientific record.

This enduring commitment to academic excellence would be fundamentally impossible without the dedication, profound expertise, and selfless contributions of our esteemed reviewers. We deeply appreciate your invaluable time and effort in shaping the future of scalable computing research.

1. Benefits & Recognition

To express our profound gratitude, SCPE provides the following recognitions to our active and dedicated reviewers:

  • APC Discount Vouchers: Reviewers who provide timely and comprehensive reports will be granted a discount voucher applicable to the Article Processing Charge (APC) of their future submissions.
  • Official Certificates: A formal Certificate of Reviewing can be downloaded directly from our system.
  • Web of Science Integration: We strongly encourage reviewers to track and verify their peer review records automatically via Web of Science (Publons) and ORCID.
  • Editorial Board Pathway: Exceptional reviewers who consistently provide high-quality reports are periodically invited to join our Editorial Board.

2. Ethics, Confidentiality & AI Policy

Reviewers must strictly adhere to the COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers.

  • Absolute Confidentiality: The manuscript is a privileged document. You must not disclose, share, or use the data/ideas contained within before publication.
  • Prohibition of AI Tools: Uploading the manuscript into generative AI tools (e.g., ChatGPT, Claude) to generate your review report is strictly prohibited, as it violates the authors' confidentiality and intellectual property rights.
  • Citation Manipulation: Reviewers must not request authors to cite their own papers (or those of their associates) simply to increase citation counts. Any suggested citations must be scientifically essential to the manuscript.

⚠️ Declaring Conflicts of Interest (COI)

You must immediately decline the invitation if you have a conflict of interest, including:

  • Working at the same institution as any of the authors.
  • Having co-authored a publication or collaborated on a grant with any of the authors within the past three years.
  • Having a direct financial or professional competition with the authors.

3. Invitations & Timeliness

Rapid publication relies on efficient peer review. When invited:

  • Respond Promptly: Please accept or decline within 3 days.
  • Suggest Alternatives: If declining, suggesting 1-2 qualified alternative experts is immensely helpful.
  • Submission Deadline: The standard timeframe to submit your report is 14 to 21 days. Please contact the editorial office immediately if an extension is needed.

4. General Evaluation Criteria (All Manuscripts)

Regardless of the article type, please assess the following universal aspects:

  • Scope & Relevance: Does the paper fall within the aims and scope of SCPE? Is the topic of current interest to the distributed and scalable computing community?
  • Originality & Significance: Is the research novel, original, and of high scientific impact?
  • Language & Clarity: Is the English language of sufficient quality to be clearly understood? Are concepts logically explained?
  • Formatting & Structure: Does the manuscript adhere to SCPE's structural and LaTeX/Word formatting guidelines?
  • Data Availability & Reproducibility: Has the author provided access to code, datasets, or adequate algorithmic details to allow the work to be reproduced?

5. Specific Evaluation Criteria by Article Type

SCPE accepts different types of articles. Please tailor your review according to the specific manuscript type you are evaluating:

A. Research Articles

  • Abstract: Is it concise (200-250 words) and fully self-contained? Does it clearly state the problem, methodology, and primary results without citing references?
  • Introduction: Is the research gap explicitly defined? Are the objectives and the study's main contributions clearly articulated?
  • Methodology / System Design: Are the proposed algorithms, architectures, or mathematical models mathematically rigorous and fully explained? Are all parameters clearly defined?
  • Experiments & Baselines: Is the experimental setup realistic? Are the chosen baseline comparisons state-of-the-art and fair? Are evaluation metrics appropriate?
  • Results & Discussion: Are figures and tables clear and strictly necessary? Does the discussion accurately interpret the results without overstating the claims?
  • Conclusions: Do the conclusions directly follow from the data? Are limitations and future directions acknowledged?

B. Review / Survey Papers

  • Comprehensiveness: Does the review cover a sufficiently broad and up-to-date spectrum of the literature? Are major paradigm shifts adequately addressed?
  • Taxonomy & Structure: Is the literature organized logically (e.g., providing a clear taxonomy or classification of existing approaches)?
  • Critical Analysis: Does the paper merely summarize existing work, or does it provide a critical evaluation (comparing pros and cons of different methods)?
  • Future Directions: Does the review successfully identify current research gaps and propose meaningful, visionary directions for future studies?

C. Scoping Reviews

  • Methodology Rigor: Did the authors follow a systematic framework for study selection (e.g., clearly defined search strings, inclusion/exclusion criteria, and databases used)?
  • PRISMA-ScR Compliance: Scoping reviews must adhere to the PRISMA-ScR guidelines. Have the authors provided a flow diagram detailing the study selection process?
  • Mapping the Field: Does the paper effectively map the extent, range, and nature of research activity in the targeted subfield?

6. Structuring Your Report

A constructive, detailed, and polite review report helps authors improve their work. We highly recommend structuring your report into three distinct sections:

1. Brief Summary

Provide a short paragraph summarizing the main goal of the paper, its core contributions, and your overall impression of its suitability for SCPE.

2. Major Comments

List significant flaws or areas requiring substantial revision. Be specific (e.g., "In Section 3.2, the comparison with [Reference X] is missing..."). If you believe the methodology is fundamentally flawed, state this clearly with evidence.

3. Minor Comments

Point out typographical errors, unclear phrasing, formatting issues, or poorly rendered figures and tables.

7. Final Recommendations

Based on your assessment, you will be asked to select one of the following recommendations in the OJS system:

  • Accept in Present Form: The paper is scientifically outstanding, flawlessly written, and requires no further changes. (Exceptionally rare for a first submission).
  • Accept after Minor Revisions: The core science is solid, but the paper requires stylistic adjustments, typo corrections, or minor clarifications.
  • Reconsider after Major Revisions: The topic is interesting and the methodology is promising, but the paper requires significant reworking, additional experiments, or extensive rewriting. You will typically be invited to re-evaluate the revised version.
  • Reject: The paper suffers from fundamental scientific flaws, lacks novelty, falls completely outside the scope of SCPE, or features exceptionally poor English writing.