Middleware Matters

Last week I had a total of around 20 papers to review for three different conferences. I had the fortune of reviewing some really good papers, but I also had to struggle through some pretty bad ones. I've been reviewing conference submissions, articles submitted to magazines, and book manuscripts for the past 15 years or so, and I've always wondered: what possesses people to submit horrible papers or manuscripts?

Don't submit your paper if:

• you can't organize your thoughts in writing
• you can't tell the reader what contribution you're hoping to make
• you haven't searched for and studied related work, or can't fairly compare your work to related efforts
• you can't detail your solution or list its pros and cons
• you haven't prototyped or implemented your work
• you can't meaningfully measure your prototype/implementation or analyze those measurements
• you can't be bothered to find and list appropriate references

These are fairly basic requirements for conference papers. Leave them out, and it's a pretty sure thing that your paper will be left out of the conference. For more detailed advice, there are several websites and papers that very clearly describe how to write good conference papers.

I think the following simple advice found here, generalized slightly, sums it up:

Good reviewers are overloaded and are looking for an excuse to stop reading your paper. Don't give them one.