[Corpora-List] why LREC2012 NOT blind-reviewed?

Sun Oct 2 14:23:08 UTC 2011

Just two humble cents from me.
I'm sure most of us, even those strongly against double blind reviewing,
remember or at least realize why this process was introduced.
The fact is many people DO send many crappy papers, often re-sending
exactly the same crap simultaneously to many conferences. If blind
reviewing can flush at least some of this, and improve the world of
science even in 1/100 of a percent, I wouldn't vote against it.

Although what I would really like to have (and I think it is feasible) is
a system telling me more-less if the paper is a candidate for a crap or a
reliable piece of work.

Also a word about the reviewers being hidden behind the curtain. This is
not exactly true, since the list of all reviewers is always available on
the conference homepage (and the list of sub-reviewers is sometimes also
added in the proceedings). If you spent some time in the field you can
more less guess who does things similar to you and can narrow down the
list of your potential reviewers (so its very much like with guessing the
paper authors).

Best,

Michal

-----------------------------------
Od: Anil Singh <anil.phdcl at gmail.com>
Kopia dla: corpora at uib.no, Yorick Wilks <Y.Wilks at dcs.shef.ac.uk>
Do: Yassine Benajiba <benajibayassine at gmail.com>
Data: Sat, 1 Oct 2011 16:02:56 +0530
Temat: Re: [Corpora-List] why LREC2012 NOT blind-reviewed?

As some academicians/researchers I have respect for have expressed
opinions which I believe to be right and which I have been writing about
on my blog and elsewhere (apart from arguing for them in conversations), I
dare to chip in and say my bit.

When I had entered this area and was thinking of submitting my first paper
(around 2003-2004) and I found out that reviewing will be blind, I was
delighted. I was a nobody (a graduate student) from a developing country
(India, but not even from one of the IITs and not with a very good
pedigree), I thought double blind reviewing will be definitely more fair
for people like me.

My experience since then has completely disabused me of that naive idea.
While it may not be possible to exactly identify the author(s) of the
paper, one does get enough information (and meta-information) that is more
than enough to trigger all the prejudices, biases etc. that blind
reviewing is supposed to be an antidote against. This happens in almost
all the cases. Needless to add that there can be exceptions.

You can, of course, give numerous counter-examples from cases where no
bias or prejudice is likely anyway or is very unlikely. But those examples
are not the ones that matter here.

As far as I am concerned, if you can just identify the fact that the
author is from India, that alone removes at least half of the supposed
effectiveness of the idea of double blind reviewing. And if you work on
Indian languages and do certain kind of work, it's a no-brainer.

Then there can be things like whether the author is just a student or an
established researcher, whether the project is funded or non-funded,
whether the language is that of a native speaker or not etc. These are the
very things that double blind reviewing is supposed to guard against, but
it simply can't. It just can't and I am sorry that it can't. Theoretically
the idea still appeals to me, but may be like many other theoretically
good things, it is not practically implementable.

I especially like Yorick's comment about undignified gymnastics that one
is required to perform to hide one's identity. It even lowers the academic
quality of the paper quite often because you can't add information that is
very relevant. And I am totally in favour of the reviewer taking
responsibility for his comments. I have a corpus of reviews and some of
the comments simply make one embarrassed that academicians (which one is
too) can behave like that -- and that too in writing.

One of the things that has always left me wondering (to put it lightly) is
the fact that the conduct of academicians during the actual meetings,
i.e., paper presentations, panel discussions etc. is so exceedingly
civilized (for want of a better word) that I sometimes feel out of place
there (coming from a chaotic third world country and being disordered
personally). But a lot of the same academicians, when they blind-review a
paper, behave like bullies, vigilantes or just plain hooligans.
Fortunately, their number is still a minority.

Of course, like everyone else, I have received wonderful (even if very
critical) reviews. But that can happen even with non-blind reviewing. Just
read literary supplements of papers that take literature seriously.

To conclude, I would just say that if for nothing else, at least to
maintain the basic dignity of the academic community and of individual
academicians, it would be best if we switch to a reviewing process that
does not pretend to be blind and where reviewers take responsibility for
their comments.

I am agnostic about whether extended abstracts should be reviewed or full
papers. Both seem to have their merits. For a conference like LREC,
extended abstracts do seem better to me, though I won't fight for that
(borrowing a phrase from review forms).

I hope am not doing anything wrong by adding this link here:

http://reviewscontd.org/

    On Sat, Oct 1, 2011 at 6:28 AM, Yassine Benajiba
<benajibayassine at gmail.com> wrote:
    Hi everyone,

I say let's judge the conference by the results. LREC is an awesome
conference constantly improving year after year. Even though it would be
great if somebody from the organizing committee could join this
conversation and tell us a bit more about the reasons.

Best,

--Yassine.

On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 11:31 PM, Eric Ringger <ringger at cs.byu.edu> wrote:
Thanks to all for the open discussion.

Graeme’s reason (1)(a) – the impact on merit review – is for me the
strongest reason to encourage LREC to move away from reviewing extended
abstracts and toward reviewing full papers.

Best,
--Eric

From: Graeme Hirst [mailto:gh at cs.toronto.edu]
Sent: Friday, September 30, 2011 11:02 AM
To: Yorick Wilks
Cc: Eric Ringger; corpora at uib.no
Subject: Re: [Corpora-List] why LREC2012 NOT blind-reviewed?

Yorick,

(1)  Whether a conference is reviewed by abstract or by full paper makes
an enormous difference:

      (a) to merit, as perceived by tenure committees, granting agencies,  
and
others, who count only fully peer-reviewed papers.
      (b) to funding for travel.  Right now, one of my colleagues has the
problem that he cannot be funded to travel to give a paper at LREC because
it isn't a fully-reviewed conference, so he doesn't even bother submitting.

You might say that these situations aren't desirable, but they are
nonetheless reality right now.

(2)  I wonder how you are so sure that you almost invariably identify the
author of an anonymous paper correctly.  If the paper is not ultimately
accepted at the conference, which is 60 to 80% of them at ACL and COLING
conferences, you will never find out who the authors actually are.  I've
certainly guessed wrongly in the past.  And in my own papers, I often
throw in "hidden signals" to deceive the reviewers.

(3)  I think Eric Ringger is 100% right about LREC.  As you say, LREC's
reputation and quality have grown, and for that reason it has to start
acting like a grown-up conference.

Regards,
Graeme

--
::::  Graeme Hirst
::::  University of Toronto * Department of Computer Science

    On 2011-09-30, at 11:27, Yorick Wilks wrote:

I disagree strongly. I dont see why all conferences should be exactly like
all others. Extended abstracts are less of a burden on busy academics
--both as writers and reviewers----and there is no evidence they lower the
final quality; COLING used to do this and I am sorry it changed. The whole
blind-review business is a huge nonsense: I rarely meet a paper to review
where i cannot identify the authors from a careful trawl of hidden signals
and the references. Trying to make a paper genuinely anonymous is almost
impossible if one has a body of past work and publication to link it
to---the mental gymnastics required are undignified and best avoided.
LRECs reputation has grown steadily and it will be the quality of its
papers that sustain it--there is no evidence at all anonymity would
improve matters in the least. if it ain't broke........
Yorick Wilks

On 30 Sep 2011, at 16:02, Eric Ringger wrote:

Greetings.

LREC has been operated in this manner since its inception.  Personally and
for the sake of LREC’s reputation, I would like to see the reviewing
process for LREC upgraded to double-blind review.

I believe that LREC fills a couple of important niches: its focus on
language resources and evaluation/validation is important and not well
served elsewhere, and it does a good job of bringing a large, diverse
group together.  (I should add that it does a good job of selecting
attractive venues as well!)  If implemented well, I believe that
double-blind review would not detract from the primary objectives of the
conference but would refine the quality of the program and improve the
reputation of the venue.  I have said as much in private feedback after
past LRECs.

I also think it is time for LREC to move up from reviewing extended
abstracts to reviewing full papers.

Regards,
--Eric

From: corpora-bounces at uib.no [mailto:corpora-bounces at uib.no] On Behalf Of
Isabella Chiari
Sent: Friday, September 30, 2011 8:45 AM
To: corpora at uib.no
Subject: [Corpora-List] why LREC2012 NOT blind-reviewed?

Dear Corpora members,
I just noticed that the LREC2012 call specifies that submissions are NOT
anonymous and there will not be blind-reviewing.

Does anyone know why? Which is the policy under this decision?
Best regards,
Isabella Chiari

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