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

Sun Oct 2 14:22:55 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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