imm Reviewers

How to Become an IMM Reviewer

If you are interested in reviewing for the IEEE Instrumentation & Measurement Magazine (IMM), please register yourself in the PeerTrack submission system, and make sure that in your profile information you correctly set your classifications, as many as you are comfortable being a reviewer for. Make sure you also choose "Reviewer" for the "Reviewer Role" option.

When an Associate Editor wants to assign a paper to reviewers, s/he can search the reviewer database by expertise and might select you as a reviewer. Please note that you are not officially an IMM reviewer for a given calendar year if you haven't submitted any reviews in that calendar year.

IMM Reviewer's Guide

When you receive a review request, please first check to make sure you have no conflict of interest. If you do have conflict of interest, please inform the requesting Associate Editor and decline the review. For example, decline the review if the paper is from your own institute, or from an author with whom you work or have worked before (former or current student, supervisor, collaborator, etc.) or an author with whom you have co-published before.

When you review a paper, you can submit two sets of comments:

  1. Remarks for the Associate Editor/Editor (optional, invisible to authors). This section is optional. Please use this to report exceptional situations, such as plagiarism, double submission, conflict of interest, private comments to the editor, etc. Remember that authors will not be able to see these comments.
  2. Remarks for the Author (mandatory, visible to authors). This section is mandatory. Here, please write your review and evaluation about the paper. Please also remember two very important notes:
  • Never disclose your identity to the authors! Remember that authors can read this section, so don't leave any clues about who you are. Reviews must be blind.
  • Do not ask authors to cite/compare with your own paper! Not only this might reveal your identity (see above), but it might also give the perception that you want to increase your citation count. It is also implicitly not allowed by IEEE, as per IEEE PSPB Manual section 8.2.2.A.4.

Review Requirements

Please, note that the IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement Magazine (IMM) has the goal of providing readable introductions and overviews of methodologies and technologies in the field of Instrumentation and Measurement to a wide engineering audience.

While reviewing a paper submitted to IMM, you are strongly invited to take care that:

  • Articles must be framed in the proper context of Instrumentation and Measurement (IM). This could be achieved by properly structuring the review of the state of the art and motivations of the work.
  • Papers are NOT expected to bring meaningful novelties, since overviews on IM methodologies/technologies/applications are very welcome, as well as contributions dealing with Open Problems in IM, presenting challenging and ambitious solutions that could be assisted by current and advancing technology.
  • Papers are expected to have technical content, but primarily they should present to the wide audience a general overview of the scientific subject addressed.
  • In line with the mission of the IMM, papers must provide an overview of the topic addressed written in the right language for the general IM audience.
  • It is expected that sufficient references be made to articles published in IM venues, such as this magazine, IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, and other IM journals and conferences.
  • A review should critique the work, not the authors! Reviews should NOT address the authors as "you", but simply as "the authors". In addition, reviews must be very objective and mindful and must avoid emotional, condescending, joking, accusing, attacking, or aggressive language. As per IEEE PSPB Manual section 2.6, "... reviewers should avoid the use of ad hominem and deprecating comments in their review and judgment statements for communications with authors."
  • Reviews should give detailed constructive comments that authors can use to improve their work.
  • From a scientific perspective, both authors and reviewers must support their statements. As such, a review should not make statements like “it is a fact that…” or “everyone knows that …” without proof. Instead, it should include citations for those claims.
  • A review should not make statements like “important references are missing…” or “literature search is incomplete …”  or "authors should compare their work to the state of the art..." without mentioning what those are.