Papers are refereed firstly to ensure that they meet the criteria for publication in BITR, meaning that they are appropriate, relevant and well researched/written, and in order to provide potential authors with critical feedback on their paper so that this or future submissions can be improved and made ready for publication.

Because a key tenet of BITR is to provide an opportunity for new and emerging researchers to publish, the referee can consider their role to be one of offering peer support and even assistance in the development of both the paper and the writing career of the author(s).

Assessing a Paper for Publication

BITR aims to publish academic papers, industry perspectives and other essays that contain new ideas which the target audience of the journal will find useful, interesting and beneficial. It is important to remember that BITR is aimed at IT academics, students and practitioners and that articles must reflect this audience.

• Relevant: For an article to be relevant it must be related to information and communications technology and the article should preferably relate to the application of ICT rather than being purely academic and theoretical.
• Originality: Too often people simply redo work that has been done elsewhere, at times because they are not aware of previous work. We place an emphasis on new work (although a good survey paper is certainly acceptable).
• Clarity/Quality of English: Even the best ideas provide little benefit if no one can understand them because of the way in which they are presented. We look for papers that are well organized and well written.
• References: Papers show their value and their originality by grounding themselves in the literature. You should make sure that the paper includes references appropriate for the kind of work. Major theoretical studies should have larger reference lists. Small case studies might only need references to their theoretical underpinnings and one or two related studies. Reference must also use the correct style, which is APA Version 5. Whilst it is not critical to be overly pedantic about this if you are unsure what this means, refer to www.apastyle.org for guidance.
• Length of Paper: Papers for BITR are normally between 3,000 and 5,000 words. However it is also important to consider whether the ideas presented are appropriate for the length.
• Potential Value: The usefulness to readers is the single most important issues for the referee to consider. Articles should be timely, relevant, clearly written in good English, factually correct.

Please do not score or weight each of the above (or other) attributes, rather consider the paper as a whole.

Providing Feedback to Authors

Authors rely on your feedback to improve their papers. Please provide written suggestions for improvement and address global issues, such as paper organisation or suggested references that the authors might have overlooked. Please try and provide a few paragraphs of comments for each paper. Part of the review process is to identify weaknesses that the author(s) can address prior to publication.

You can (and should) provide overall comments but also address specific issues in the paper. In the latter case, please try and clearly identify the section of the paper that you are referring to. Where you are critical of something in the paper, try and say why in a neutral way and attempt where possible to provide suggestions as to how this can be addressed. You might also want to provide feedback that challenges the author to consider alternative perspectives.

Please do not correct spelling or grammatical errors, however do note that this needs attention in the final submission. A serious number of grammatical or spelling errors would render the paper unacceptable unless the subject was particularly compelling or invaluable. For papers with particularly bad writing, you might suggest that they consider using an external editor.

Remember that one of the aims of BITR is to provide a publication channel for new and emerging researchers. Please be supportive and do take the experience of the author(s) into account. Allowance can be made for a weaker paper if the author is new, allowing the referee to recommend acceptance where they would have rejected a more experienced author's work. To be clear about, it is anticipated that you will be more lenient of new writers, and it is acceptable to apply a higher standard to experienced authors. This is important to ensure that BITR is accessible to new writers but also to ensure that it maintains academic credibility in the material it publishes.

Working with the Editors

When you accept a paper for review, you will normally be asked to commit to an agreed deadline. This deadline is likely to be based around a publication deadline so, please only accept a paper for review if you feel that you can work to this. In the event that you later discover that you are unable to meet the deadline, please notify the editor as soon as possible.

If upon receipt of the paper you decide that it is not an area that you have sufficient knowledge or expertise in and so don't feel able to review the paper accurately, please notify the author and another reviewer will be appointed.

BITR is editorially reviewed and author details are known to the reviewers. If you feel that you have a conflict of interest with the author(s) of a particular paper, return it to the edit and do not review it. A conflict of interest might include a paper from a close colleague, where you have been involved in a project being described or where you were involved in a body funding or otherwise supporting research being described.

You will be asked to respond to the editor by email. The editors are looking for an objective, qualitative assessment of papers, so rather than using a formal evaluation form, it would be appreciated if reviewers could provide the following feedback:

Peer Reviews

Papers will normally be reviewed by at least two people. They will be members of the editorial board of BITR or subject matter experts who have been invited to be a reviewer for an edition (or who's views were sought due to the nature of a specific paper). The editorial board and reviewers are selected from academics and practitioners in the field of applied ICT. Just as BITR is intended as a vehicle for new writers, it is also hoped to encourage new and relatively inexperience reviewers to become involved. To achieve this, new reviewers will be "paired" with a more experienced reviewer, who will mentor and support them, advising them on the refereeing process and guiding them in terms of formulating their reviews.

Updated: May 2003 | If you have any questions, please contact the editor.