Sample ERB Review

Greetings and thank you for lending your expertise and experience as a journal reviewer.
Individuals serving as reviewers are performing an important and valuable job, assuring that the
manuscripts they evaluate are being published with integrity and accuracy.
As a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), IGI Global takes great pride in ensuring
that the highest level of care is taken to administer a robust double-blind peer review process on each
and every journal manuscript submitted to IGI Global journal publications.
Please take a moment to read through the review criteria below, and in addition you will also find a
sample evaluation.
With deepest appreciation,
Lindsay Wertman
Managing Director, IGI Global
Review Criteria
As a reviewer, your comments are valuable to the advancement of your colleagues’ research, even if the
manuscript is not, in your opinion, publishable.
All reviews should be conducted through the eEditorial Discovery® editorial management system by the
assigned due date. Reviewers who complete high-quality reviews in a timely manner are providing an
essential service to the field and to the journal.
Please carefully read each manuscript, supporting your evaluation with relevant citations and with the
goal of helping the authors construct a more rigorous research work by providing constructive feedback.
Provide an honest assessment of the value of the manuscript. Begin by providing your overall
assessment of the work, followed by a specific list of comments. Please bear in mind that although
grammatical corrections are valuable, the review must stretch beyond the use of punctuation, spelling,
and language usage.
An appropriate evaluation includes an analysis of the manuscript’s strengths and weaknesses,

suggestions on how to make it more complete, relevant, and readable, as well as specific questions for
the authors to address. Provide advice that leads to action. Vague statements and no points of action do
not provide goals for the authors and will hinder any subsequent revisions.
Avoid making derogatory and unprofessional comments. If you do not find the manuscript publishable,
extensive comments regarding why the paper is not acceptable and constructive directions for future
submissions should still be provided. A decision to “reject” the manuscript, with no feedback to the
authors, does not help them advance their skills.
As such, while conducting your review, consider the following questions:

• Is the manuscript in congruence with the mission of the journal?
• How useful is the material to the field?
• Does the manuscript clearly state the issue being addressed?
• Does the literature review contain relevant information in support of the manuscript?
• Does the manuscript contain a detailed explanation of research methods and procedures?
• Is the manuscript clearly organized in a logical fashion?
• Are the author's conclusions supported by the research?
Additional tips for improving your review:
• Provide the page number and explicitly state the areas of the manuscript to which you are referring.
• Consider providing relevant citations to the authors to improve the work.
• Do not forget to assess the tables, figures, and diagrams.
Sample Evaluation
REVIEWER 1
Reviewer Information
Removed
Evaluation submitted: Jan 11, 2016
Rankings
Popularity of the subject..................5
Appropriateness for the journal.......6
Adequacy of literature review..........6
Quality of research design...............6
Adequacy of data analysis...............NA
Contributions to the literature...........6
Legitimacy of conclusions................6
Practical/managerial significance....6
Clarity of presentation......................3
Overall Evaluation
Marginally publishable
Recommendations for Review

Manuscript requires minor revisions from author(s)
Editorial Decision
Accept After Specified Revision
Comments to the Author

This paper proposes a novel solution that combines DEMO enterprise ontology with a stochastic
approach based on partially observable Markov decision processes.
In the introduction, the authors introduce the need for decision making under uncertainty in
organizations. While this argument is certainly valid, the introduction is very general (which types of
uncertainty ?, how do these link to the specific approach suggested ?) and contains limited empirical
arguments. In other words, the introduction reads like a general need to deal with uncertainty in
decision making (in theory, not much empirical argumentation), and next, the new approach is put
forward as a solution for this general need. Also, no specific argumentation is given why this approach is
particularly suitable, or how it relates to others (although the section on related work does address this
to a certain extent).
In terms of methodology, the DSR perspective seems not incorrect, but not very convincing at the same
time. More specifically, similar papers on extending methodologies have been published in the past (say,
the 70’s-80’s) without explicit reference to DSR. The references to DSR are not necessarily incorrect, but
it is not very clear that the authors explicitly followed this methodology during the research (rather than
retro-fitted it afterwards) and what the application of the DSR methodology specifically contributed to
the quality of the research (methodology) and the research results. The current proposal therefore
could be interpreted by the reader as an interesting experiment, but little more.
The proposed approach does have the merit that, to my knowledge, it is new that DEMO is combined
with Markov decision processes. Although the paper reads like a first attempt to make the combination
and many more aspects need research in the future, it does show the potential of extending the
deterministic DEMO models with probabilities and concepts such as partial observability. The case study
is a useful illustration of this potential.
One definite issue with this paper is the quality of English language used. There are countless spelling
mistakes, and I found the paper difficult to read in general.
Small remark on p 17: I do not feel that the first paragraph, explaining the differences between the
current paper and Guerrero (2015), is absolutely required in the paper. It could be useful as an answer
to reviewers, but I would not keep it in the paper.
In conclusion, the paper could be strengthened by a better problem statement (‘need’) in the
introduction, and a more clear explanation of how this proposal solves that need. It would also help that
the case study addresses this. Right now, it reads more like an interesting calculation exercise, than a
solution to concrete management needs described in the introduction. But most urgently is a correction
of the countless spelling mistakes in the paper. That is a minimum to consider the paper for publication.
Comments to the Editor

In its current format, the paper is not publishable due to the spelling mistakes, but I do feel it has the
potential to contribute to the DEMO literature, with an interesting proposal in combining it with Markov
theory. This, however, should be more than an interesting exercise, but should be properly argued and
explained in the paper. If these changes are made in a revision, I would certainly consider acceptance.

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Greetings and thank you for lending your expertise and experience as a journal reviewer.

With deepest appreciation,

An appropriate evaluation includes an analysis of the manuscript’s strengths and weaknesses,

As such, while conducting your review, consider the following questions:

Additional tips for improving your review:

Recommendations for Review

Comments to the Author

Comments to the Editor

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