CS886 - Paper Critiques

• Two paper critiques (10% of final mark each)
• To be done individually (i.e., no team)
• Due date: the day before the presentation scheduled for each paper (see schedule)
• Submission: by email to ppoupart [at] uwaterloo [dot] ca
  

Format

• At most 2 pages
• Put yourself in the shoes of a reviewer for a conference or journal
• Give constructive feedback to the authors
• For every criticism, make a suggestion to improve the paper
• Mention also the good aspects of the paper
• If you don't understand something, mention it and explain why you are having trouble to understand

Suggested questions to structure your critique

• What's the paper about?
• What are the contributions?
• What's the take home message?

• Are the ideas novel/original?
• Are the contributions significant?
  

• Are the ideas presented technically correct?
• Are the proofs accurate?
• Are the algorithms correct?
  

• Are the ideas/algorithms empirically or theoretically evaluated?
• If some assumptions are made, are they realistic?
• Is scalability demonstrated?
  

• Is the paper properly situated with respect to related work?
  
• Is there a brief survey of related work?
• Do the authors explain similarities and differences with previous work?
  

• Is the paper well structured?
• Does the abstract properly and accurately summarize the paper?
• Do the introduction and conclusion clearly explain the contributions and the take home message?
• Is the flow of ideas easy to follow?
• Is the paper well written?
• Are all the technical terms and abbreviations explained?
  
• Are there important grammatical errors?
• Are there a lot of typos?