How to review a scientific conference paper quickly and correctly

The following checklist will help you to write a review a conference paper.

What is the contribution of this study?

The value of a study can not be measured without its contribution. So we should start by determining what it has been done. In a well-written paper this information can be found in the abstract or in the introduction (check also conclusion). What is new? In order to answer this question we should be aware of the literature on that area, if not check some of the references given in the paper.

Check the notations, abbreviations and definitions

Before any deep reading of the paper, it is a good practice to list all the important notations, abbreviations and definitions on a paper. This can be very helpful while checking the proofs.

Look at the some of the relevant references

Are the results are correct?

This is the hardest – longest part of a paper review process. Check the proofs.

Do spell checking

Even though there exist built-in spellcheckers in most of the word processors (Latex , MS Word), authors does spell checking manually for a second time. Don’t trust computers nor humans, do it again!

P.S. This site is a great resource of all sort of advices (writing thesis, presentation, timet management etc.) for people in academia.