Today I received my results from IP&M. For some strange reason, my paper only had 1 reviewer! How that can happen in an international journal is beyond me. Here is the result of the one review….

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Reviewer #1: Overall, it is hard to read a little. The authors should polish the wording and representation.Representation of citations is illegible. Is it correct style for IP&M?

I’m not fully satisfied the reason why extracting from a single document is important.
To use other technique on a set of documents seems to be enough for keyword search from the collection.
The authors should explain and emphasize, using other examples.

The outline of the proposed algorithm is comprehensible.
However, I could not understand which parts are original and why this works better.
The authors should explain the essential point of the algorithm at first for readers to grasp it easily.

At the bottom of p.9, the citation “REL NFormatiX” is incomplete.
In all tables, what percentages are figured?

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Now, I do not proclaim that my paper is the new bible of keyword extraction or even close to being the best paper written, but I do believe that it is well written and that the necessary information is in the paper. The paper was turned down by IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, the highest level journal in this field, but the 4 reviewers said the paper was well written and easy to read.

The thing that gets me the most is “In all tables, what percentages are figured?” Why? Because, there is an entire section in the paper on the experimental methods in which I specifically explain how the experiments were done and what the figures in the tables represent. Is it too much to ask for the reviewers to read the entire paper or at least do not ask stupid questions if they do not read the paper?

This is my second time sending a paper to IP&M, under mandates from my professor, and my second rejection with really strange comments. The first time I was informed, by obviously a master of the English language, that my English was illegal.

I have no problems with being rejected, in fact from some of my rejections I have been able to make my papers better. I do not however like it when the reviewers do not read the paper, but feel they can pass judgment on it. I know everyone’s time is precious, but I strongly believe if you want to take part in the research community you should fulfill your obligations to best of your ability and not “phone it in” as the saying goes.