THE REVIEWING PROCESS FOR ISPRS EVENTS Cl´ ement Mallet 1 , Ian Dowman 2 , George Vosselman 3 , Uwe Stilla 4 , Lena Halounova 5 , Nicolas Paparoditis 1 1 Univ. Paris-Est, LASTIG MATIS, IGN, ENSG, F-94160 Saint-Mande, France 2 Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, University College London, UK 3 Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC), University of Twente, Enschede, the Netherlands 4 Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, Technische Universitaet Muenchen, 80333 Muenchen, Germany 5 Department of Geomatics, Faculty of Civil Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic Commission V, WG V/5 KEY WORDS: Review, guidelines, policies, full papers, abstracts, authors, area chair, programme chair, working group officers, technical commission presidents, evaluation criteria, workshops, Geospatial Week, Symposia, Congress. ABSTRACT: Following the first initiatives taken by the International Programme Committee of the XXIII rd ISPRS Congress in Prague (Czech Re- public) in 2016, modifications of the reviewing process of ISPRS events were further considered during the years 2017 and 2018. This evolution first targets to better fit such a process to the currents requirements and expectations of the ISPRS community. Secondly, it aims to provide unified guidelines for the different steps of the process. Under the aegis of the 2020 Congress Director and ISAC (International Science Advisory Committee) chair, several discussions were held in-between September 2017 and June 2018 with ISAC members, Technical Commission Presidents (TCP), council members, 2016 and 2020 Congress Programme Chairs. This document serves as a unique transparent basis that applies for all kinds of ISPRS events (from Congress and Geospatial Week to smaller work- shops), and all categories of people that are bound to be involved in the evaluation process of scientific contributions (authors, reviewers, TCPs, . . . ). It also specifies the evaluation criteria for the works submitted to ISPRS events, both for full papers and abstracts. Subse- quently, it helps authors to improve the content and shape of their contributions. Eventually, this paper is targeted to help new chairs to smoothly prepare their future event. The following guidelines were first adopted for the 2018 Technical Commission Symposia. 1. INTRODUCTION The International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sens- ing (ISPRS) organizes and supports various scientific events through the Congress Director (the Congress, every 4 years), the Techni- cal Commission Presidents (the symposia, every 4 years), and other Event Chairs (e.g., the Geospatial Week, every 2 years, and smaller conferences and workshops). So far, the reviewing pro- cess (important dates, assignment to reviewers, evaluation form, final decision. . . ) varies with respect to the event: size, topics, community. In particular, it has been noticed that the evaluation criteria of a given event may favour either method-based papers or application-based papers. Therefore, there is no global co- herency, except the final publication of the accepted papers in the ISPRS Annals and Archives (See Section 2 and (ISPRS, 2018d)). The International Annals of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sens- ing and Spatial Information Sciences (ISPRS Annals) contain double blind peer reviewed scientific contributions of ISPRS Con- gresses, Symposia and a number of conferences and workshops (ISPRS, 2018b). The series was newly established in 2012. The Annals are open access publications, published under the Cre- ative Common Attribution 3.0 License. The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Infor- mation Sciences (ISPRS Archives) is the series of peer-reviewed proceedings published by ISPRS since 1908 (ISPRS, 2018c). Since 1999 and 2011, the Archives are open access and published under the Creative Common Attribution 3.0 License, respectively. The Annals and the Archives are listed in the ISI Conference Proceed- ings Citation Index (CPCI) of the Web of Science, SCOPUS, and DOAJ. In 2016, the International Programme Committee of the XXIII rd Congress in Prague (Czech Republic) established, during the prepa- ration of the congress, guidelines for the reviewing process (IS- PRS, 2018a). In 2017, the ISPRS Council has decided to re- fine such guidelines and propose them as standards for all forth- coming ISPRS events. In addition, under the aegis of the 2020 Congress Director and ISAC (International Science Advisory Com- mittee) chair, standardized evaluation criteria and their respec- tive description have been set up. They stem from discussions with ISAC members, 2016-2020 Technical Commission Presi- dents (TCP), council members, 2016 and 2020 Congress Pro- gramme Chairs. Several iterations existed between May 2017 and June 2018. This paper documents the newly established reviewing guidelines for scientific contributions submitted to any kind of ISPRS events (from Congress and Geospatial Week to smaller workshops). It describes the evaluation sequence for all categories of people that are involved in the process: authors, reviewers, TCPs, .... It also specifies the evaluation criteria for the papers submitted to ISPRS events. It applies both for full papers and abstracts. Subsequently, it helps authors to improve the content and shape of their con- tributions. This paper is eventually targeted to help new chairs to smoothly prepare their future event. The following guidelines were first adopted for the 2018 Technical Commission Symposia. The document is structured as follows. Information about paper submission is first provided, both for full papers and abstracts (Section 2), followed by a comprehensive description about the reviewing process (Section 3). Then, guidelines for Programme Chairs/Area Chairs and reviewers are detailed in Sections 4 and 5, respectively. ISPRS Annals of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Volume IV-5, 2018 ISPRS TC V Mid-term Symposium “Geospatial Technology – Pixel to People”, 20–23 November 2018, Dehradun, India This contribution has been peer-reviewed. The double-blind peer-review was conducted on the basis of the full paper. https://doi.org/10.5194/isprs-annals-IV-5-53-2018 | © Authors 2018. CC BY 4.0 License. 53