Review guidelines

We are committed to setting a high standard of quality and integrity for the HEXED review process. There are two main goals in reviewing:

  • To decide fairly whether each paper is worthy of acceptance; and
  • To provide the authors with feedback on how to improve the quality of their research and writing.

With these goals in mind, we request that all reviewers follow the review guidelines below (modified from the EDM 2024 guidelines).

Reviews should include

  • A total of 200-500 words of detailed feedback that give a complete assessment of a submission that contains rationale that explain recommendations and concerns. Please aim to write the kind you would like to receive for your own work. Please avoid very short reviews, they are frustrating for authors and detrimental to the overall review process.
  • The review should include:
    • A brief summary of the paper itself (e.g., the question being addressed, the high level approach used, what was found).
    • A thorough assessment of the submission’s main strengths and weaknesses in making a conceptual, technical, or empirical contribution to the study of human-centric explainable AI in education.
    • Where possible, suggestions for improvement should be given.
  • The following categories and questions are useful to consider in writing your review:
    • Relevance:
      • Is the submission trying to solve an important problem that is interesting and relevant for the study of explainable AI in education?
      • Does the submission attend to the real-world context, including issues of impact, fairness, and equity?
    • Novelty:
      • Is there a novel contribution in the submission in relation to previous work in the area?
      • If a replication study is reported, is it clear what is the contribution to knowledge in comparison to the original study?
    • Grounding:
      • Is the work situated appropriately with respect to the current state of the field, including sufficient coverage of relevant literature?
    • Methods:
      • Are the methods used suitable, well-described and justified with reference to the literature?
      • Does the submission show accepted evidence of rigour in the tradition followed (statistical, computational, qualitative, design)?
    • Results:
      • Do the claims made have appropriate empirical support?
      • If negative results are presented, have different explanations for the lack of findings been considered?
    • Implications:
      • Are contributions to theory and/or practice outlined clearly?
      • Are limitations with respect to data, analysis or framing factors taken into account?
      • Are potential issues of fairness and equity considered?
    • Communication:
      • Is the submission written clearly for understanding by an interdisciplinary audience?

Additional considerations

  • If the paper is not properly anonymized (i.e., the identity of the authors is revealed in the paper) please review the paper as usual, but indicate this in the “Confidential remarks for the program committee” box on the reviewing form.
  • If there are issues with the English in the submission (e.g., grammatical mistakes, misspellings or unusual phrasings), this can be noted in the “Confidential remarks for the program committee” box on the reviewing form, but it should not affect the review and assessment of the submissions with respect to its scientific merit.

The workshop chairs will compare all reviews and numeric assessments of quality and confidence and make the final decisions regarding paper acceptance or rejection.