The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences is the series of proceedings published by the International Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS). The Archives have a long standing history, the first volume having been published more than a century ago. The Archives contain the proceedings of ISPRS meetings, incl. those of the ISPRS Congress, the ISPRS Symposia and ISPRS Workshops. This note describes the review process of The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences (ISPRS Archives).
The organizer of a scientific meeting, who is usually affiliated with ISPRS e. g. as a working group chair or co-chair, applies to the ISPRS Secretary General for inclusion of the meeting proceedings into the ISPRS Archives. Upon approval of the request, the meeting including a call for papers is advertised as an ISPRS event on a world-wide basis and the schedule for the submission of contributions is made public. The submission deadline is usually set about four to six months prior to the meeting in order to have enough time for a rigorous review.
A programme committee for the meeting is established by the meeting organizer and the names are publicly announced. Members of the programme committee are scientific leaders in the field with ample expertise regarding the topics of the meeting. The meeting organiser usually acts as chair of the programme committee who typically also serves as editor of the respective ISPRS Archives volume. It is to be ensured that conflicts of interest during the review process are avoided. Any person involved in paper reviewing must declare a conflict of interest if they recognise a paper as the work of a direct colleague, collaborator, or if for other reasons they have doubts about their objectivity. In this case another member of the programme committee reviews the submission.
Following submission, contributions are assessed by a minimum of two programme committee members against a set of pre-defined criteria. These criteria include scientific originality, potential interest in the community, proper documentation of prior work, clarity of presentation, technical correctness and correct use of language. This list may be prolonged by items specific to a certain meeting such as relevance for professional users or relevance in an interdisciplinary setting, if the meeting includes such goals. In general, reviewing is carried out in a double-blind fashion.
The views of the programme committee are assembled by the committee chair. In case of disagreement, additional reviews are solicited, until a majority vote is reached. Results (acceptance of rejection) are then established for each submission. The final responsibility for the results rests with the programme committee chair. The scientific programme of the meeting is established based on the results of the review process.
The review results are then communicated to the authors, who prepare the final paper. Final papers are due about two to four weeks prior to the meeting. Prior to publications final papers undergoes an automatic plagiarism check. In case of any problems the programme committee chair decides about the final acceptance of the paper.
The ISPRS Archives Volume is then available to the participants during the meeting.