Authors » Double Blind Review

PowerMEMS 2021 will have a Double-Blind review process.

What is DBR (Double-Blind Review)?
In DBR, the authors' identity is hidden from the reviewers until the review process is completed. This is in contrast to a single-blind review process, where the reviewer identity is hidden from the authors, but the reviewers know the author identity.

Why DBR for PowerMEMS 2021?
We have chosen for the DBR process format to focus the evaluation process on the quality of the submission by reducing human biases with respect to the authors' reputation and institution and thus to ensure that paper evaluations are as fair as possible and of the highest possible quality.

To whom am I anonymous as author and when will my identity be revealed?
When obtaining a paper reference number, the authors fill out their name(s) and contact data via the registration website. This identity data is accessible to the conference organizers administrative staff but not to the reviewers in the technical program committee (TPC members). Be aware that not all technical program committee members will read every submission.

Your identity will be revealed to the TPC members only after a decision has been made on whether the paper has been selected for presentation at PowerMEMS 2021.

How is this different from a single-blind review process?
Authors are required to prepare the 4-page full paper using the A4 IEEE Template (https://www.ieee.org/conferences/publishing/templates.html) and submit their approved IEEE eXpress PDF file. Please download the IEEE PDF eXpress guidelines.

All manuscripts will be peer-reviewed by the Technical Program Committee. All accepted papers will be published in IEEE PowerMEMS 2021 Technical Digest and appear in IEEE Xplore.

The two important differences in the paper writing are as follows:
  1. References to previously published work must be written in a neutral manner, both when referring to your own previous work or to previous work from others. For example: "Previous work [ref] has shown ..." or "Somebodysname et al. have shown ...", and NOT "In our previous work [ref] we have shown...". In the list of references at the end, you provide the full reference to the work. If your name is S. Ample, you would write "S. Ample et al., "Publication Title", Journal of MEMS, vol 1, pp. xx-yy, 2015."
  2. Referencing to your own yet unpublished work, which is not yet publically available to the reviewers, must be annotated in the following manner. In the text you must refer to your work without mentioning your name, for example: "Previous work [ref] has shown ..." or S. Ample et al. have shown ...", and NOT "Our previous work [ref] has shown...",. In the reference list at the bottom or on the figure page, you must ONLY write: "Unpublished Reference", i.e. you must NOT write the full reference to this work. On the Paper Upload page, there is a specific box, entitled "Unpublished references", in which you must write the full references to any unpublished work, for example "S. Ample et al., "Publication Title", accepted at MicroTAS 2020." Upon request from the reviewers, the conference organizers' administrative staff will retrieve the unpublished manuscripts, blind them by hand, and make them available to the reviewers. Note that the conference organizers have agreements for such actions with most publishers and most of the other large conference series related to the MEMS field.
Helpful Hints for DBR
Please make sure to do the following before uploading your paper:
  • Please refer to any of your previous work in a neutral manner. Instead of "we" or "our", replace with "their".
  • Make sure to identify any Conflict of Interests in the TPC on your Paper Information form.
  • If your referenced work has not been published, please provide us with the appropriate reference on the "Upload" form.