reviewing-paper-sourceslisted

# Reviewing Paper Sources ## Overview A paper review is an **evidence-gathering exercise, not a reading exercise**. The findings that change a paper come from things you compute or verify, not from things you notice while reading: recomputing the headline statistic, checking every reference against its publisher record, compiling the sources yourself, rendering the figures at print size. **Core principle: never trust an artifact you did not produce.** The committed PDF is stale until proven current. A reference is wrong until checked against a primary source. A reported rate means nothing until you have its sample size. ## Mode: establish this first | | Mode A — internal | Mode B — external | |---|---|---| | Situation | Advisor/self-review of your own group's draft | Referee report for a venue | | Register | Blunt, shared stake in the outcome | Neutral, addressed to authors + chair | | Proposes fixes | Yes, including edits to the sources | No — diagnose only, never rewrite the authors' text | | Artifacts | Review `.md` + `.pdf`, `*-annotated.tex`, `refs-corrected.bib` | Review `.md` + `.pdf` only | | Scores/verdict | Yes (both modes) | Yes | If it is ambiguous, ask. "My student's paper" ⇒ Mode A. "I'm reviewing for X" ⇒ Mode B. **Then establish what you were given.** With LaTeX sources, follow the workflow below as written. With only a PDF — the usual case for refereeing — the compile step, the `.bbl` cross-check and the source-based tools are all unavailable, and two