Why should this paper be published?
Here is a simple suggestion that will immensely improve the publishing/reviewing experience. Every submission should include a subsection called: "Why should this paper be published?" (WSTPBP). Here, the authors should provide an objective/falsifiable statement of why this paper deserves publication. This may include statements like: this feature of the system is novel (no previous work has it) this is a more {fault-tolerant, secure, efficient, simple} solution than previous solutions This should be a targeted minimal set. If one of these statements is falsified by the reviewers, it could be a valid reason to reject the paper. In that sense, WSTPBP is the authors' contract with the reviewers. The authors put a stake in the ground, saying that the reviewers should focus on the claims in WSTPBP, rather than giving other pretexts, diverging to unclaimed features to reject the paper. This focuses the reviewing process as the reviewers evaluate the paper based on WSTPBP. If th...