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I am reviewing a conference paper that violates the maximum number of pages by more than 10%. I believe that this is enough reason to outright reject the paper.
However, maybe the authors would welcome reviewer comments anyway. But I do not want to waste a day's work, in case nobody cares about my comments. What is customary and ethical in such a situation?
As a disclaimer, I have not been in this exact situation: in my field (mathematics) there are few conference papers, and the number of journals with strict length requirements is small enough that I have never reviewed a paper which violated the requirements. Nevertheless:
In my experience it is customary in academic and professional contexts that if you submit something that does not adhere to the rules of submission, then you should expect that your submission will be rejected for that reason alone. Now it may be the case that rather than definitively rejecting your submission you are told, "Hey, please fix X so that your submission can be considered"...and it may not. There is much talk of grant applications that are rejected because something in the fine print of the submission rules was not followed.
In your case, you have noticed that one of the submission requirements has been violated, apparently in a nontrivial way ("by more than 10%"). In my opinion your clearest ethical obligation is to convey this knowledge to the editors. It is really unfair if the requirement gets completely ignored and the paper gets published anyway whereas some other authors are either getting dinged for not following the same rules or are working much harder (and perhaps, trading on the quality of their paper) in order to follow them. So I think your first step should be to point this out to the editors.
If you like, you can convey your willingness to look at a new version in a timely manner. You could even say that you are reading the version that you already have and are willing to work on a report under the assumption that the authors will later submit a version which is essentially the same but meets the length requirements. But I think that's about as far as you can go. If the submission really is permanently rejected based on the length then the authors will resubmit to another conference/journal and they'll get their feedback at that time (possibly even from you!). Viewing the fact that you received the paper and are not at this time writing a report on it to the authors as some kind of disservice to them is probably the wrong way to view it: this is really part of the usual business of academic refereeing.
Added: As long as you point out the failure to meet the length requirement, I certainly see no ethical problem with passing on whatever evaluation of the paper you want. In fact, when communicating with the editors if you think that the paper is otherwise very strong then it would be useful to say that. However, it seems to me that it is possible that the editors might decide that since the length requirements have been violated the paper will be rejected and the authors will not receive a referee report. Thus your careful comments are not guaranteed to be conveyed to the authors. This seems like a good argument for checking in with the editors before writing a full-blown report.
There is only one possible answer: Ask the Program Committee chair. It is an almost-one-line mail:
Hello Jeffy,
one of the papers I've got to review for the ABC Congress doesn't fit in the page limit given, it's: John Doe et al.: Study of DEF in context of XYZ, link: http://sciencesconf..../link-to-the-paper-in-the-review-system
Should I still review it or is exceeding the length itself a reason for rejection?
Cheers, Tom
It saves troubles in the thing I think. It may be fine in some conferences (when the page limit is taken loosely) and may be a problem elsewhere (when it's strict for instance because the proceedings publisher is strict about it, or for whatever reason). You can't know this, there's the PC chair to know this.
It's not uncommon to have vague descriptions of maximum length (do references count? acknowledgments? tables? all of these can vary across conferences). Maybe the maximum length is not as you interpreted.
If you suspect that the paper is overlength, I would petition the program committee and wait for their response before putting any effort into reviewing, but I would not vote for rejection myself.
In my opinion, deciding on desk rejection is up to the editors/PC, not the reviewers. If the paper was sent out for review, I assume that it passed initial screening, but ofcourse it is possible to have slipped through the cracks.
Technically speaking, you have the right to immediately vote for rejection because of the length constraint violation.
If you want to review the paper and leave helpful comments, you are obviously welcome (for example, if there is some section in the paper you think is not necessary and can be removed to make the paper both in the correct length and good enough for the journal / conference then you might point that out).
Maximum length alone should not be a criterion for rejection. If the paper has merit, then final acceptance should be contingent on bringing the length down.
EDIT: Maximum length should still be within reason and often there is some flexibility for one page over the limit. If the maximum page limit is 8 pages and the paper is 15 pages, it should be rejected. For an 8 page limit, 10 pages is about the limit of what could be condensed to something less than 9 pages without losing content.
The rejection is not up to you. The fact that the manuscript (MS) has gone out to review despite being two long can be for two reasons: (1) the length was not spotted by the editors and was thus sent out without identifying the problem and (2) the editors know it is too long but do not think it is a problem. Now you do not know which of these apply. If you refuse to review it and number (2) is the case, you are not doing the editors any favours. If you review the MS and (1) is the case, then it is still not certain you can see what will happen since any decision is up to the editors. It is possible they will reject the MS once they know it is too long but it is also possible they will require the authors to take the reviews and both revise according to suggestions and shorten the MS to a proper length. It is of course possible they let MS through despite breaking the length.
So options are plenty. Therefore, if you think your work may be done in vain, you simply drop a line to the editors pointing out the fact that the MS is longer than expected and ask whether or not they still want you to do the review. An editor should be quite happy to respond to such a heads up mail question.
Given that it is a conference paper, I would assume that by the time the reviewer sees it, the submission deadline has already passed. The authors would therefore not be able to submit any modifications. Hence the only viable action is to contact the chair of the program committee, as yo' suggested.
Ask them to re-write it properly or if they refuse reject the paper. Schools work on a basis of you teach this person and they adhere to you're guidelines not vica versa. As they are opposing this is the basic contract of teaching discluding money and limitations such as not permenantly confiscating or prosecuting.
