Moderated by Erik Sandewall; refereeing chaired by Susanne Biundo.

Erik Sandewall Cognitive Robotics Logic and its Metatheory: Features and Fluents Revisited

The article mentioned above has been submitted to the Electronic Transactions on Artificial Intelligence, and the present page contains the review discussion. Click here for more explanations and for the webpage of theauthor, Erik Sandewall. Overview of interactions N:o Question Answer(s) Continued discussion 1 12.6.1999  Anonymous Referee 1     2 12.6.1999  Anonymous Referee 2       Q1. Anonymous Referee 1 (12.6.1999): I have checked the article against the refereeing criteria for reference articles: 1. Does the article represent a tradition or "approach" where there is already a sufficient volume of work in the field? Yes. The article well summarizes research that has been done by Sandewall and his group over the last ten years. 2. Does the article concisely specify the assumptions, motivations, and notations used in that approach? Does it correctly capture the assumptions, etc. that have been used and are being used? Yes. Though clear from the context, I would clearly state the meaning of the predicate  D( [s, t] , s)  used at page 8. 3. Would reading the present article enable one to skip the introductory definitions section of many previously published articles that used the approach? Yes. 4. Is the article also concise in the sense that it does not contain a lot of material that is unnecessary for the above criteria? Yes. 5. Is the article pedagogical and sufficiently easy to read, but at the same time precise and correct? Yes. Q2. Anonymous Referee 2 (12.6.1999): General Remarks The paper is certainly acceptable as a reference article for the features and fluents approach, and meets all the relevant criteria. I think it could be improved with the addition of a few examples. In particular, I think it would be an easier to read if a couple of examples of action laws were introduced, for standard benchmark scenarios. In fact, I don't think the form of an action law is ever defined. It's a shame about the plethora of different ways of writing the same thing. This is quite confusing for the reader.   Background: Review Protocol Pages and the ETAI This Review Protocol Page (RPP) is a part of the webpage structure for the Electronic Transactions on Artificial Intelligence, or ETAI. The ETAI is an electronic journal that uses the Internet medium not merely for distributing the articles, but also for a novel, two-stage review procedure. The first review phase is open and allows the peer community to ask questions to the author and to create a discussion about the contribution. The second phase - called refereeing in the ETAI - is like conventional journal refereeing except that the major part of the required feedback is supposed to have occurred already in the first, review phase. The referees make a recommendation whether the article is to be accepted or declined, as usual. The article and the discussion remain on-line regardless of whether the article was accepted or not. Additional questions and discussion after the acceptance decision are welcomed. The Review Protocol Page is used as a working structure for the entire reviewing process. During the first (review) phase it accumulates the successive debate contributions. If the referees make specific comments about the article in the refereeing phase, then those comments are posted on the RPP as well, but without indicating the identity of the referee. (In many cases the referees may return simply an " accept" or " decline" recommendation, namely if sufficient feedback has been obtained already in the review phase).