Trying to understand the paper, I attempted to read the published paper. Well, no luck! The paper was also horribly written. I started wondering who in his right mind decided to accept this paper to an ACM journal, and what the reviewers were saying. I simply cannot believe that anyone in his right mind would actually read such papers, and even try to write any meaningful review afterwards. Most probably the reviewers gave up and agreed after many revisions to allow the paper to be published, hoping that they will never have to read the paper again. Or may be I am wrong and the paper is indeed a hidden gem?
So, how can we avoid such cases? Here is my not so original suggestion: Publish the (anonymous) reviews together with each paper!
I cannot see anything negative with that. It will make everyone happier. People that write high-quality reviews would not mind seeing their names being published together with the reviews. Other reviewers will see what is a high-quality review and hopefully will try to imitate the style.
In fact, the practice of publishing a commentary for each paper is not new. I have seen many papers in statistics being published with eponymous commentary. Often, reading the reviews is more interesting than reading the paper.
Furthermore, the reviews will offer a quick overview of the contributions and shortcomings of the paper. It will also allow the reader to understand what lead to the acceptance of the paper. Was it a new idea? An excellent experimental evaluation? Or just the reviewers could not even read the paper and just gave up, giving a lukewarm "accept"?
