ISSAC 2018 Paper Review Process

The paper review process will be conducted by:

  1. The Program Committee Chair: Chosen by the ISSAC 2018 General Chair in consultation with the ISSAC Steering Committee Chair.
  2. The Program Committee (PC): Chosen by the PC Chair in consultation with the General Chair. 20 members in total (including the PC chair).
  3. External Reviewers: Chosen by the PC members to review individual papers based on their expertise.
The ISSAC 2018 Program Committee is listed on the webpage of ISSAC2018.

The Review Process

  1. Paper Bidding and Assignment:
    This takes place in the week between Abstract Submission and Full submission, and the week following. PC members bid for papers, after which the PC chair assigns each paper to three PC members. In exceptional circumstances a paper may be rejected at this stage. For example, if the paper:
    • is clearly off-topic for ISSAC;
    • substantially exceeds the page limit;
    • have been submitted simultaneously to another conference or journal;
    • contains material already known to be published;
    • has no evaluation via proof, experiment, or analysis.
  2. Conflict of Interests
    During the bidding period, a PC member should choose "Conflict of Interest" for a paper if the PC member believes there are non-technical factors that can bias his or her judgement either positively or negatively. When in doubt, the PC member should consult the PC Chair for a decision. The following situations are always considered conflicts of interest:
    • is relative or spouse, or in a personal or professional relationship which could compromise or be seen to compromise objectivity of one of the authors
    • is a student or advisor of one of the authors, now or in the past, or plans to be a student or advisor of one of the authors in the future
    • presently works at the same local institution as one of the authors
    • has been collaborating presently or during the past 5 years with one of the authors (or plan to in the immediate future).
    These conflict of interest rules also apply to subreviewers. If the PC chair has papers with conflict of interests, the PC chair should declare conflict of interests to these papers and ask a PC member to oversee the review procedure for these papers.
  3. Paper Reviewing:
    Unless rejected in stage 1, each paper should receive at least three reviews, one obtained by each of the assigned PC members. The PC members may choose to write a review of the paper themselves and / or ask external reviewers who are experts in the field of the paper to write reviews. PC members who are not assigned the paper may also choose to write or obtain reviews. In unusual cases, such as when an external reviewer fails to deliver a review on time, papers may receive only two reviews, but if less than two are obtained additional reviews must be sought, possibly from the PC.
  4. Recommendation:
    The PC members assigned the paper will, after reading any external reviews prepare a recommendation to either accept, reject or have further discussion on the paper with the whole PC. In some cases, where satisfactory answers to specific questions in the preliminary reviews may change the recommendation, authors may be asked a precise, self-contained and short answers.
  5. Discussion and Decision:
    Based on the recommendations of the referees, the PC chair will create 3 groups: accept, reject, discuss. PC members are allowed to request papers to move from the accept or reject group to the discuss group. If a paper is in the discuss group, all PC members, except those with conflict of interests, will be invited to comment and discuss the paper. These discussions will not be returned to the authors. In exceptional cases further reviews may be prepared. Finally, all PC members, except those in conflict of interest, will vote on whether to accept or reject each paper in the discuss group. The PC Chair will make the final decision based on the results of the votes.
  6. Notification:
    Email notifications of the PC's decisions will be sent to the corresponding authors, along with all reviews of the paper, provided anonymously. There is no further rebuttal or appeal stage for rejected papers. In some cases, accepted papers undergo a second reviewing process, in which the assigned PC members verify that the final version of the paper is acceptable and that any required changes have been made. Those papers that do not satisfy the referees in this second stage of reviewing and / or that are not uploaded in final form by the deadline for camera ready copies will be rejected.