ISSAC 2016 Paper Review Process

The paper review process will be conducted by:

  1. The Program Committee Chair: Chosen by the ISSAC 2016 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 2016 Program Committee is listed on the webpage of ISSAC2016.

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 (8 pages in the ACM sig-alternate.cls style or 17 pages of letter size paper in 12pt font with normal spacings);
    • 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 paper if the PC member
    • 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 student or advisor presently or in the past of one of the authors
    • presently works at the same institution as one of the authors
    • has been collaborating presently or during the past 3 years with one of the authors on the same research topic.
    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, which can be done by changing the PC member status to co-chair of the PC.
  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. Selective Rebuttal:
    After all reviews are complete, responses from the authors may be asked.
    • Rebuttals are asked for those papers, where satisfactory answers to specific questions in the preliminary reviews can lead to a change of the evaluation of the paper.
    • PC members assigned a paper decide whether the paper needs a rebuttal.
    • The PC Chair will send these authors the reviews (including the scores) that raise those specific questions and the authors have five days to answer questions and respond to comments of the reviewers.
    • The rebuttal should be precise and self-contained, and is confined to one page in length. The rebuttal is for addressing specific questions or factual errors in the reviews, not for getting revised text or new results into the review process. Any such novel material will be ignored by the referees.
    • There is only one round of rebuttal.
  5. Recommendation:
    The PC members assigned the paper will, after reading any external reviews and rebuttals, prepare a recommendation to either accept, reject or have further discussion on the paper with the whole PC.
  6. 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 discissions will not be returned to the authors. In exceptional cases further reviews may be prepared. Finally, the entire PC 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.
  7. 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. 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. 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.