TPC Member – Role and Responsibilities through the Review Process

You have been invited to join the Technical Program Committee and your role is essential to the successful completion of the conference review process.

As TPC member you will be responsible for handling the paper(s) that the Chairs assign to you. This means the following:

Inviting Reviewers (a minimum of three reviews are needed)
Ensuring reviews are delivered on time
Ensuring the reviews present a qualified and professional evaluation of the submission
- In case a Review is not suitable, you can mark it Non-Admissible
Delivering a recommendation for the Chairs based on your expertise and the review comments
Evaluating the Reviewers’ input

NOTE: You also have the opportunity to bid on papers before the Chairs assign them to individual TPC members – doing so promptly after you receive the notifying email increases your chances of handing the paper(s) of your choosing.

Before the Review begins, it is advisable to note down the Submission deadline, as you can expect to be approached a few days after this deadline. Your activity begins at the Paper Assignment stage of the review process, see your responsibilities in a chronological order below:

Paper Assignments – Request Papers to Handle

You will receive a notification when the conference moves to Paper Assignment stage. To maximise the likelihood of handling the paper(s) of your choosing, promptly log into Confy+, click on ‘My Conferences’ and then click directly on the track where you can see your role (TPC member) has been assigned – in the screenshot below, it is ‘New Track’.

This takes you to the Homepage of the conference. To bid on papers, click ‘Request’

Once you have been assigned to a paper, you receive an email. This means you can begin handling the paper – please see the instructions for this section of the review process below.

TPC Member in Review Management – Invite Reviewers and Manage Your Submission(s)

The main objective of this stage is to ensure each paper has at least three reviews. As the TPC member, you are responsible for inviting these Reviewers, therefore your activity is crucial in order to move forward. You receive an email with the details (such as the deadline and next steps) when you have been assigned submissions. To handle the paper, log into Confy+ and click on My Assignments. Here, you can see all your pending assignments and you need to go through all of them to handle each one.

The following actions are needed in each of your assigned submissions:

3 reviews need to be delivered – this means you must invite Reviewers (it is recommended to invite at least 4-5 reviewers, as not all may deliver their reviews on time). There are two ways of inviting Reviewers in the Manage Reviewers section (highlighted in red on the above screenshot)
- Invite Reviewer – using the form where you fill in the Reviewer’s details (name, email, affiliation)
- Community Bids – Community Reviewers have already expressed interest in this particular paper, so they are motivated to deliver a quality review promptly. You can see Community Bids under the form.
Submit recommendation – once the reviews have been delivered, you have to evaluate the Reviewers and submit a recommendation to the Chairs based on the reviews and your evaluation. This is an important indicator when making decisions, so it is advisable to try to complete the recommendation promptly.

Submitting the recommendation to Chairs is the final step of the TPC member responsibilities.

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