Conflict of Interest
As soon as you get your reviewing assignment, please go through all the papers to find cases where:
1. There is a conflict of interest (e.g., a paper authored by your recent collaborator from a different institution, or a concurrent work with the same contribution as the work you submitted yourself)
2. You are unable to provide reasonable review to the paper. However, do not give up just because the paper is not of your liking or because it does not perfectly match your area of expertise. Due to various hard constraints, it is unavoidable that not all assignments are optimal, and reviewers are asked to make a reasonable effort to review the assigned papers.
If either of these issues arise, please let us know right away by emailing the Program Chairs.
MCVR makes every effort to avoid conflicts in the review assignments, but errors can occur. If you think you have a conflict of interest with a paper you are reviewing, you are required to contact the Program Chairs to resolve the matter.
Conflicts of interest include (but are not limited to) situations in which:
▪ You work at the same institution as one of the authors.
▪ You have been directly involved in the work and will be receiving credit in some way.
▪ You suspect that others might see a conflict of interest in your involvement.
▪ You have collaborated with one of the authors in the past three years. Collaboration is usually defined as having written a paper or having a joint grant.
▪ You were the MS/PhD advisor of one of the authors or the MS/PhD advisee of one of the authors.
Rebuttal
Authors will be given an opportunity to answer your criticisms in a rebuttal. In your review, you can ask the authors to provide specific information in the rebuttal, such clarifications on the proposed algorithm and on the experimental results. However, refrain from asking brand new experiments. The rebuttal is not a major revision of the paper, nor is fair to ask to the authors to perform complex tasks in the short time available for the rebuttal. If you think that a crucial experiment is missing and that the paper cannot be accepted without it, you can reject the paper; however, do not ask the authors to perform this experiment in the rebuttal. The Program Chair can discount your requests if they are unreasonable.
Be Specific and Provide Evidence
Please be specific and detailed in your reviews. For example, simply saying “this is well known” or “this has been common practice in the industry for years” is not sufficient: cite specific publications, including books, or public disclosures of techniques and explain the concrete overlap with the reviewed paper. Always explain your rating. Your discussion, sometimes more than your score, will help the authors, fellow reviewers, and Program Chairs understand the basis of your opinions, so please be thorough.
Your reviews will be returned to the authors, so you should include specific feedback on ways the authors can improve their papers or their research. A harshly written, emotional review will be disregarded by the authors, regardless of whether your criticisms are valid. State you criticisms clearly and concisely to help the Program Chair make a decision based on your review, but also put yourself in the mind-set of writing to someone you wish to help, such as a respected colleague who wants your opinion on a concept or a project to help the authors improve their work.
A thoughtful review not only benefits the authors, but may benefit you as well. Remember that your reviews are read by other reviewers and especially the Program Chairs, in addition to the authors. In contrast to the authors, they will know your name. Being a helpful reviewer will improve your reputation in the research community. In contrast, returning an uninformative, flawed, late review will damage your reputation.
Further Guidelines
Do not ask the authors to cite your papers unless this is clearly justified. Be aware that the Program Chair can see your name.
Before you claim a paper is out of scope, carefully check the Call for Papers, clearly explain why, and try to suggest a better venue for it.
Avoid referring to the authors by using the phrase “you” as it may sound confrontational; use instead “the authors” or “the paper.”