Reviewer Assignment Phase

Description

During this phase, area chairs are supposed to recommend reviewers for the papers assigned to them. These recommendations are then used by the program chairs to make the final reviewer assignments. This final stage is needed for the purpose of load balancing (since each reviewer will generally be accessible to multiple area chairs) and for handling conflicts (since area chairs do not know the identities of the authors when assigning reviewers to papers).

Functionalities Offered During this Phase (by User Type)

Authors: Can view their submitted papers but cannot edit any of the information they have already submitted.
Reviewers: The system does not offer any functionalities to reviewers during this phase.
Area Chairs: Can view the papers assigned to them and can recommend four reviewers for every one of those papers (3 main reviewers and an alternate, in case program chairs cannot satisfy one of the first three choices). The area chairs are also supposed to indicate the reason for selecting a particular reviewer (this rationale is used by the program chairs when deciding final reviewer assignments). Area chairs can also view an estimate of the total reviewing load for each one of their reviewers so that they can try to balance the reviewers' load.
Administrators: The functionalities useful during this phase are under the 'General Functions', 'Area Chair Assignent Phase' and 'Reviewer Assgignment Phase' menus. Program chairs can track the progress of area chairs in assigning reviews to their papers and make the final reviewer assignments.

Preparations BEFORE This Phase Begins

The 'Load Chair to Papers Table' and 'Load Chair to Reviewers Table' operations must be performed before switching to this phase.
Edit the file /scratch/oct/aolserver/servers/oct/reasonForSelectionNormalized.txt. This file contains a text description of the possible rationales that an area chair can choose from when assigning a reviewer to a paper. See the help file for 'Export Reviewer To Papers Table' for more information.

Switching to the Reviewer Assignment Phase

Execute

cd /scratch/oct/aolserver/servers/oct/tcl ./set_phase_assign

When the script is run as shown above, it will NOT actually switch OCT to that phase. Instead, it will display the steps that must be performed before the system goes into this phase.
Once you are convinced that everything is set up for switching to this phase, execute
```
./set_phase_assign yes
```
to perform the switch.

Actions AFTER This Phase Begins

Track the progress of your area chairs to make sure that they don't leave things for the last minute...
Take a look at the workspace of each area chair to make sure their assignments are consistent with your expectations
Track the reviewer assignment statistics to identify potential reviewer contentions.

Actions at the END of This Phase

Run the 'View Reviewer Assignment Sheet' script to view the assignment recommendations of the area chairs and identify possible conflicts of interest.
Run the 'View Reviewer Assgignment Statistics Sheets' to identify reviewer contentions.
Once all area chairs are done with their assignments, export the reviewer assignment recommendations to a file.
Edit the file to adjust assignments and to make sure that every paper has exactly three reviewers (this is not an website restriction; it is simply to conform with standard CVPR reviewing practice).
Load the final review assignments back onto the website.
Run the 'View Reviewer Assignment Sheet' script to view the final assignment recommendations and make a final sanity check.
Run the 'View Reviewer Assignment Statistics Sheet' to verify that no reviewer is overloaded.
Export and reload the assignment file in case final adjustments need to be made.

Phase Indicator

If the system correctly switched to the reviewer assignment phase, the 'Current Phase Parameters' on the Administrator menu should be equal to (closed,assign)