Area Chair Assignment Phase

Description

This phase marks the end of the paper submission process. During this phase, Program Chairs are supposed to perform two tasks: (1) decide the assignment of papers to area chairs and (2) decide the subset of reviewers that will be 'accessible' to each area chair.

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: The system does not offer any functionalities to area chairs during this phase.
Administrators: The functionalities useful during this phase are under the 'General Functions', 'Final Paper Submission' and 'Area Chair Assignent Phase' menus.

Preparations BEFORE This Phase Begins

All area chairs MUST have registered on the website before area chair assignments can be loaded on the system. All reviewers MUST have registered on the website, before the area chair to reviewer assignments are loaded on the system.
Make sure all papers have been submitted. Once the system switches to the OCT phase (and beyond) neither the users nor the admin will be able to submit papers.

Switching to the Area Chair Assignment Phase

Execute

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

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_closed yes
```
to perform the switch.

Actions AFTER This Phase Begins

Delete 'deadbeat' authors that did not complete the user registration procedure.
Delete supplements without PDF. CAUTION: During CVPR'03 there was an instance where an author accidentally submitted his pdf file as a supplement instead of as a pdf. This resulted in a submission with a supplement but not a pdf. Before delecting ANY such supplements, double-check that they are indeed supplements and not actual paper submissions.
Delete papers without PDF. The above cautionary note applies here too.
Run the 'Validate PDFs' script to view the pdf files of all submitted papers and check for problems and page limit (or paper format) violations.
For security reasons, record all valid submissions.
If not already done so, prepare the following files in the /scratc/oct/aolserver/servers/oct/pages/admin/config directory:
chairs.txt
reviewers.txt
Run the 'Promote Chairs' script from the Admin menu
Run the 'Promote Reviewers' script from the Admin menu
Run the 'Export Paper Weights' script and use the generated file to create an assignment of area chairs to papers.
Once the assignment of papers to area chairs is decided, create a file that holds these assignments and load them into the OCT system using the 'Load Chair to Papers Table' script. Be sure to read the script's help page before running the script.
Run the 'View Area Chair Assignment Sheet' to inspect the area chair assignments, identify possible conflicts, etc.
Run the 'Load Chair to Reviewers Table' script to specify the reviewers an area chair can assign papers to. Be sure to read the help page of that script before running it.

Phase Indicator

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