Discussion Phase
Description
During this phase, reviewers and/or area chairs can discuss their reviews and
modify them in response to this discussion.
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: Reviewers enter or edit their reviews. In addition to the reviews themselves, the
system allows reviewers to provide a relative ranking of their papers. The system automatically
sends the reviewer an email each time he/she submits a review to the system.
- Area Chairs: Can view the papers assigned to them and the reviewers assigned to their
papers by the program chairs. In addition, area chairs can track the progress of their reviewers,
and are given the ability to send email to reviewers that are getting late on their reviews. Area
chairs can also view the reviews that have been entered into the system at any given time (for
papers assigned to them). Area chairs can also fill out an area chair recommendation form with
their accept/reject recommendation, can mark papers for discussion or recommend a paper for an
award. Finally, area chairs can enter or modify reviews
for papers to which they were assigned as reviewers by the program chairs.
- Administrators: Send to reviewers all the submitted reviews for each paper that was assigned to these
reviewers. The emails do not identify the other reviewers so the discussion is supposed to
be coordinated by the relevant area chair.
Preparations BEFORE This Phase Begins
- Make sure all or most of the reviews are in the system.
Switching to the Discussion Phase
This phase is 'virtual' in the sense that nothing needs to be reconfigured on
the system. The discussion is initiated by the admin sending email to all
reviewers with the reviews of the papers they were handling:
- Run the script 'Reset Email-Sent Flags' to initialize the emailing system.
- Run the script 'Email Reviews to Each Reviewer' to send the emails.
Be sure to read
the help pages for these two scripts before running them.
Actions AFTER This Phase Begins
- The 'Email Reviews to Each Reviewer' can be run repeatedly to send
any new reviews that came in late (i.e., after the discussion phase has
begun).
Phase Indicator
The 'Current Phase Parameters' on the Administrator menu remain unchanged, i.e., they should be equal to (closed,submit)