Submission Information

The submission deadline for regular papers and long abstracts have now passed for IPCAI 2023

Important Dates

For regular paper submissions

Intention to submit deadline:  28 October  11 November, 2022 (11:59 pm, Pacific Time) 
Submission deadline:  4 November 15 November, 2022 (11:59 pm, Pacific Time)
First review round and early decisions to authors: 16 January, 2023 (11:59 pm, Pacific Time)
Revision and rebuttal  deadline: 6 February, 2023 (11:59 pm, Pacific Time)
Decision notifications: 5 March, 2023 (11:59 pm, Pacific Time)

Registration deadline for papers accepted at IPCAI: 8 March, 2023 (11:59 pm, Pacific Time). No extensions!

For long abstract submissions

Submission Deadline:  20 January, 2023 (11:59 pm, Pacific Time)
Decision notifications: 5 March, 2023 (11:59 pm, Pacific Time)

Registration deadline for accepted long abstracts at IPCAI: 8 March, 2023 (11:59 pm, Pacific Time). No extensions!

Author Instructions for Regular Papers

Scope of regular papers

To understand if your submission fits in the scope of IPCAI, and for general submission information please refer to the Call for Papers.

Submitting with CMT

All IPCAI 2023 submissions are made using Microsoft’s Conference Management Toolkit (CMT).  One of the paper's authors must be allocated as the corresponding author (also called the submitting author) who is responsible for making the CMT submission on behalf of all the co-authors, with permission from all co-authors. The corresponding author is required to already have a CMT account, and they can be the corresponding author for more than one submission.

Once you've logged into CMT, a regular paper submission is created by the corresponding author as follows. First, select the IPCAI 2023 conference here, with the role of author, then press the 'create new submission' button, and select the regular paper track. You will then see additional submission instructions, and the submission form.  Once you have filled in mandatory form items, you create your submission by clicking the 'submit' button at the bottom of the submission form. You will then be assigned a unique submission ID for your paper.

You will be able to edit all information in the submission form, and upload/replace the manuscript pdf file and any supplementary material files with newer versions, up to the regular paper submission deadline. The manuscript file should not exceed 20 MB. The supplementary material files can be in the following formats:  doc, docx, pdf, mp4 or wmv. You are permitted to submit up to 3 supplementary material files. Each of these files should not exceed 50 MB.  

Corresponding authors should only create one submission per paper.  Any submission changes should be made by editing the submission that you first created.

There are two submission deadlines that corresponding authors must respect (see important dates above):

The intention to submit deadline

The purpose of this deadline is to assist handling of submissions by the program committee. By this deadline, you should have completed what we call an 'intention to submit'. Concretely, this is achieved when both the following have been done:

1. The submission has been created by the corresponding author using CMT. You know this has been done when you have a submission ID associated with your submission on CMT's IPCAI 2023 conference.

2. The following submission form items have been completed:

   • The list of authors

   • The manuscript title (which may be modified up to the submission deadline)

   • The abstract (which may be modified up to the submission deadline)

   • Domain conflicts

   • Selection of subject areas (1 primary and up to 3 secondary)

Other fields in the submission form may be completed, and submission files may be uploaded, but they are not required to be done by the intention to submit deadline.

The submission deadline

By this deadline, you should have completed all submission form items and uploaded all your submission files.

Domain conflicts

CMT uses two mechanisms for domain conflicts: 

• Individually entered domain conflicts

• Domain conflicts per submission

The corresponding author should do both, as described here.

Author guidelines and formatting information

The manuscript file

Accepted IPCAI regular papers will be transferred to the International Journal of Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery (IJCARS) for further revisions and published by Springer Nature as a full paper in the IPCAI special Issue of IJCARS, or (if required) in a regular journal issue. Therefore, authors of regular IPCAI papers should ensure their submission closely conforms to the IJCARS author guideline and requirements. All accepted papers will need to conform to the IJCARS guidelines and requirements for publication.

To ensure a smooth review and publication process, IPCAI submitting authors should read the IJCARS guidelines, and especially check the following are satisfied prior to submitting using CMT:

• The following sections of the IJCARS guidelines have been read, and they must be followed by all submissions

  • Ethical Responsibilities of Authors

  • Authorship Principles

  • Compliance with Ethical Standards

  • Competing Interests

• The manuscript file has been prepared either with LaTeX or MS word using the IJCARS instructions. We strongly encourage using LaTeX, where the Springer Nature template must be used with the lineno option to print line numbers. You should not use the LNCS template, as indicated in the original Call for Papers. Format deviations are not allowed especially in attempts to gain space, including but not limited to using \vspace, changes to font sizes, line spacing or margins. 

• The manuscript file should not exceed 12 pages single column (approximately 5000 words), including everything (title, abstract, authors, affiliations, keywords, tables, figures, references, captions, decelerations, acknowledgements etc.). This is submitted on CMT as a single 12 page PDF file. Note that if accepted, Springer Nature will use your manuscript source material to prepare a final proof using the double column format. You should not submit the source material used to generate the PDF file on CMT.

• The Declarations section should cover funding, competing interests, ethics approval, consent, data, material and/or code availability, as per the IJCARS guidelines.

• Statements about public access to resources, i.e., data, code or other materials, should be collected in one place: the Declarations section under the 'Data, code and/or material availability' heading, including access links.

• An 'Acknowledgements' section should be included if one is required (one should not be added during a revision).

• There should be 4-6 keywords for indexing purposes.

• The abstract should be in a structured format (Purpose, Methods, Results and Conclusion). The abstract should not exceed 250 words.

• After the regular paper submission deadline passes, the authorship names, affiliations, corresponding author, and ordering should not be modified during revisions. Therefore, authors are required to ensure these are correctly declared and formatted in the manuscript file, and that they match with the submission’s author details on CMT. 

• The submitted supplementary material files should conform to the IJCARS instructions, with the difference that video files cannot exceed 50 MB. 

Supplementary material

Supplementary materials (if any) may be submitted in addition to the manuscript file. We encourage authors to submit supplementary material along with your submission to clarify your contribution with the reviewers, which may include video files. Note that the manuscript file should stand alone, and be fully understood without the need to refer to supplementary material. Supplementary material for accepted papers will only be available online. The supplementary material should conform to the IJCARS guidelines. 

Submission confidentiality

In cases where confidential information is submitted to IPCAI, authors should do the following:

• Include a prominent sign (such as a “Confidential, patent pending” watermark) on every page of the paper.

• Submit a document as supplementary material explaining your expected handling of confidentiality of the paper and providing a list of persons, institutions, and companies that should not be involved in the review process.

• Inform the program chairs through an email about submission of such a paper including the submission number.

The assignment of reviewers and meta-reviewers will then be performed considering these restrictions. Throughout the review process, your submission will only be visible to the program chairs and the specific area chairs and reviewers responsible for the paper who also signed a confidentiality agreement. All other area chairs and reviewers will not have access to your submission.

Reproducible research

The authors should read and follow our reproducibility guidelines (see below), designed to improve the submission quality and promote reproducible research according to best practices. This will include completing a reproducibility checklist on CMT for your submission. We strongly recommend reading these guidelines prior to submission.  

Review process

Submissions are peer-reviewed in a single-blind process. We recommend you read the IPCAI reviewer guidelines (see below) before submitting, so you know what to expect. Your submission will be assigned to two meta-reviewers (primary and secondary), and be sent out for peer-review by qualified experts (typically 3). You will then receive these reviews and two meta-reviews. Based on these reviews, your paper will be given an early decision: either accept, reject, or revise. Accepted submissions will be directly transferred to IJCARS for submission to the IPCAI special issue of IJCARS. If your paper has received a revision, then you are invited to address the reviewer comments, and submit a revised version with a cover letter including responses to reviewer comments and manuscript changes. The revised paper will then be reviewed by the reviewers, meta-reviewers,, and a final accept or reject decision will be made. Accepted papers will then be transferred to IJCARS. All accepted papers will enter into a final review stage, conducted by IJCARS.

Author Instructions for Long Abstracts

Scope of long abstracts

To understand if your submission fits in the scope of IPCAI, and for general submission information please refer to the Call for Papers.

Submitting with CMT

All Long Abstract submissions are made using Microsoft’s Conference Management Toolkit (CMT). One author must be allocated as the corresponding author (also called the submitting author) who is responsible for making the CMT submission on behalf of all the co-authors, with permission from all co-authors. The corresponding author is required to already have a CMT account, and they can be the corresponding author for more than one submission.

Note that unlike IPCAI regular paper submissions, there is no ‘intention-to-submit’ phase for Long Abstracts. All submissions should be completed using CMT by the Long Abstract submission deadline.

Creating a submission

Once you've logged into CMT, a Long Abstract submission is created by the corresponding author as follows. First, select the IPCAI 2023 conference here, with the role of author, then press the 'create new submission' button, and select the ‘Long Abstract’ track. You will then see additional submission instructions, and the submission form. Once you have filled in mandatory form items, you create your submission by clicking the 'submit' button at the bottom of the submission form. You will then be assigned a unique submission ID for your long abstract.

Domain conflicts

To prevent any potential conflicts-of-interest in the submission review process, we use CMT’s domain conflicts mechanism. The corresponding author should input ‘Individually entered domain conflicts’ and ‘Domain conflicts per submission’ as described here. Your submission will not be considered for review if you have not inputted your domain conflicts, and it is the responsibility of the corresponding author to ensure all domain conflicts are inputted.

Modifying your submission

You will be able to edit all information in the submission form, and upload/replace the manuscript pdf file and any supplementary material files with newer versions, up to the long abstract submission deadline. 

One CMT entry per submission

The corresponding author should only create one submission on CMT for each Long Abstract they intend to submit. Any submission changes should be made by editing the submission that you first created.

Author guidelines and formatting information

The manuscript file

Your Long Abstract should be submitted as a single file (PDF), up to 4 pages in length (single-column), using LaTeX and the Springer Nature template. The 4 page limit applies to all content, including title, author information, short abstract, main body, acknowledgements and related statements, as well as references.If accepted, you will be offered to publish the manuscript as a Short Communication in the IPCAI special issue of the International Journal of Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery (IJCARS). Therefore, authors should ensure their submission closely conforms to the IJCARS author guideline and requirements. All Long Abstract accepted submissions will need to conform to the IJCARS guidelines and requirements for publication in IJCARS as a Short Communication in the IPCAI special issue. Do not use the LNCS LaTeX template, as indicated in the original call for long abstracts. 

To ensure a smooth review and publication process, submitting authors of Long Abstracts should read the IJCARS guidelines, and especially check the following prior to submission:

• The following sections of the IJCARS guidelines have been read and followed:

  • Ethical Responsibilities of Authors

  • Authorship Principles

  • Compliance with Ethical Standards

  • Competing Interests

• The manuscript file (PDF), which should not exceed 4 pages, must have the following parts, as per the IJCARS guidelines:

  • The title

  • 4-6 keywords

  • The names of all co-authors and their affiliations

  • The name of the corresponding author

  • A short abstract structured into 4 sections (Purpose, Methods, Results and Conclusion), not exceeding 250 words.

  • A Declarations section, giving details about funding, competing interests, ethics approval, consent, data, material and/or code availability.

  • An Acknowledgements section (if one is required). One should not be added during a revision.

• Format deviations from the LaTeX template are not allowed especially in attempts to gain space, including but not limited to using \vspace, changes to font sizes, line spacing or margins.

• The manuscript file should not exceed 20 MB.

• After the regular paper submission deadline passes, the authorship names, affiliations, corresponding author, and ordering should not be modified during revisions. Therefore, authors are required to ensure these are correctly declared and formatted in the manuscript file, and that they match with the submission’s author details on CMT.

Supplementary material

Supplementary materials (if any) may be submitted in addition to the manuscript file. We encourage authors to submit supplementary material along with your submission to clarify your contribution with the reviewers, which may include video files. Note that the manuscript file should stand alone, and be fully understood without the need to refer to supplementary material. Supplementary material for accepted papers will only be available online. The supplementary material should conform to the IJCARS guidelines.

The supplementary material files must be uploaded using CMT, and be in the following formats: doc, docx, pdf, mp4 or wmv. You are permitted to submit up to 3 supplementary material files. Each of these files should not exceed 50 MB.

Submission confidentiality

In cases where confidential information is submitted to IPCAI, authors should do the following:

• Include a prominent sign (such as a “Confidential, patent pending” watermark) on every page of the paper.

• Submit a document as supplementary material explaining your expected handling of confidentiality of the paper and providing a list of persons, institutions, and companies that should not be involved in the review process.

• Inform the program chairs through an email about submission of such a paper including the submission number.

The assignment of reviewers will then be performed considering these restrictions. Throughout the review process, your submission will only be visible to the program chairs and the specific area chairs and reviewers responsible for the paper who also signed a confidentiality agreement. All other area chairs and reviewers will not have access to your submission.

Review process

Long Abstract submissions are peer-reviewed in a single-blind process with normally 2 reviewers. There is no rebuttal stage, so after review, your submission will either be accepted or rejected. You will be notified of the reviews and the verdict via CMT. Accepted submissions will then be directly transferred to IJCARS for submission to the IPCAI special issue of IJCARS, which will include one final round of reviews conducted by IJCARS. 

IPCAI 2023 Reproducibility Checklist 

Checklist motivation

IPCAI is dedicated to publishing high quality, reproducible and responsible research following best practices. Motivated by the success and increasing use of reproducibility checklists in other major conferences, this year, we request authors to complete a reproducibility checklist as part of the submission on CMT. The reproducibility questions are given below.

The main purpose of the checklist is to help verify that the materials, methods and analysis presented in an IPCAI paper are clearly defined, and that, ideally, the results and conclusions can be reproduced independently given full access to these resources. The resources should be described in the paper itself or via supplementary material for additional details (especially, wherever possible, by linking to data, and the software implementations of algorithms and analysis used in the paper).

A good IPCAI paper will strive for the highest level of reproducibility, however, experimental setups described in IPCAI often comprise complex hardware and software setups, and it must be kept in mind that full independent reproducibility cannot always be ensured, despite best efforts by the authors. Access to all materials needed to reproduce results may not be possible, and the use of proprietary systems that are subject to licence restrictions is common in IPCAI.  For instance, reported software run-times require implementation on specific hardware, which is part of the experimental material that would be needed for exact reproduction, which generally cannot be shared. Additionally, the implementation can be so large that checking (or even running) code implementations is often neither sufficient for full reproducibility and unfeasible.  In such cases where full reproducibility is impossible, it is expected that the results are reproducible in principle. That is, when the experimental materials and implementation are not readily available, the paper should be described in sufficient detail that reproducibility would likely be attained given access to such resources by field experts. The checklist questions below are designed to promote this important aspect.  

Reproducibility Frequently Asked Questions

Q1: How are the checklist responses used during the reviewing process?

The checklist is designed to remind authors of items they could address in their submissions to help the reviewers to understand and evaluate the work, similar to a pre-flight checklist or pre-surgery checklist. The checklist responses are visible to reviewers and the review form will ask reviewers to rate a submission with respect to whether the submission includes enough information for reproducibility. However, the reviewers will rate the submission based on the submission itself, not simply based on the checklist responses. Also, the checklist responses are visible to Program Chairs, who might take them into consideration when making the final accept/reject decisions.

Q2: If our paper addresses all the items on the checklist, is that sufficient for reproducibility?

Not necessarily. IPCAI research is quite varied and no checklist could cover all the items necessary to reproduce all papers. Use your best judgement to include items relevant for your work, regardless of whether they are in the reproducibility checklist.

Q3: As the corresponding (submitting) author, am I required to fill out the reproducibility checklist in the full-paper submission form?

Yes. You won’t be able to submit the full paper without filling out the reproducibility checklist first. Note that some items in the checklist may not be relevant to your submission. 

Q4: As the corresponding author, I have completed the checklist in the submission form. Am I required to address those items explicitly in the submission itself (i.e., in the main paper or supplementary material)?

The items from the checklist are not required to be addressed explicitly in a submission, but authors will surely find their submission is of higher quality if they do so for items that are relevant to their work. Please use your best judgement to determine what checklist items are relevant to your work and what items should be addressed explicitly in the submission itself.

Q5: As the corresponding author, should we address checklist items in the main paper or in the supplementary materials?

It depends on which place is more appropriate. For example, important values such as the number of model parameters and the size of training data should be included in the main paper, whereas less important ones can be included in the appendix in supplementary material. This is the same kind of decision you have to make for other types of information such as math formulas. Just remember that reviewers have access to supplementary materials.

Q6: As the corresponding author, should we submit code and/or data as part of supplementary materials?

IJCARS, and the IPCAI special issue, have a type 1 research data policy. That is, where possible and applicable, authors are encouraged to deposit data that support the findings of their research in a public repository. Authors who do not have a preferred repository should consult Springer Nature’s list of repositories and research data policy. The same is true for code, where authors are encouraged to make code that supports findings publicly available, including setup, dependencies and execution instructions. Public code and data links can be referenced in the main text or in the or supplementary materials.  As per the author guidelines. Statements about public access to resources, i.e., data, code or other materials, should be collected in one place: the Declarations section under the 'Data, code and/or material availability' heading, including access links.

Q7: As a reviewer, should I lower my rating of a submission if it doesn’t address some checklist items in the submission?

Please see Q1 above. Reviewers should use their best judgement to determine whether certain checklist items should be addressed in the submission.

Checklist questions

The checklist is closely aligned to the one used at MICCAI 2022 with additional questions relevant for IPCAI. Questions in black font are from the MICCAI 2022 reproducibility checklist. Questions in red font are new to IPCAI 2023. Questions should be answered on CMT with ‘Yes’, ‘No’ or ‘Not applicable'. An optional free text field can be used for further clarification by the authors.  Some of the new IPCAI questions concerning clinical research and statistical methods have been based on A CHecklist for statistical Assessment of Medical Papers (CHAMP), and we recommend that you also consult that paper. 

1.  For all experimental setups/studies, check if you include

• A clear description of the experimental objectives, tested hypotheses, study design, controls and materials (also see item 5).

• References to any published details about the study e.g., its approved protocol and record on clinicaltrials.gov.

• Declaration of any deviations from previously published protocols or design violations. For example, non-response in surveys (missing data) or non-compliance by patients in clinical studies.

• A discussion of key assumptions or simplifications.

• A discussion of potential biases, e.g., selection, information or confounding biases.

• A discussion of study limitations.

2.  For all experiments involving users/testers of a system, surveys, or questionnaires, check if you include

• A clear description of the participant cohort, including demographics, competencies and experience.

• A clear description of the intended population.

• A clear description of the participant selection/sampling methodology and any exclusion criteria.

• A  clear description of any participant training, priming or key instructions.

• The list of questions, or forms and response options.

3.  For all preclinical experiments e.g., with phantoms, animal studies, or in-silico studies, check if you include

• A clear description of models, preparation and choice of settings/parameters. 

• A discussion of model validity and important clinical aspects that have not been accounted by the model.

• For animal studies, full conformity with the  journal and publisher's ethics guidelines and rules.

4.  For all clinical studies, check if you include

• Details of the study type/model.

• A clear description of the patient cohort and target population.

• A clear description of selection/sampling methodology and any exclusion criteria.

• A verification of the study description and analysis by a clinical research expert.

• Full conformity with the journal and publisher's ethics guidelines and rules.

5. For all hardware and systems, check if you include

• A clear declaration of what hardware or system you used (e.g., make, model and hardware/software versions).

• A clear description of hardware setup, controls and any calibration processes.

• A clear description of possible assumptions or limitations to using this specific hardware.

6. For all statistical analysis

• A description of the statistical methods, appropriateness and validity of assumptions.

• A description of all variables considered for statistical analysis.

• A justification of sample size.

• A description of how missing data or outliers are handled e.g., if a baseline or proposed method fails to return a result (missing data).

• A declaration of used software tools.

7. For all models and algorithms, check if you include

• A clear declaration of what software framework and version you used.

• A clear explanation of any assumptions.

• A clear description of the mathematical setting, algorithm, and/or model.

8. For all datasets used, check if you include:

• The relevant statistics, such as number of examples.

• Description of the study cohort.

• For existing datasets, citations, versions, as well as descriptions if they are not publicly available.

• For new data collected, a complete description of the data collection process, such as descriptions of the experimental setup, device(s) used, image acquisition parameters, subjects/objects involved, instructions to annotators, and methods for quality control.

• A link to a downloadable version of the dataset (if public).

• Whether ethics approval was necessary for the data.

9. For all code related to this work that you have made available or will release if this work is accepted, check if you include:

• Specification of dependencies.

• Training code.

• Evaluation code.

• (Pre-) trained model(s).

• Dataset or link to the dataset needed to run the code.

• README file including a table of results accompanied by a precise command to run to produce those results.

10. For all reported experimental results, check if you include:

• The range of hyper-parameters considered, method to select the best hyper-parameter configuration, and specification of all hyper-parameters used to generate results.

• Information on sensitivity regarding parameter changes.

• The exact number of training and evaluation runs.

• Details on how baseline methods were implemented and tuned.

• The details of train / validation / test data, and isolation of test data.

• A clear definition of the specific evaluation metrics and/or statistics used to report results.

• A description of results with central tendency (e.g. mean) & variation (e.g. error bars).

• An analysis of statistical significance of reported differences in performance between methods.

• The average runtime for each result, or estimated energy cost.

• A description of the memory footprint.

• Discussion of clinical significance.

• A description of the computing infrastructure used (hardware and software).

• An analysis of situations in which the method failed.

Sources

These guidelines use the following sources: 

1. The MICCAI 2022, AAAI 2022, IJCAI 2021 and NeurIPS 2020 reproducibility checklists

2. The IJCAI-ECAI 2022 reproducibility guideline FAQ

3. Pineau et al. Improving Reproducibility in Machine Learning Research. arXiv:2003.12206

4. Mansournia et al. A CHecklist for statistical Assessment of Medical Papers (the CHAMP statement): explanation and elaboration, BJSM 2021

Reviewer Guidelines for Regular Papers

Firstly, thank you to each person who has volunteered to review for IPCAI 2023! To maintain a high-quality technical program, we rely very much on the time and expertise of our reviewers. 

Pre-review checklist

As soon as you get your reviewing assignment from CMT, please ensure that:

• There is no obvious conflict with you (e.g., a paper authored by your recent collaborator from a different institution). See the conflicts of interest section below.

• You strictly respect review ethics and uphold submission confidentiality (see ethics section below). 

• You have sufficient expertise to review the paper. 

• You have understood the reviewer guidelines (this section).

• You have understood the reproducibility checklist (above sction).

• You have understood this is a single-blind review, and therefore you must not reveal your identity in the review.

• You have allocated sufficient time for a good quality review. Main innovation claims should be confirmed or refuted in the review. To do this effectively, you should adequately familiarize yourself with relevant recent prior art that has been published before the IPCAI 2023 submission, in a peer-reviewed workshop, conference or journal. Note that such prior art may or may not have been adequately referenced in the submission. 

If issues with any of the above points arise, please let the meta-reviewer know right away by contacting them through the CMT system.

What to look for

• Each paper that is accepted should be technically sound and make a contribution to the field.

• Look for what is good or stimulating in the paper. In particular, look for what new knowledge advancement the paper made. 

• We recommend that you embrace novel concepts. For example, the fact that a proposed method does not exceed the state-of-the-art accuracy on an existing benchmark dataset is not grounds for rejection by itself. 

• It is important to weigh both the novelty and potential (clinical) impact of the work alongside the reported performance. 

• Make sure to also consider submitted supplementary and appendix material in your review. 

• If you think the paper is out of scope for IPCAI's subject areas, clearly explain why in the review. Then suggest other publication possibilities (journals, conferences, workshops) that would be a better match for the paper. However, unless the area mismatch is extreme, you should keep an open mind, because we want a diverse set of good papers at the conference.

• Minor flaws that can be easily corrected should not be a reason to reject a paper.

• IPCAI is dedicated to promoting reproducible research. We ask you to read the reproducibility guidelines, especially pay attention to the frequently asked equations section, which is applicable to reviewers and authors, and to confirm that the reproducibility checklist responses align with the submission in your review.  

Writing the review

• Make sure your review contains the following:

  • A quick summary of the paper

  • A statement whether the paper fits into the scope of IPCAI

  • A discussion of the major strengths and weaknesses

  • A discussion of the clarity of presentation

  • Suggestions for improvement of the paper

• Please be specific and detailed in your reviews. Your main critique of the paper should be written in terms of a list of strengths and weaknesses. You can use bullet points here, but also explain your arguments. 

• Be specific about novelty. Claims in a review that the submitted work “has been done before” MUST be backed up with specific references and an explanation of how closely they are related. At the same time, for a positive review, be sure to summarize what novel aspects are most interesting in the Strengths section.

• Be generous about giving the authors new ideas for how they can improve their work. You might suggest a new technical tool that could help, a dataset that could be tried, an application area that might benefit from their work, or a way to generalize their idea to increase its impact.

• Short reviews are unhelpful to authors, other reviewers, and Area Chairs. If you have agreed to review a paper, you should take enough time to write a thoughtful and detailed review. Bullet lists with one short sentence per bullet are NOT a detailed review. Your discussion, more than your score, will help the authors, fellow reviewers, and Area Chairs understand the basis for your recommendation, so please be thorough. 

• You should include specific feedback on ways the authors can improve their papers.

• In the discussion of related work and references, simply saying “this is well known” or “this has been common practice in the industry for years” is not sufficient: You MUST cite specific publications, including books or public disclosures of techniques. If you do not provide references to support your claim, the Area Chairs can discount it.

• Take the time to write good reviews. Ideally, you should read a paper and then think about it over the course of several days before you write your review.

• Be specific when you suggest that the writing needs to be improved. If there is a particular section that is unclear, point it out and give suggestions for how it can be clarified.

• Do not give away your identity by asking the authors to cite several of your own papers.

• The tone of your review is important. A harshly written review will be resented by the authors, regardless of whether your criticisms are true. If you take care, it is always possible to word your review constructively while staying true to your thoughts about the paper.

• Avoid referring to the authors in the second person (“you”). It is best to avoid the term “the authors” as well, because you are reviewing their work and not the person. Instead, use the third person (“the paper”). Referring to the authors as “you” can be perceived as being confrontational, even though you may not mean it this way.

Post-review checklist

After your review, check that you 

• Have destroyed all digital or physical copies of papers and supplementary material associated with the submission.

• Maintain submission confidentiality, including all submissions that are eventially rejected by IPCAI.

• Alert the meta-reviewer if you discover any issues with your review using CMT as soon as possible.

Ethics for reviewing papers

• Confidentiality: You have the responsibility to protect the confidentiality of the ideas represented in the papers you review. By accepting to review a paper, you must not distribute any of the submitted material,  or discuss papers under review with anyone except the meta-reviewers or the IPCAI program committee.  You must not use ideas from a paper that you review to develop new ones of your own before its publication.

• Avoid conflict of interest: it is important for you to identify and avoid any conflict of interest. 

• Be professional: Belittling or sarcastic comments have no place in the reviewing process. The most valuable comments in a review are those that help the authors understand the shortcomings of their work and how they might improve it. 

Conflicts of interest

You have a conflict of interest if any one of the following items are true:

• 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. If you're a member of an author's thesis committee, and the paper is about his or her thesis work, then you were involved.

• You suspect that others might perceive a conflict of interest in your involvement.

• You have collaborated with one of the authors in the past three years (more or less). Collaboration is usually defined as having written a paper or grant proposal together, although you should use your judgment.

• You were the MS/PhD advisor or advisee of one of the authors. Most funding agencies and publications typically consider advisees to represent a lifetime conflict of interest. You should think carefully before reviewing a paper you know to be written by a former advisor or advisee, especially a recent one.

• You have a business partnership, or you are relative or have close personal relationships. 

Additional Sources

https://cvpr2022.thecvf.com/reviewer-guidelines 

https://miccai2021.org/en/REVIEWER-GUIDELINES.html