Track chair: The Review Process Explained

The aim of the review process is to have qualified individuals look at submissions to decide if the content is appropriate for the conference. Generally speaking, the majority of or all submissions will undergo some sort of review before accepted into the conference. Some submissions may be accepted without a review (e.g., invited speakers/keynotes) and others may be rejected due to lack of relevance, lack of space or the quality of the submission content.

Track chairs are able to assist the admins in the review process. Each conference has unique review settings that are configured by conference administrators. In some cases, admins may ask track chairs to perform many actions such as allocating submissions to reviewers, starting the review, assigning decisions and notifying authors. In other cases, admins may not want track chairs to take specific actions.

Overview of the track chair role during the review process:

Conference organisers may ask you to take (or not take!) the following steps:

• Add or invite reviewers and ensure they are ready to review
• Run the allocation on your track(s) to match qualified reviewers with submissions based on topics
• Double check the allocation and make adjustments to the assignments before formally opening the review, if needed
• Formally open the review by hitting the Send to Reviewers button and emailing reviewers their assignments so they can get started
• Manage the review which includes things like send reminder emails to reviewers, changing assignments mid-review if needed and manually assigning reviewers to late submissions (if any)
• Assign decisions to submissions
• Notify authors of your decisions