Assign papers to reviewers for review

Management -> Paper reviewing -> Reviewers

Background

When external reviewers evaluate the papers, each reviewer is assigned the papers he is to review. In most cases, each paper is first reviewed independently by several reviewers and the program committee can then make the final decision on each paper on this basis.

In order for the reviewers to start the review process, the individual papers must not only be assigned to the respective reviewers, but the responsibility for the papers must also be transferred from the authors to the reviewers in the workflows.

Finally, an email should be sent to all reviewers with the most important information at the start of the review process (access to the system, review deadline, review criteria, etc.).

Papers can either be assigned to reviewers automatically based on the topic or the assignment can be done manually.

Assigning papers automatically

Prerequisites

• Reviewers have been assigned to the topic areas for which they are to review papers. Reviewers without topic areas are not assigned any papers by automatic assignment.

• The two decisive parameters for the automatic assignment Number of reviewers per paper (A) and Max. number of papers per reviewer (B) are set appropriately in the basic configuration of the paper review, see Fig. 1

• The persons with a reviewer function have no duplicates among the authors.

Fig. 1: Parameters for the automatic assignment of papers to reviewers

Procedure

1. Click the Assign abstracts button (1) in the list of reviewers to access the assignment overview.

2. Click one of the two buttons to assign reviewers (2)

3. Check the assignment and fill gaps if necessary

Fig. 2: Automatically assign papers to reviewers by Converia

Notes

• During the automatic assignment, the system tries to find the configured number of reviewers (A in Fig. 1) with a suitable topic for each paper.

• Each reviewer receives no more than the configured maximum number of papers (B in Fig. 1).

• The assignment is made at random and the system tries to distribute the papers evenly among the reviewers (workload).

• The result of the assignment is displayed in a table. The table has one row for each paper and as many columns as configured in the number of reviewers per paper (=A).

• If not enough reviewers could be found by the system when the papers were assigned according to their main topic (= the paper's first submission topic) and several topics per paper could be specified during submission, you can use the Assign reviewers button (= all submission topics of the paper) to fill any gaps in the assignment.

• By default, no reviewer will be assigned to a paper in which he is an author, unless you activate the option Allow reviewers as reviewer of own papers in the basic configuration paper review. Prerequisite: There are no more duplicate persons among the reviewers in this conference (reviewer/author, see deduplication).

• As long as the reviewers have not yet started the review process, the current assignment can be removed at any time using the red button “Remove all reviewer-paper assignments”. Assignments for which a review has already been made will be retained and will not be deleted.

Assignment gaps

If the system cannot find the configured number of reviewers (A) for all papers during the assignment process, these gaps (empty cells in the table) are listed individually and in detail as red messages.

Fig. 3: Assignment gap: No further reviewer could be found for paper 138

Possible causes for assignment gaps

• There are not enough reviewers in the corresponding topic

• Thematically suitable reviewers have already been assigned the maximum number of papers (=B)

• Thematically suitable reviewers are authors of the paper in question

Procedure for filling assignment gaps

If all papers must be assigned to the configured number of reviewers (A), then the following steps can be taken:

• If necessary, do not just make the assignment based on the main topic (see notes above)

• Find additional reviewers who can take over the review in the understaffed topics

• Increase the maximum number of papers per reviewer (B)

• Reduce the number of reviewers per paper (A), remove all existing assignments and make new assignments

• Fill gaps manually, see below

Gaps in the assignment can be eliminated by adjusting the parameters and then clicking again on one of the two buttons to assign reviewers. This can be repeated as often as you like – existing assignments will not be changed.

Special assignment scenarios

With suitable parameters (A and B from Fig. 1), special assignment scenarios can be realized.

For example, automatic assignment can also be carried out in several stages in order to assign all papers to selected "review chairs", for example, and then to distribute the papers among other independent reviewers as usual.

• Stage 1: All review chairs receive all topics, Parameters: A1 = number of review chairs, B1 = total number of all papers -> assign reviewers automatically

• Stage 2: All normal reviewers only receive their respective topics afterwards (and therefore no papers in the first stage), parameters: A2 = number of review chairs + number of normal reviewers, B2 = maximum number of papers for normal reviewers -> assign reviewers again

Assign papers manually

Manually assigning papers can be used to realize individual assignment scenarios or to easily close gaps after automatic assignment.

The assignment paper ↔ reviewer can be created or removed from both sides, both from the paper and from the reviewer's side.

Assignments from the reviewer's view

List of reviewers -> Reviewer Details -> Abstracts/Manuscripts tab

Fig. 4: Assignment of paper ↔ reviewer from the reviewer's point of view

To manually assign a paper, go to the reviewer overview:

• Find the desired reviewer and click on the pencil to edit (1) and then adjust either the abstract or manuscript assignment.
• Select Assign paper (2) if you want to assign individual papers.

• Select a paper and add it. (3)

• Alternatively, you can assign all papers in a specific topic, add all papers or remove all papers, or assign all papers in the topics that are stored in the reviewer profile.

• You can remove incorrectly assigned papers from this reviewer using the red cross .

Assignments from the paper view

Paper list -> Paper details -> Review tab

The assigned reviewers of a paper can also be edited from the paper view. You can choose a reviewer in the select box and add it to the paper (for abstract or manuscript review) or remove existing reviewer assignments with the red cross .

Fig. 5: Assignment of paper ↔ reviewer from the paper's point of view