SmartChair Manual

Service · Paper submission

Submission, bidding & review

This is the heart of the paper service: how a submitted paper finds its reviewers, gets reviewed and discussed, and receives a decision — and who does what at each step.

The flow

1SubmissionAuthor uploads paper
2BiddingPC Members state preferences
3AssignmentPapers matched to reviewers
4ReviewReports filled in
5DiscussionReviewers confer
6DecisionResult to author

A result that allows revision loops the paper back to step 1: the author submits a revised version (R1, R2, …) before the revision deadline, and the organizers choose whether the same reviewers or new ones handle it.

Who does what

RoleIn this flow
AuthorSubmits and updates the paper; sees the author-visible part of the reports and the final result; submits revisions when allowed.
PC MemberA program-committee reviewer. Takes part in bidding — marking each paper Want / Maybe / Don't want — and registers research-area expertise; then reviews the papers assigned.
RefereeAn external reviewer invited for specific papers. Does not bid; receives direct assignments and writes reports.
PC Chair / ChairRuns the pipeline: opens bidding, runs the automatic assignment, adjusts it by hand, sends invitations and reminders, opens discussion, and enters decisions.
Associate EditorOptionally manages review for a delegated subset of papers and recommends decisions.

Bidding

During the bidding period, PC Members see the submitted papers (title and abstract, or the full paper if the conference allows) and mark each one Want, Maybe, or Don't want. Bidding is optional per conference — smaller conferences can skip straight to manual assignment.

Assignment

The automatic assignment matches papers to reviewers using bidding results and research-area overlap, under two organizer-set bounds: a minimum number of reviews per paper and a maximum number of papers per reviewer. Organizers can preview the result, adjust any paper's reviewer list by hand, decide what happens to existing assignments (keep or overwrite), and then send invitation e-mails. A reviewer's actual set of papers is always visible to the organizers, alongside each reviewer's progress.

Review and discussion

Each assigned reviewer fills in the conference's review form; a report is Under review until the reviewer submits it as Completed (and can be reopened for editing). When discussion is enabled, the reviewers of the same paper share an anonymous discussion board during the discussion window, and can read each other's reports (author-visible items only) through report sharing. Under blind review, author names are hidden from reviewers throughout.

Decision

Organizers record a result per paper from the conference's result list. Accepted and Not accepted always exist; other options are free text, and an option marked as revision-allowed (for example “Revision needed”) is what re-opens submission for that paper. Results, and the author-visible report content, reach authors through the portal and through result-notification e-mails.

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