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Reviewer Instructions, Guidelines and Policies
Thank you for agreeing to review for IEEE ICCV13. The quality of the conference depends to a large extent on the willingness of reviewers like you to provide thoughtful, high-quality reviews. By agreeing to review papers for ICCV13, you commit to
  • review your assigned papers by the deadline dates
  • assess the author rebuttals
  • discuss the papers with Area Chairs and your fellow reviewers in a timely manner
All these duties will take place during the period of May 13 to July 21. We will strive to limit the reviewing load to about 6 papers for student reviewers and 10 papers for everyone else. Please read the following instructions carefully, as some reviewing duties are new or have changed for ICCV13.

At the bottom of this page you will find general guidelines on ICCV reviewing, writing technical reviews, and ethical considerations. See also the ICCV13 Author Instructions & Policies page.


The ICCV13 Reviewing Timeline
  • Mar 21: Reviewer invitations & instructions sent [registration instructions]
  • Mar 31: Reviewer registration deadline
  • Apr 12: Paper submission deadline
  • May 13: Papers assigned to reviewers
  • Jun 9: Pre-rebuttal section of review form due
  • Jun 14-Jul 8: Paper discussion with Area Chairs and fellow reviewers
  • Jul 9-15: Author rebuttal period
  • Jul 16-20: Discussion continues [additional reviewing instructions]
  • Jul 21: Post-rebuttal section of review form due


Important Changes to the ICCV13 Review Process

If you have reviewed for ICCV, ECCV or CVPR in the past, we would like to draw your attention to three important changes this year:
  1. Your review form will have TWO parts, which you must complete by

    June 9 and July 21

    respectively. You will have approximately 4 weeks to complete the first part (May 13 to June 9). This part is similar to the review forms of recent years and will be shown to authors after a discussion with your Area Chair and fellow reviewers. The second (post-rebuttal) part will become visible after the author rebuttal and will include a request for your final accept/reject recommendation. A "borderline" score will not be an option there.
  2. Your task as a reviewer will not be complete until you submit your final recommendation by July 21.
  3. The registration information you enter on the CMT review system changed for ICCV13. We ask that you DO NOT enter the domain names of your co-authors' or collaborators' institutions. ONLY the domain name of the institution you CURRENTLY work or study should be entered on CMT. We also ask that you enter the URL of your Google Scholar Citations profile. See below for detailed instructions.


Reviewer Registration Instructions (register by March 31)

Step 1: Log on to CMT
  • We have already created an account for you on ICCV13's Conference Management Service (CMT). Your account name is the same as the email address you received your original reviewer invitation.
  • Please follow this link to create a new password and have it emailed to you. If you don't receive a new password within a few minutes, make sure the email is sent to the address you expect.
  • Log on to CMT with your new password.

Step 2: (NEW) Enter the domain of ONLY your current institution
  • The first time you log on to CMT you will be asked to enter your "Conflict Domains".
  • (NEW) Please ignore CMT’s instructions on the "Edit Conflict Domains" page about which domains to enter. These instructions are common to all conferences hosted by CMT and could not be customized for ICCV13 (ICCV13 will be using the DBLP service to automatically identify collaborators within the past 3 years).
  • (NEW) Please only enter the domain of the academic department or institution where you currently work or study. If you worked or studied at more than one institution in the past year, please enter the domain of each institution separated by semicolons.
  • If your institution is a university, please enter the domain of your academic department rather than the whole university.
  • (NEW) DO NOT enter the institution domain names of your current or past co-authors: only your institution should be entered.
  • (NEW) DO NOT enter the domain of your email providers such as gmail, yahoo, hotmail as your institution domain.

Step 3: (NEW) Select one TOP-LEVEL primary subject area
  • (NEW) Subject areas are organized hierarchically in two levels. Please choose a top-level subject area as your primary area.

Step 4: Select up to five secondary subject areas
  • You may select any combination of top-level and lower-level subject areas. Pay extra attention to these choices, as they are critical in allowing us to properly assign papers to reviewers.
  • (NEW) Your primary subject area cannot be selected as a secondary subject area; if you select it, the system will not allow you to save. It is possible, however, to select secondary subject areas that lie below your primary subject area in the hierarchy. For example, if you have chosen "3D computer vision" for your primary subject area, you cannot choose "3D computer vision" as a secondary subject area but you can choose "Stereo correspondence".

Step 5: (NEW) Create a Google Scholar Citations profile for yourself
  • We are working again this year with the Toronto Paper Matching system to assist with reviewer assignment functions. For this system to work, we need a representative sample of publications from you.
  • If you don't have a Google Scholar Citation profile already, please follow this link to create one.

Step 6: (NEW) Enter the URL of your Google Scholar citation profile in the"My URL" field on CMT
  • Please do not leave this field blank
  • DO NOT enter your home page URL in the "My URL" field, or any URL other than that of your Google Scholar Citations profile.


ICCV13 Reviewer Guidelines

Start Early

Based on the published schedule, you will have four weeks to complete the pre-rebuttal review form; please do not leave this for the last few days before the June 9 deadline. Adhering to this deadline is extremely important since all reviews of all papers must be submitted before we can move to the paper discussion phase, where your reviews will be visible to your fellow reviewers and your Area Chair.

Similarly, you will have a week after the author rebuttals to submit your final recommendation by July 21. Again, adhering this deadline is extremely important because Area Chairs will have a lot of work to do after that point.

What to Look For

Look for what's good or stimulating in the paper. Minor flaws can be corrected and shouldn't be a reason for rejection. Each paper that is accepted should, however, be technically sound and make a substantial contribution to the field.

Blind Reviews

Blind reviewing is an essential part of ICCV reviewing. Authors were asked to take reasonable efforts to hide their identities, including not listing their names or affiliations and omitting acknowledgments. This information will of course be included in the published version. Reviewers should also make all efforts to keep their identity invisible to the authors. Don't say, "you should have cited my paper!"

Note that posting a paper online or giving a public talk does not violate the double-blind policy. Reviewers must not seek the identity of the authors; authors must not bias the review process by suggesting their identities.

Be Specific

Please be specific and detailed in your reviews. 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: cite specific publications or public disclosures of techniques. The comment fields are the most important of the review. Your discussion, sometimes more than any scores, will help the authors, fellow reviewers and Area Chairs understand the basis of your opinion.

Your reviews will be returned to the authors and they will be given a chance to respond in their rebuttal. It is therefore important to help authors understand which comments in your review are most important to address in their response and which are less so.

You should include any specific feedback on ways the authors can improve their papers. For more suggestions on writing your reviews, read the section below on Writing Technical Reviews.

Be proactive: participate in discussions & respond promptly to Area Chair requests

Your task as a reviewer does NOT end when you submit the pre-rebuttal part of your review on June 9: reviewers are an integral part of the decision making and should be ready to provide additional input when necessary.

Don’t expect the Area Chair to initiate discussion on papers. When the discussion period begins, your fellow reviewers’ reviews will be visible to you by default. Take a look at what the other reviewers said right away and discuss on the CMT bulletin board. Such discussions must take place in cases of disparate recommendations; disagreement on technical or subjective grounds; errors in the reviews (yours or others’); or new evidence (e.g. important missing related work or technical errors caught by a subset of the reviewers).

If an Area Chair makes a request on the bulletin board, please respond promptly. Each Area Chair is responsible for dozens of papers and thus has a very significant workload; please help make their task easier by responding promptly when they make a request.

When You're Done

When you have finished with your review, you should destroy any paper manuscript and/or supporting material you received. See the Ethics guidelines below.


Writing Technical Reviews

Here are some recommendations that may help you as you do this very valuable task. In many professions, people give back to their community by doing volunteer work. In technical fields, we volunteer our time by reviewing papers that are written by other researchers in our field. We recommend that you approach your reviews in this spirit of volunteerism. Sure, your reviews make you a gatekeeper in helping decide which papers are ready for publication. Just as important, however, is to provide feedback to the authors so that they may improve their work. Try to write your review in a way that the authors can benefit from your review. We suggest reading a paper and then thinking about it over the course of several days before you write your review. "Living" with a paper for a few days gives you time to make thoughtful decisions about it. This is the best way to come up with helpful suggestions for improving the paper. To do this, you need to carve out some time in your day to think about the paper that you are reviewing. The tone of your review is important. A harshly written review will be disregarded by the authors, regardless of whether your criticisms are true. If you take care, it is always possible to word your review diplomatically while staying true to your thoughts about the paper. Put yourself in the mindset of writing to someone you wish to help, such as a respected colleague who wants your opinion on a concept or a project. Here are some specific issues to keep in mind as you write your reviews:
  • Short reviews are unhelpful to the authors and to other reviewers. If you have agreed to review a paper, you should take enough time to write a thoughtful and detailed 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.
  • Don't give away your identity by asking the authors to cite several of your own papers.
  • If you don't think the paper is right for the ICCV program, suggest other publication possibilities (journals, conferences, workshops) that would be a better match for the paper.
  • Avoid referring to the authors by using the phrase "you" or "the authors." These phrases should be replaced by "the paper." Directly talking about the authors can be perceived as being confrontational, even though you do not mean it this way.
Be generous about giving the authors new ideas for how they can improve their work. Your suggestions may be very specific (for example, "this numerical solver would be better for your application") or may be more general in nature. You might suggest a new dataset that could be tried, or a new application area that might benefit from their tool. You may tell them how their idea can be generalized beyond what they have already considered. A thoughtful review not only benefits the authors, but may well benefit you, too. Remember that your reviews are read by other reviewers and especially the Area Chairs, in addition to the authors. Being a helpful reviewer will generate good will toward you in the research community.


Ethics for Reviewing Papers

1. Protect Ideas
As a reviewer for ICCV, you have the responsibility to protect the confidentiality of the ideas represented in the papers you review. ICCV submissions are not published documents. The work is considered new or proprietary by the authors; otherwise they would not have submitted it. Of course, their intent is to ultimately publish to the world, but most of the submitted papers will not appear in the ICCV proceedings. Thus, it is likely that the paper you have in your hands will be refined further and submitted to some other journal or conference, or even to CVPR next year. Sometimes the work is still considered confidential by the author's employers. These organizations do not consider sending a paper to ICCV for review to constitute a public disclosure. Protection of the ideas in the papers you receive means:
  • Do not show the paper to anyone else, including colleagues or students, unless you have asked them to write a review, or to help with your review.
  • Do not show any results or videos/images or any of the supplementary material to non-reviewers.
  • Do not use ideas from papers you review to develop new ones.
  • After the review process, destroy all copies of papers and videos that are not returned to the senior reviewer and erase any implementations you have written to evaluate the ideas in the papers, as well as any results of those implementations.
2. Avoid Conflict of Interest
As a reviewer of a ICCV paper, you have a certain power over the reviewing process. It is important for you to avoid any conflict of interest. Even though you would, of course, act impartially on any paper, there should be absolutely no question about the impartiality of review. Thus, if you are assigned a paper where your review would create a possible conflict of interest, you should return the paper and not submit a review. Conflicts of interest include (but are not limited to) situations in which:
  • 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 the author's thesis committee, and the paper is about his or her thesis work, then you were involved.
  • You suspect that others might see a conflict of interest in your involvement. For example, even though Microsoft Research in Seattle and Beijing are in some ways more distant than Berkeley and MIT, there is likely to be a perception that they are "both Microsoft," so folks from one should not review papers from the other.
  • 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 of one of the authors or the MS/PhD advisee of one of the authors. Funding agencies typically consider advisees to represent a lifetime conflict of interest. ICCV has traditionally been more flexible than this, but you should think carefully before reviewing a paper you know to be written by a former advisee.
The blind reviewing process will help hide the authorship of many papers, and senior reviewers will try hard to avoid conflicts. But if you recognize the work or the author and feel it could present a conflict of interest, send the paper back to the Area Chair as soon as possible so he or she can find someone else to review it.

3. 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. Write a courteous, informative, incisive, and helpful review that you would be proud to add your name to (were it not anonymous).

Based on Specific Documents Created for SIGGRAPH by Greg Turk (used here with permission). UPDATED and Modified by Irfan Essa. A few other sources of reviewer guidelines from ACM and IEEE were also considered.