Area Chair Console
A map of the Area Chair Console — how its six tabs let you oversee the papers in your area, from bidding and reviewer assignments through reviews, meta-reviews, decisions, and follow-up actions.
The Area Chair (AC) Console is your workspace for the papers you oversee in a program. It opens at /console/area-chair.
If you are an Area Chair on more than one program, the console first shows a selection grid; pick a program card to open its workspace. Each card shows the conference and year, your AC #, your program name, the review mode, a pending badge when assignments need your attention, and headline counts for AC Papers, reviewers Assigned, and reviewers Needed.
Once a program is open, a tab bar runs across the top.
Purpose
Give an Area Chair one place to shepherd the papers in their area — express review preferences through bidding, confirm or propose reviewer assignments, track review progress, write meta-reviews, see the final decisions, and raise conflicts, reassignment requests, escalations, and reviewer reminders.
When you use it
- To bid on the papers you would prefer (or prefer not) to handle.
- To approve the reviewers the PC Chair proposes for your papers — and, when your PC enables it, to assign reviewers yourself.
- To monitor review progress and write your meta-reviews.
- To see the accept/reject decisions for papers you handled.
- To report conflicts, request reassignments, escalate to your Senior Area Chair, or remind late reviewers.
The tabs
These are the tabs in the order they appear:
- 1
Dashboard — your assignment overview (AC papers, reviewers assigned, average affinity, conflicts), a pending-actions alert, quick actions, and an assignment progress bar.
- 2
Paper Bidding — rate how keen you are to handle each paper (Very High through Very Low) so the matching algorithm can place papers with you.
- 3
Reviewer Assignments — approve the reviewers proposed for your papers; when your PC enables it, this tab also lets you assign reviewers yourself. Carries a badge with the number of pending approvals.
- 4
Reviews & Meta — track review progress for every paper you touch and open each one to read reviews and write your meta-review. Carries a badge with the number of meta-reviews still owed.
- 5
Decisions — see the accept/reject decisions for the papers in your program.
- 6
Actions — follow-up operations: report a conflict, request a reassignment, escalate to your Senior Area Chair, or send reviewer reminders.
Tips
On the same program you can be the Area Chair for some papers and an ordinary reviewer for others. The Reviews & Meta tab labels each row AC or Reviewer so you can tell which hat you wear — AC papers need a meta-review, reviewer papers need a regular review.
The Reviewer Assignments tab only lets you assign reviewers yourself when the PC Chair has enabled AC reviewer assignment for your program. If that switch is off, the tab shows just the pending approvals you need to confirm.