Reviewer Assignment
Match reviewers to submissions from three sub-tabs. Auto Assign matches by expertise, Manual Assign picks a reviewer by hand, and Assignments & Progress is where you approve, replace or remove reviewers.
Purpose
The Reviewer Assignment section of the Review tab is where your submissions and your review committee become a set of submission and reviewer assignments. It is the first section of the Review tab and has three sub-tabs:
- Auto Assign matches reviewers to submissions by expertise and suggests reviewers for every one.
- Manual Assign lets you pick one reviewer and give them the submissions you choose.
- Assignments & Progress lists every submission with its reviewers (or every reviewer with their submissions). This is where you approve suggestions and fix individual assignments.
The section appears in Full tier programs that use the Direct review mode. The assignments it produces feed the Progress and Reviewers columns of Reviews & Decisions.
When you use it
Open Reviewer Assignment once submissions are in and your committee is set up, usually right after the submission deadline:
- Run Auto Assign to get suggested reviewers for every submission at once.
- Approve the suggestions in Assignments & Progress.
- Use Manual Assign, or the edit button in Assignments & Progress, to fill gaps or to replace a reviewer.
Auto Assign only suggests. A suggested reviewer gets no task and no email until you approve the suggestion in Assignments & Progress. Manual Assign is different: it assigns at once and notifies the reviewer.
Walkthrough
- 1
Open the Program Chair Console, select the program, click the Review tab, then Reviewer Assignment.
- 2
Choose Auto Assign to match the whole program, or Manual Assign to assign one reviewer by hand.
- 3
Open Assignments & Progress to see the result, approve suggestions, and edit any submission or reviewer.
Tips
Links from older emails that open the Matching, Manage Assignments or Manage Reviewers screens now open Auto Assign or Assignments & Progress.
You can't assign reviewers or an area chair to a paper you are an author of while another chair of the program can; they do it. When you are the only one with that right, you can.
Reviewer bidding is turned off in the PC Console for now. The Reviewers may bid assignment rule and the bidding dates are hidden, and Auto Assign matches on expertise and conflicts only. Settings you saved earlier are kept.