Background

To expose students to the academic review process and train the next generation of program committee (PC) members, the ACM IMC 2022 TPC would like to make submitted papers available to the Shadow TPC. The Shadow TPC allows participants to read papers at the submission stage, experience the peer-review process from a reviewer’s perspective, and discuss academic work with fellow Shadow TPC members. This opportunity allows future TPC members to learn first-hand about the peer-review process and gain experience as a reviewer.

The Shadow TPC’s peer-review process will closely resemble the actual one in function, workload, and timing. Yet, the two processes will run on isolated systems; STPC members have no access to any TPC information, including names of reviewers, reviews, or any other data such as relative rankings. Shadow TPC reviewers can not delegate reviews (i.e., request external reviews) and will have to abide by the same rules and restrictions applicable to regular TPC members (e.g., anonymity and confidentiality rules).

Changes to previous iterations

The Shadow TPC will have no direct impact on the actual TPC. Yet, we will experiment this year with forwarding “Best of Shadow TPC” comments — detailed review summaries for two pre-accepted papers with exceptionally high ratings—to the actual TPC. Please note that the actual TPC is free to ignore these comments. In addition to the overall peer-review process, the Shadow TPC will award a shadow “Best Paper”, which will be announced during the award ceremony.

Application

If you are interested in participating, please apply by uploading your application material to the https://imc22shadowtpc.hotcrp.com/ submission site by April 8, 2022, 23:59 AoE. Your application should contain a single PDF file including a CV and a brief (0.25-1 page) motivation statement explaining why you would like to participate in the Shadow TPC. Please indicate your name, position/year of study, areas of research experience, publications, and past reviewing experience (if any) in your application. If you mark them appropriately, you are also free to include tech reports, papers under submission, unreviewed manuscripts, etc.

Important Dates

Application Deadline Friday April 8, 2022 at 11:59PM AoE (UTC-12)
Notification Friday April 15, 2022
Paper Bidding Phase May 15, 2022–May 23, 2022
Review Phase 1 May 25, 2022–July 8, 2022
Review Phase 2 July 8, 2022–August 12, 2022
Online STPC Meeting Thursday August 18, 2022

For any further questions or concerns, please contact the Shadow TPC chairs via imc22shadowtpcchairs@mpi-inf.mpg.de.