Paper Review Process

Conferences that are held in cooperation with non-IEEE organizations are encouraged to have a review process that is consistent with the policy stated in the paragraph above.

IEEE policy and professional ethics requires that referees treat the contents of papers under review as privileged information not to be disclosed to others before publication. It is expected that no one with access to a paper under review will make any inappropriate use of the special knowledge which that access provides. This applies to anyone else who is authorized to handle conference submissions.

Conferences may use a “blind review” process where the authors are not revealed to the reviewers in order to allow concentration on content.

Depending upon the size and scope of the conference, the paper review process may include some or all of the following activities:

• receipt of all papers;
• logging of papers;
• assignment of most logical reviewers;
• simultaneous mailing to all identified reviewers;
• review of the papers;
• coordination of actual reviews and receipt of comments;
• constantly updated reports to all reviewers on the status of papers in the review process including statements of acceptance or rejection by the reviewers;
• close work on session plans to slot as many high-quality papers as possible in the conference;
• notification to all authors of acceptance or rejection of papers.

The status reports to reviewers should identify the reviewers of each paper, its present status (accepted/rejected), and any comments regarding the paper's quality or referral to another reviewer. 

The deadline for paper submission should be set sufficiently far in advance of the date of the conference to allow enough time for proper review. A schedule showing dates for the different tasks, deadlines, and dependencies should be established to help all Program Committee members as well as authors.