STAIR'11 EasyChair Reviewer Guide

Dear respected reviewers,

This is a simple guideline to get you started with reviews on EasyChair.

1. Registration

You should have already received the invitation email for the PC, together with a link to connect to the login page. The link for STAIR'11 is https://www.easychair.org/account/signin.cgi?conf=stair11

If you have registered to use EasyChair before, you can log in using your previous login details in A.If you never used EasyChair before, choose the "sign up for an account" option (B).

If you have choose to sign up for an account, follow the steps in the system to set up your account. Fill in the details and click Continue: now you should be correctly registered.

An email notification will be sent to the account you have specified in the email field. Click on the link given in the notification email. You will be directed to a form where you can fill in your account details. Once you have completed the form, click "Create my account" to create your EasyChair account.

You can now log into the system with the account details that you have created. Use the link provided earlier and log into the system. Once logged, you'll be shown the following message.

2. Check Your Review Assignments

Once logged into the system, if you click on "Submissions" inside the top menu (A), you'll be shown the list of all the submissions in your assigned track.

To get only the papers you've been chosen to review for STAIR'11, click on Reviews->My papers.

The "My papers" list shows you only the papers you have to review.

3. Start Reviewing

In the "My papers" section, a list of all submissions assigned to you will be shown. For each one of them you have access to its Details, you can download it in PDF format by clicking the Paper icon. You can also download all the papers you have to review at once, just by clicking on the "Download these submissions" link on the top right.

To start reviewing, you can:

Add a review while you're connected (marked A above, refer to section 2.1) OR
You can download the Review form (B, refer to section 2.2)

You can also invite someone to make the review for you (C, refer to section 2.3)

2.1 Online Reviewing

You can access this feature just by clicking on the green "Add new review" button which appears next to the paper names in the list. The following online review form will be shown:

Now you'll have the chance to directly add your review:

In the "Paper and reviewer information" you can specify if this review is made by yourself or by someone else
The "Evaluation" frame is particularly important, as it contains the parameters that will be used to calculate the final rating, that is the Overall evaluation and the Reviewer's confidence
The last frame called "Review" contains the detailed review, which is particularly important for the paper authors as they'll read your feedback and the justification of your scores here

Once you have completed the review form, click on the "Submit review" button at the end of the form.

2.2 Download Review Form

Review forms can be downloaded easily, just by clicking the Review form link next to papers and then the Download button at the top right corner. The downloaded files are simple text files that can be cut and pasted inside emails (if you want to ask someone else to review the paper for you), and edited within a normal text editor (e.g. notepad). Editing the template is pretty easy and there are detailed instructions inside the file itself. The advantage of using the template is that after you've edited it you can paste it inside the system or upload it and it will be automatically parsed and added to the reviews.

You can also choose the Reviews->Download review forms option from the main menu you'll be able to download all the review forms at once.

Choose the download option that suits your need best.

2.3 Request a Review

If you want, you can request someone else to make a review for you: invited users don't have to be subscribed to EasyChair, so the process is pretty easy for them. First of all, click on Request review next to the paper title.

You'll be then shown a window like this:

When you've completed the required fields (and customized the body of the mail) click on Send request and the request will be sent to the email address you specified. The person you've invited will receive an email containing a link to the paper page and the possibility to accept or refuse the review. If the person accepts, then he'll be able to download the review form too.

Once your reviewer has read the paper and completed the review form, he'll have to send it to you by email, then you'll be able to upload it on EasyChair (more details about this in the next section).

4. Send the reviews

The last step, if you've written your reviews using the review forms, is to upload them. This is pretty simple: just choose Reviews->Upload reviews from the main menu, then choose the file(s) that contain your reviews and upload them.

If everything went ok, you'll be shown a similar message as the following:

Thank you

If you've completed your review process, thank you. The STAIR'11 organizing committee wishes to convey our sincerest gratitude for your kind assistance.

Reference: http://airlab.elet.polimi.it/index.php/EasyChair_Reviews