IEEE INFOCOM 2013 Conference, Turin, Italy

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Summary of Action Items for TPC Members

  1. Accept or Decline the TPC Invitation (within 1 week of receipt).
  2. Plan to attend INFOCOM 2013 TPC Informational/Planning Meeting on March 28, 2012 - during INFOCOM 2012 (Highly Recommended).
  3. Select TPC topics of interest, methodology, and update Conflicts of Interest by July 20, 2012
  4. Claim papers by August 4, 11:59PM PDT.
  5. Expect to be notified of all papers assigned to you by August 22, 2012.
  6. Report conflict-of-interest and get papers reassigned by August 25, 2012.
  7. Complete TPC Regular Reviews for papers by October 1, 2012
  8. Lead/Participate in online discussion on your assigned papers (October 2-16, 2012)
  9. Write Lead TPC Discussion Summary/Review by October 16, 2012
  10. Attend TPC Meeting (Highly Recommended) on November 10, 2012 in Arizona State University, Tempe (Phoenix area).
 

As an IEEE INFOCOM 2013 TPC member, your reviews and participation in the TPC are crucial in determining the ultimate quality of the conference. Here are some guidelines to help clarify the TPC work. A simple way to think about the TPC duties is to think reciprocally about what you expect as an author of a paper from a peer in the community: a good, substantive review, a decision that is well-founded on the consensus of the reviews and good feedback. This is what we expect from TPC members. The element of randomness in the process cannot be eliminated, but we want to minimize it while biasing it towards merit and providing good feedback to authors.

Table of Contents

 

Updating your topics of interest and conflicts of interest information

You are requested to update your topics of interest for INFOCOM 2013 and your conflicts of interest information on EDAS after accepting the invitation to serve on the TPC by following the instructions below. You can update your topics of interest by logging into http://edas.info/ using your login email address and your EDAS password. Then click on "My TPCs" tab. You will see a list of conferences in which you serve as a TPC member. In the row for "INFOCOM 2013", please click on the cell in the "Interests (edit)" column. The link is usually set as "undefined", by default. In the subsequent screen, you will see that you are listed as "neutral" to all the topics for the conference. Please select at least eight (8) topics and click on the corresponding menu buttons in the "of interest" column. Similarly, please select as many topics which are not "of interest" to you. Please be sure to click on "Change topics of interest" button at the bottom of the page to update your topics of interest. Below the list of topics, you will see a list of methodologies. Please choose at least two (2) methodologies and click on the corresponding menu buttons in the "of interest" column. It is critical that you update your topics and methodologies of interest before the review assignment, in order to make sure that you have the best chance to receive papers which fall in your topics and methodologies of interest.
You can update your conflicts of interest (COI) information by logging into http://edas.info/ using your login email address and your EDAS password. Then click on "My Profile" tab. On the first line, please click on the link listed as "conflicts of interest". In the subsequent screen, you will see a list of individuals with whom you have identified Conflicts-of-Interest. Please note that in EDAS, "Your initial list of conflicts-of-interest consists of individuals having the same email domain, the same name or those that have co-authored EDAS-registered papers with you. You can provide either the name of the organization, the name of an individual, or an email domain, or several of these." Please be sure to identify all individuals with whom you have conflicts of interest, paying particular attention to potential INFOCOM 2013 authors and TPC members. We greatly appreciate your efforts in updating this information in EDAS so that we may avoid unnecessary changes to review assignments later, a time-consuming process.Please read the INFOCOM 2013 Definition of Conflict of Interest for determining the set of individuals you need to list on EDAS provided below. People/institutions that you are in "conflict of interest" consist of the following:

  • Same institution within 4 years (anywhere in your organization or parent company counts); note that this includes your previous or future institution if you have recently changed job, or are in the process of changing job.
  • Co-author (or pending) a publication within 4 years, in any technical area, including patents, tech. reports, etc.
  • Active or pending grant, proposal, or application of any sort together
  • Ph.D, post-doctoral advisor/advisee at any time, current or past
  • Close personal friend (or enemy!)
  • Any other non-technical bias
 

Claiming papers

You can claim (request) the papers that you would like to review for INFOCOM 2013 by logging into EDAS (http://edas.info) using your login email address and your EDAS password. Then click on "My TPCs" tab. You will see a list of conferences in which you serve as a TPC member. In the row for "INFOCOM 2013", please click on the cell in the "Requested (claim)" column. In the subsequent screen, you will see a list of papers marked as one of the following: Want to review, Can review, Review if needed and Cannot review. Please select at least 75 papers and click on the corresponding menu buttons in the "Want to review," "Can review" and "Review if needed" columns. Similarly, please select as many papers which you feel you "Cannot review." Please be sure to click on "Change" button at the bottom of the page to update your list of claimed (requested) papers for INFOCOM 2013. Please be sure to list at least 75 papers in the Want to Review, Can Review and Review if needed columns (total) and at least 45 papers in the Want to Review column to provide us with enough flexibility to assign three independent reviewers to each paper.

Frequently asked questions

I am not able to view the list of abstracts to claim from? - Detailed Instructions
Please log into EDAS (http://edas.info) using your login email address and your EDAS password. If you have forgotten your EDAS password, you will need to follow instructions at http://edas.info to request the system to email you your password. If you have already logged in to EDAS, you can Claim Papers by clicking on the "My TPCs" tab at the top, then going to the row marked "INFOCOM 2013" and clicking on the number (usually 0) in the corresponding cell in the column marked "Requested (claim)." If the list of papers (abstracts) that match your interest is large, you will receive a message such as: "There are *NUM* papers in the list for *your EDAS ID* - restrict topics." To modify (or select) topics "Of Interest" and restrict the list of papers that are shown to you, please follow the directions above. Please make sure that you mark as many topics as possible under "no interest" and click on "Change topics of interest." Then please try the process of Claiming papers again. According to the EDAS webpage on selecting topics: "Papers containing the topics labeled 'of interest' will be included, those containing topics 'not of interest' will be excluded even if they contain topics of interest. Papers labeled with the neutral topics will be included if they also contain topics that are of interest." Please be sure to list at least 75 papers in the Want to Review, Can Review and Review if needed columns (total) and at least 45 papers in the Want to Review column to provide us with enough flexibility to assign three independent reviewers to each paper.

I am not able to see the My TPCs tab - Detailed Instructions
Please click on the "My profile" tab and then click on the "My TPCs" tab.

I have too many papers (> 100) claimed in the categories: Want to Review + Can Review + Review if needed. How do I reduce this number?
You need to move more papers to the other category: Cannot Review. This is done by clicking on the Claim link and then marking a different category (column) for the papers in the Can Review category, since these constitute the bulk of your selections typically. Another option for you is to modify your set of topics to mark more of the topics as "no interest" and try the claims process with fewer abstracts. Please be sure to list at least 75 papers in the Want to Review, Can Review and Review if needed columns (total) and at least 45 papers in the Want to Review column to provide us with enough flexibility to assign three independent reviewers to each paper.
 

Regular Review vs. Lead TPC Review/Summary

  • Each TPC member will be the TPC lead for about 5 papers and will be a regular reviewer for about 12-15 papers (including the ones for which he/she is the TPC lead reviewer).
  • For papers for which you are the TPC lead, in your EDAS screen (after you login, select "My TPCs" and INFOCOM 2013 from the list of conferences), you will see both a link to "tpc" as well as "review" under the "Type" column.
  • For papers for which you are a regular reviewer, you will only see the "review" link under the "Type" column. First, you need to provide a review for each of the papers in your list by using the "review" link and filling out the review form by the Regular Review deadline. You may delegate some regular reviews as described below (see Delegation).
  • After that there will be an online discussion phase during which you can discuss with other reviewers/TPC leads each of the papers that has been assigned to you for review. The messages posted during the online discussion will not be made available to the authors. Please see below for instructions on how to participate in the online discussion.
  • Once the discussion phase is over, as the TPC lead you will need to provide a summary of the discussions in the form of a TPC lead (meta) review. For this, please click on the "tpc" link under the "Type" column for your TPC lead papers and fill out the TPC summary form and choose one of four categories for each paper
    1. Accept
    2. Discuss
    3. Needs Additional Review and
    4. Reject.
  • This TPC lead (meta) review (TPC summary) needs to be completed by the TPC Summary deadline. The TPC summary will not be made available to the authors.
 

Accepting and Delegating Reviews - HOWTO

If you are a TPC member with primary review responsibilities, you will receive by the deadline, your review assignments with upto 5 papers for which you are the TPC lead reviewer and upto 12-15 papers for which you are the regular reviewer. Please note that you will be assigned a regular review for each of the papers for which you are a TPC lead reviewer. So the actual number of papers that you will deal with is only around 12-15.

How do I accept all of my review assignments?
When you log in to your EDAS page (http://edas.info) for INFOCOM 2013 (and click on My Reviews tab), you will be shown a list of all the papers you are handling for this conference. Please click on the link at the top of the table which states "You can also accept and decline reviews in a batch." You will be presented with a list of all your review assignments with the status Accepted column marked for each paper. If you have ensured that you do not have a conflict of interest with any of the authors for the papers in this list, please go ahead and click on the "Change" button at the bottom of the page.

How do I accept my review assignments one by one?
When you log in to your EDAS page (http://edas.info) for INFOCOM 2013 (and click on My Reviews tab), you will be shown a list of all the papers you are handling for this conference. To accept your TPC lead (meta) review assignments: In the second column (marked Type of review), please click on the link marked "tpc" and then click on the "Accept review" button. Please do this for each of the papers for which you are the TPC lead (meta) reviewer. Please note that you may not delegate your TPC lead (meta) reviews and you may not decline your TPC review assignments unless you have a conflict of interest with the authors. To accept your regular review assignments: In the second column (marked Type of review), please click on the link marked "review" and then click on the "Accept review" button. Please do this for each of the papers for which you are the regular reviewer. Please note that you may not delegate your regular reviews to graduate students and you may only delegate a maximum of one-third (up to 5) of your regular reviews to qualified colleagues and you may not decline your regular review assignments unless you have a conflict of interest with the authors. We request that you ACCEPT all of your review assignments within a week after receiving the notification emails and no later than Sep. 1, 2012.

How do I decline my review assignments?
Please follow the instructions above to view the review assignments and instead of clicking on "Accept review" button, please click on the "Decline review" button. Please decline reviews ONLY when there is a conflict of interest with the authors of the paper.

How do I delegate my regular review to a qualified colleague?
First, please read the INFOCOM Delegation guidelines below. From your INFOCOM 2013 TPC member page, please do the following:
  1. Click on the paper number
  2. Click on the pencil icon for editing your Review pencil_icon
  3. Click on Delegate the review
  4. Please enter the last name or EDAS ID of the reviewer. There may be many IDs for an individual and so please select the active one in consultation with the potential reviewer.
  5. You will then be able to edit the Review invitation email sent out by EDAS. Please add content at the top to let the potential reviewer know that the invitation is coming from you and not the INFOCOM 2013 TPC Co-chairs (default).
  6. You will receive a copy of the completed review by email when your delegate has submitted it.
  7. Delegation must be done within 2 weeks of papers assigned to the TPC member.
  8. The TPC member must also follow up with their delegates to finish their reviews, and oversee the quality. Please inform the delegate that they are also co-responsible with you for actively participating in the online discussion phase.
 

Participating in Online Discussions - HOWTO

To post an online discussion message for a paper that you are reviewing, please do the following (after the Regular Review deadline).

  1. Click on the Paper number (after clicking on My reviews tab upon EDAS login).
  2. You should be able to view the reviews and at the bottom of the page, there will be a Discussion section.
  3. Click on the Discuss bubble icon bubble_icon. You will see a text box in the subsequent screen. Please type in your comments about the paper. The discussion messages will be emailed to all the reviewers and Lead TPC member for that paper. You will also be able to view the discussion messages online.
  4. For guidelines on the online discussion phase, please see below.

As lead TPC member of a paper, you will need to take an active role in the discussion regarding that paper. You may ask reviewers to clarify their remarks, provide additional justification for their comments etc. Once you have completed the discussion phase, you (as Lead TPC member) will need to summarize the discussion in your Lead TPC Review/Summary.

 

High-Quality Review

High-quality reviews is by far the most important contribution of a TPC member.

  • Basic Quantity/Quality: Reviews of length shorter than 100 words will generate an automated EDAS feedback to you requesting more input.
  • Kindly do not cut-and-paste the same information in different categories when this happens: please enter feedback that will be useful to authors.
  • In particular, if any of the papers are reviewed with the help of students, we expect the TPC member to provide oversight and clarity and personally enter the reviews into the EDAS system.
  • In the TPC meeting, a review having a score of 5 with a short unsubstantiated review will be discounted, and the other dissenting reviews may override the higher score if they are more substantive.

So, if you want your reviews to matter in TPC discussions, please enter substantive, high-quality reviews.

 

Coherence between numerical scores and review content

INFOCOM 2013 will adopt a numerical score range of 1 to 5 for reviews. The TPC lead assigned to a given paper will have to check if the numerical scores are well justified by the written reviews (and also catch short/low quality reviews), and follow up with reviewers using EDAS. Since every TPC member is a lead for some papers, kindly use this opportunity to check the coherence of the scores/reviews you give to papers.
For example, if there is a score of 5, there has to be clear enumeration of reasons why this paper deserves that rating. (Remember that the scores are logarithmic!) After you have reviewed all papers, and see the distribution of scores you have given, please see if there is any bias in your scoring and if it is indeed justified by the quality of the papers in your set.
Similarly, a rating of 2 or 1 may lead to a paper not making it to the TPC meeting: so it is the reviewer's responsibility to give more feedback for authors. Please note that irrespective of your scores, if a paper has reviews that are not strong, the scores may not matter.

 

Delegation guidelines

The following guidelines apply to delegation of reviews. In principle, we strongly discourage delegation unless there is a compelling need such as a very qualified reviewer for a given paper.

  • Lead TPC papers (typically 5): NO DELEGATION. We expect the TPC member to read the paper and write the review and actively participate in the post-review on-line discussion phase. Please note that you may not delegate the regular review for your Lead TPC papers.
  • One-third of regular reviews (about 5 out of 12-15): Delegate to qualified researcher via EDAS, but *NOT* graduate students. Delegation must be done within 2 weeks of papers assigned to the TPC member (by September 8, 2012). The TPC member must also follow up with their delegates to finish their reviews, and oversee the quality. Please inform the delegate that they are also co-responsible with you for actively participating in the online discussion phase.
 

TPC On-line discussion phase: Guidelines

  • Each TPC member is a TPC lead for at most 5 papers. In this online discussion phase, the TPC-lead should try to resolve conflicting reviews and to come up with a unanimous recommendation for these papers. The TPC-lead is also in charge of writing a short review (known as the TPC-lead or meta- review), which summarizes the discussion and makes a recommendation (Accept, Needs additional review, Discuss at TPC meeting or Reject).
  • TPC Leads: Please start the discussion as soon as two reviews are available instead of waiting for all three reviews to be submitted. The other reviewers will receive the discussion message through an e-mail from EDAS. Discussion messages can always be viewed on the EDAS page for the paper. For details on how to initiate and post discussion messages, please refer to the detailed instructions above.
  • Discussion messages are sent anonymously to all the TPC members who have been assigned as reviewers for the paper as well as any delegated reviewers. You should not identify yourself when you post discussion messages on EDAS. Reviewers may identify each other as "Reviewer A", "Reviewer B" etc.
  • The TPC lead of a paper will have to check if the numerical scores are well justified by the written review (and also catch short/low quality reviews), and follow up with reviewers using EDAS requesting them to update their reviews.
  • Also, please just do not mark papers for "discuss" without adequate on-line discussion. During the TPC meeting, the group members spend an average of 15 minute per paper and do not have the time to *review* the paper in detail - they will depend quite a bit upon the paper comments and on-line discussions. Kindly provide them with more clarifications about why you have unresolved differences, and reasons for accept/reject.
  • If the paper truly needs more attention and an extra authoritative review, kindly mark it for an extra review. This year, we will have Area TPC chairs who will find such a review for papers and help in decision making.
  • The TPC-lead summary (meta-review) is due by Oct. 16. An extension of a few days can only be granted by the ATPC Chair who is responsible for the paper.
  • The ATPC chair can view the discussion messages and participate in the online discussions (if necessary). ATPC Chairs will also be able to view reviewer identities.
 

Role of Area TPC Chairs

For INFOCOM 2013, Area TPC Chairs will play a critical role in the review process after the online discussion phase is completed and the Lead TPC review/summary has been submitted. The role of the Area TPC Chairs is to categorize the paper as Accept, Discuss at TPC meeting or Reject. The Area TPC chairs may seek or provide additional reviews. The Area TPC chairs will also lead the discussion groups at the INFOCOM 2013 TPC meeting described below. Additional information about the role of the Area TPC Chairs can be found here.

 

TPC Meeting

The INFOCOM 2013 TPC Meeting is scheduled on November 10, 2012 in Arizona State University, Tempe (Phoenix area).
Details are on the INFOCOM 2013 website and can be found at the TPC meeting information page (accessible using the TPC Meeting Logistics page under TPC Menu). Please let us know if you will attend the meeting and the dinner through EDAS (log into EDAS, click on “MyTPC” tab, and then click on the “TPC meeting” icon in the INFOCOM 2013 row. All TPC members are invited to the TPC meeting. In order to put together a high-quality program, it is important to have you participate in this meeting. This is an invaluable experience to see how papers are actually accepted/rejected and which reviews matter and which reviews do not. It is a way to tap into the decision mindset of your peers in the community (especially for newer TPC members) so that you can write more competitive papers to INFOCOM and other conferences.
We expect to have a more focused set of papers at the TPC meeting with a higher acceptance probability (almost 30-40%) compared to the overall conference acceptance rate of 20%. This will hopefully bias the discussions to be positive and discuss papers which have good feedback from the TPC review, TPC discussion and Area TPC processes.
We expect to have groups discussing about 25--30 papers each, which will give an average of 15 min per paper (Note: these numbers are tentative at this stage and we will know better by October 2012). This is why the on-line TPC discussion should not "punt" the hard work to the TPC meeting and instead should give good feedback. Also, reviews having high ratings with short reviews may be discounted. Area TPC chairs may choose to bring in papers with lower numerical scores, but have substantive feedback (possibly through an extra review).

 

Registering for TPC Meeting - HOWTO

How do I register for the TPC meeting on EDAS?
When you log in to your EDAS page (http://edas.info), please click on the "My TPCs" tab, you will then be shown a list of all the conferences for which you are a TPC member. In the row for "INFOCOM 2013", you will see the icon people_iconunder the column "TPC meeting". Please click on the icon. Then answer the following questions:
  • (a) I will attend the TPC meeting
  • (b) I will attend dinner
  • (c) I will be staying at the hotel (TBD)
  • (d) I need vegetarian meal at dinner
You may indicate in the Comments field additional information such as "I will be arriving late", "I will have to leave early" etc. You may indicate your dietary restrictions by updating your profile on EDAS. There is a link provided to your profile in your TPC meeting page. Please click on the "Submit" button when you are finished.

Where can I find more information about the TPC meeting location?
Detailed information about the TPC meeting can be found at the TPC Meeting Info page on the INFOCOM 2013 website. Attendees are strongly encouraged to confirm your travel and hotel bookings early to obtain good rates in the Los Angeles area.

How do I know if I have already registered for the TPC meeting on EDAS?
When you log in to your EDAS page (http://edas.info), please click on the "My TPCs" tab), you will then be shown a list of all the conferences for which you are a TPC member. In the row for "INFOCOM 2013", you will see the icon people_icon under the column "TPC meeting". Please click on the icon and you will see your earlier response (both the radio buttons and the text box).

I need a formal registration/invitation letter to authorize my travel/reimbursement/Visa. Where can I obtain this?
Unfortunately, EDAS does not generate a confirmation email or registration letter to attendees. If you need written proof of registration/invitation for the TPC meeting, please contact Ms. Debora Kingston (email) at IEEE Communications Society.
 
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