Getting Started as a Reviewer

A program committee has asked you to review talk submissions for an event. You'll be assigned specific talks, score them against the committee's criteria, and leave feedback — all from the Me portal, without needing to know anything else about how the event is run.

Where to Find It

Me > Reviews

Once you're signed in, open Reviews to see everything assigned to you.

What You'll Learn

1. How to sign in and find your review queue
2. Why to set up your reviewer profile first
3. How to score a talk and submit a review
4. What to do if you can't review something fairly

Signing In

The program committee adds you to the project as a reviewer. If you don't already have an ema account, you'll get an invitation email first — accepting it creates your account. See Signing In for the full detail on both cases.

After that, each time you're assigned a talk you get an email that links straight to it — there's no separate accept step for individual assignments.

Your First Task: Set Up Your Profile

Before You Start

Do this before review rounds open, not after — the committee uses it to assign talks.

Open Me > Reviewer Profile and add:

• Your areas of expertise, so the committee can match you to relevant talks.
• Any conflicts of interest — an institution, sponsor, or person you can't review impartially.

See Reviewer Profile for the full field list.

Completing a Review

1. Open a review from Me > Reviews.
2. Read the talk's abstract, description, and authors — unless the project's review visibility hides some of this from you (fully blind rounds hide the abstract too).
3. Score each required criterion and add public comments (for the speaker) and private comments (for the committee).
4. Set your confidence level and declare a conflict if one applies.
5. Save Draft to come back later, or Submit Review to finalize.

First review of a round

A reviewer opens their first assigned talk, checks it for any conflict of interest, scores each criterion, leaves a short note of encouragement in public comments and a scheduling concern in private comments, then submits.

Declining drops every round you haven't submitted yet

If you can't review a talk — wrong expertise, a conflict, no time before the deadline — decline it rather than leaving it unsubmitted. Declining applies to every round of that assignment you haven't already submitted, not just the one you're looking at.

Check Your Work

You're done with an assignment when its status shows Submitted, or — if you can't take it on — Declined with a reason the committee can act on.

Where to Go Next

• Review Assignments — the full walkthrough of the review queue, criteria types, and blind-review rules
• Reviewer Profile — managing expertise and conflict declarations in detail