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. The Reviews link appears once you have a review assignment, or when an event's call for submissions has started with a submission form available — see When Features Appear.

After sign-in, reviewers can open an assignment from their review queue.

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, when you're assigned talks you get an email linking to your review queue — there's no separate accept step for individual assignments. If a review round has not opened yet, the notification waits until it does, and the assignment page shows a Round not yet open notice until then. Organizations that use SSO or a hey ema account send you through that sign-in instead of an emailed code.

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 Reviewer profile under Reviews in the Me menu 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. Your queue shows each assignment's status — Not Started, In Progress, Submitted or Declined — and its deadline. If a talk has more than one review round assigned to you, there is a tab for each round and you review each one separately.
2. Read the talk's abstract, description, and authors — in a blind round, author identities are hidden from you.
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 applies to one round — and can be taken back while it's open

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 the round you're looking at; other rounds on the same submission are unaffected. The committee is notified and may assign a replacement, and you can undo the decline while the round is still open.

Check Your Work

You're done with an assignment when its status shows Submitted — while the round is open, Reopen my review returns it to draft so you can change and resubmit it — or, if you can't take it on, Declined. A decline reason is optional, but a sentence the committee can act on makes reassigning the talk easier.

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