CHAIR HOW-TO: Author Feedback

OVERVIEW

Sometimes chairs will request author feedback of the reviews, i.e. explain or mitigate issues that reviewers see in the paper. The Chair needs to set the questions, activity deadline, enable Author Feedback, send the emails to the Authors. This document shows the feedback process.

Important

For Multi-Track conferences the desired track must be selected from the Track dropdown before this feature can be enabled. Everything after track selection is the same as a single-track conference.

FORMS

There are a few Forms that need to be configured for Author Feedback.

The Review Questions need to have 'Visible to Authors during Author Feedback' selected for those Review questions Authors should see during the Author Feedback phase.
The Meta-Review Questions need to have 'Visible to Authors during Author Feedback' selected for those Meta-Review questions Authors should see during the Author Feedback phase.
The Author Feedback Questions need to be configured for the Author to answer during the Author Feedback phase.

From the Settings tab, go to ‘Forms>Author Feedback.’ Click ‘+ Add new question’.

Author Feedback

In the ‘Create New Question’ window, enter the question in the text box, check/uncheck the corresponding boxes for ‘Required’ and visibility, depending on the needs of the conference.
Set the ‘Type’ and any options, then click 'Save changes.'

Author Feedback

DEADLINE

Note

Authors will be able to update their file freely up to the Author Feedback deadline

AUTHOR FEEDBACK

Important

DO NOT enable Author Feedback in conjunction with Author Notification status set to 'Completed' with a date in the past. This will give Authors access to all the Reviews (and/or Meta-Reviews) selected for Author Feedback AND Author Notification.

Go to ‘Activity Timeline>Deadline’ and set 'Author Feedback' to 'Enabled' with a proper end date, then click 'Save Changes.'

Author Feedback

CHAIR CONSOLE

REQUESTED FOR AUTHOR FEEDBACK (INDIVIDUAL)

From the ‘Chair Console,’ the Chair finds the papers that are to have Author Feedback. Manually set the ‘Requested for Author Feedback?’ column to ‘Yes’ for those papers.

Author Feedback

REQUESTED FOR AUTHOR FEEDBACK (BULK)

From the ‘Chair Console’, click ‘Actions’, select ‘Author Feedback>Bulk Enable’

Author Feedback

AUTHOR FEEDBACK SETTINGS

From the ‘Settings Tab’ click ‘Features>Author Feedback. Set the ‘General Settings’ section as desired.

SNAPSHOT

The snapshot is a capture of the Reviews at the time Author Feedback is enabled and the papers are flagged with 'Request for Author Feedback?' = Yes in the Chair Console.

This is the default setting:

'Show live review instead of review snapshot to author during author feedback' deselected.
'Request all papers for author feedback' deselected.

Author Feedback

SNAPSHOT SCENARIOS

If the Reviewer changes the review with these deselected, the Author sees the original review, not the updated review.
If, during Author Feedback, ‘Show live review instead of review snapshot to author during author feedback’ is selected, authors will see the LIVE reviews instead of the review snapshot.
If the Chair enables the snapshot once again (by deselecting 'Show live review instead of review snapshot to author during author feedback') the Authors will see the prior review - meaning the review when the last snapshot was taken.
If the chair wants to enable a fresh snapshot, this is the first of two ways to do it. Go to the Chair Console. The papers in the 'Request for Author Feedback' column must be toggled from 'Yes' to 'No' and back again.
This is the equivalent of pressing the shutter release on a camera.
However, doing this for each paper can be time consuming and tedious. This is where to use the bulk Disable/Enable option. The second way is to select ‘Request all papers for author feedback’.

REQUEST ALL PAPERS FOR AUTHOR FEEDBACK

If ‘Request all papers for author feedback’ is selected, all papers are requested for Author Feedback when Author Feedback activity is changed from Disabled to Enabled. This overrides the Chair Console column ‘Requested For Author Feedback?’

This ‘Request all papers for author feedback’ was designed to enable the snapshot globally for all papers – as a shortcut for conferences that will use one status.

Author Feedback

Note

If Reviewers are allowed to make changes to reviews during Author Feedback and it is ok for authors to see review updates (or miss review updates because they only read the reviews once), there is no need to use the snapshot.
If the snapshot is used previously, it is possible that authors were not seeing the latest reviews.

AUTHOR FEEDBACK FILE SECTION

If the Author is allowed or required to upload a feedback file, set this section accordingly. Also, set if the file is to be visible to Reviewers and/or Meta-Reviewers. Check or uncheck those boxes accordingly. Click ‘Save changes.’

Author Feedback

AUTHOR FEEDBACK COMMENT SECTION

After Author Feedback has been completed, Reviewers and Meta-Reviewers can post comments/questions for their assigned papers. Notification will be sent to Authors to respond to the comments. The number of comments is limited to 5.

Note

The timeline setting to have this section enabled is 'Author Feedback' needs to be set to 'Completed' with an end-date that has passed.

Check the box 'Allow reviewer / meta-reviewer to post comment for author to respond after author feedback' to allow the comments/questions to be posted.
Set the number of comments that can be posted per assigned paper by clicking the dropdown. The maximum is 5.
Click ‘Save changes.’

Author Feedback

EMAIL AUTHORS

Filter the ‘Chair Console’ for the papers for which ‘Author Feedback’ is wanted. In this case we filter the ‘Requested for Author Feedback?’ column for ‘Yes’.

Author Feedback