2017 ACL 2017:ACs: Reviewers on responses

Sent to Track Chairs.

Subject: [ACL 2017] Area Chairs: Reviewers to respond to Author Responses

Dear [reviewerFirstName] [reviewerLastName]:

With author response concluded, we are now in the midst of the final phase of interacting with your team of reviewers.  Please note the following for your action for both long and short papers.

  * Reviewer discussion with respect to the responses - Many areas have been proactive and are already acting accordingly.  We would like you to (re-)initiate discussion with your reviewers concerning the bulk of papers that have an author response.  We have draft the below letter for you to post in the respective discussion boards, but please customize it to fit your circumstances.

  * Direct-to-AC text - You will note a fair proportion of papers also used the direct-to-AC communication (see Track Management > Accept/Reject Suggestions > Reviews (on each paper)).  Please read each one.  In the notifications to authors, we (from the PC level) will include a statement to say that every direct-to-AC communication was read and suitably acted upon.  You may choose your own method to deal with this communication as you see fit.  We envision that most will not require a response, but in specific cases, you can choose to add a response by using a metareview for this purpose (note to do this, you first need to visit Track Management > Metareview Settings > Assign/Monitor Meta Reviews).  Note that the reviewers are not privy to the direct-to-AC text, so you may need to be sensitive to how you phrase the text, as the reviewers can login and see your metareview.

What happens next?
- To rank your selections for the area, following the author response period, by carefully examining the reviews (please do not rank just based on the average review scores since the quality of reviews is often varied).  Each area will need to generate a ranking of both short and long papers.  Papers with AC COIs will need to be handled carefully.
We will be communicating with you again soon about this.


Dear [XX, YY and ZZ]:

The authors have now issued their responses to your comments, and we
are now thus in the final round of work for ACL 2017 reviewing.
Please login by March 20, and revise your review for all short and
long papers (inclusive of this one).  At the minimum, you need to
change the box in the review marking that you have considered their
response.

Please use this discussion to further comment on the authors'
response.  Do also change the text of your review, if appropriate.
Please consider what you think is feasible for the authors to revise
in the time between the notification and  camera ready dates (March 30
and April 22, respectively; about 1 1/2 months).

We'd appreciate that you try to push submissions towards a clear
decision for or against acceptance.

The link below will take you to the discussion board for the paper;
you may find it useful to open another window or tab to revise your
revise after clicking on the link.

Thank you!
- [AC Name]
for ACL 2017 [AreaName]