Some statistics on STOC 2007 program committee PC work


Number of PC members: 22

Number of submitted papers (removing duplicates and early withdrawals): 312

Number of PC members assigned to each paper: 3 (and sometimes more)

Number of papers assigned to PC member: typically, 45

Number of papers withdrawn prior to physical PC meeting: 5

Dates of PC meeting: February 10 and 11, 2007.

Number of PC members attending the PC meeting: 19.

Number of hours spent by PC members in PC meeting room (including breakfast and lunch): 18.5

Number of accepted papers: 78 (upper bound dictated by constraints of STOC 2007 program)


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Operational consequences of the above statistics


The papers were discussed electronically prior to the PC meeting. 
Roughly half the submissions were rejected during this electronic discussion phase, 
to give more time per paper during the PC meeting (for those papers that had a reasonable
chance of being accepted).

During the PC meeting, it was not possible to reach unanimous agreement regarding every paper. 
Some papers were decided by taking a vote.

PC members were given a few extra days after the meeting to review and confirm the decisions.

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Answers to frequently asked questions about feedback to authors

 
Q: Who wrote the reviews?
A: Individual PC members and external reviewers. The reviews do NOT represent the
collective opinion of the program committee, and need not include the reasons for
accepting or rejecting the given submission.

Q: What other information was available to the program committee in making accept/reject decisions?
A: The submitted papers themselves. 
Other written information includes numerical scores and confidence levels (at least three per paper), 
and comments to the PC only. 
In addition, there were oral discussions during the PC meetings.

Q: Some of the reviews forwarded to me say wrong things about the paper.
A: We know and ignored these reviews.

Q: All of the reviews forwarded to me are by reviewers who did not understand the paper.
A: Try to write your paper more clearly. Alternatively, it may be the case that STOC attendees 
(as reflected by the composition of the STOC committee) are not the right audience for your paper.

Q: All reviewers liked my paper. How come it was not accepted?
A: Given many good papers, some difficult choices had to be made. 

Q: No reviewer liked my paper. How come it was accepted?
A: Probably some committee members are asking the same question. But note again that the reviews
forwarded to the authors do not reflect the full discussion. Several committee members must have
liked the paper.

Q: I think that the program committee made a wrong decision in my case. How can I get more information
about the reasons for this decision?
A: The only information released to the authors is the information that you already received: 
the accept/reject decision and those reviews of reviewers who explicitly allowed the review to be 
forwarded to the authors. Any additional information is confidential.

Q: What is the procedure for appealing?
A: There is no such procedure. The decisions of the program committee about rejected papers are final. 
The decisions about accepted papers are also final, unless subsequently a major error is discovered 
in the paper, in which case the authors are expected to withdraw their paper.