Paper selection process
DRAFT (Jan 20, 2010, revised Jan 2012, March 2015)
This page describes the normal selection process for the International Conference on HPSG.
It is not a legally binding document but a statement of what is the intended practice. Details may be modified if they prove impractical.
1 Who's who
- The Standing Committee
The HPSG Standing Committee is a permanent body, in charge of overseeing the organization of the annual HPSG conference. For more details follow this link.
- The Program Committee
The Program Committee (PC) changes with each edition of the conference. It is responsible for the scientific content of the conference. It consists mainly of practitioneers of HPSG, with expertise in linguistic, computational or foundational issues. A minority of PC members are chosen outside of the HPSG community.
PC members are appointed by the PC chair in consultation with the HPSG Standing Committee.
The main tasks of the PC are: to issue a call for papers, to review the abstracts, and to determine the provisional program.
- The Program Committee Chair
The PC chair is appointed by the HPSG Standing Committee.
The main tasks of the PC chair are:
- To appoint PC members, in consultation with the Standing Committee.
- To select invited speakers, in consultation with the Standing Committee and the local chair.
- To set up and organize the selection process.
- To notify authors of their inclusion in the provisional program, and seek confirmation that they will present their papers at the conference.
- To finalize the program on the basis of this.
- To give a short report to the Business Meeting of the Conference, and subsequently a written report to the Standing Committee, covering topics like number of submissions, acceptance rate, geographical spread of submissions, and any issues relating to the organization and structure of the Conference.
- The Local chair
The local chair is not directly involved in the selection process.
The main tasks of the local chair are to organize the practical arrangements and the funding of the conference.
2 Conference structure
- Submission types
Experimentally, the HPSG 2010, 2011 and 2012 conferences have two sessions: a main session and a poster session.
There have also been two types of submissions: submissions to the main session and submissions to the poster session.
Submissions to the poster session are two pages long. They may be either accepted or rejected by the Program Committee.
Submissions to the main session are five pages long. The Program Committee may take three decisions: (i) accept, (ii) reject, or (iii) accept as a poster. The PC will accept as posters submissions that are found to be appropriate for the conference, but not of sufficient quality, scope, or maturity for inclusion in the main program.
- Reserve papers
A subset of the papers accepted as posters also constitute a pool of reserve papers for the main session. The PC chair will make final decisions on last minute inclusions in the main session.
- Proceedings
The HPSG Conference Proceedings will be published online on the CSLI Publications website.
In general, only papers actually presented at the conference in the main session will be included in the proceedings, irrespective of their initial submission type (the exception to this is that reserve papers will also be eligible for inclusion providing the authors attend the conference and are willing to present).
Although it is expected that authors will take into account the questions, remarks and criticisms issued at the conference when preparing the written version of their paper, no formal round of reviewing is organised.
In 2012, the Standing Committee decided that posters that are presented at the conference should also be included in the Proceedings.
3 Reviewing process
To maintain continuity, it is strongly suggested that the easychair conference system (http://www.easychair.org/) be used throughout the reviewing process.
Each paper is reviewed by at least two reviewers chosen among the PC members.
- Paper assignment
In a first phase, all PC members have access to all anonymized submissions. For each paper PC members indicate whether they wish to review it, wish not to review it, or are indifferent. In this phase they also alert the PC chair to potential conflicts of interest.
In a second phase, the PC chairs assigns papers to reviewers on the basis of their preferences.
- Reviewing phase
Each PC member reviews the papers assigned to them individually. PC members may not access other reviews before they hand in theirs, nor should they confer with other PC members on individual reviews. PC members may consult outside experts on their review, but this should be exceptional, and it is the PC member rather than the outside expert that is ultimately responsible for the review.
- Reaction and Decision phase
In the decision phase, all PC members can access all reviews except those for papers for which they have a conflict of interest. PC members may react to reviews proposed by others, and a provisional program is set up on the basis of reviews and reactions.
Like the reviewing phase, the reaction phase is anonymous, reviewers names should be hidden, like those of original authors.
Conflicts are settled by the PC chair.
- Notification
The PC chair notifies authors of the decision that was reached for their submission. Comments from reviewers are sent to the authors. This is meant to help authors prepare their presentation or understand the assessment of their abstract. The comments do not always completely reflect the decision process, some aspects of which are confidential.
- Anonymity
All submissions are anonymous to everybody but the PC chair. Rejected submissions stay anonymous even to the Program Committee.
Reviews are also sent anonymously to authors. In addition, reviews normally stay anonymous within the program committee. This rule may be breached by the PC chair in special circumstances where the identity of the reviewer is crucial to an assessment of their expertise.
Knowledge of authorship prevents the PC chair from producing reviews. However the chair reads all papers, may issue comments on reviews by others or request such comments, and is responsible for the final decisions.
- Conflicts of interest
The PC chair may not submit a paper, either singly or jointly.
PC members may submit a paper, but may in no circumstance review their own paper or the paper of a coauthor of a submission to the current conference.
PC members are not normally assigned a paper by a current collaborator or by a member of their current institution. However it may sometimes be hard or even impossible to find enough reviewers with adequate expertise and no conflict of interest. Balancing such factors is the responsibility of the PC chair.
In cases where the PC chair is faced with having to make decisions about papers where they see a conflict of interest for themselves (e.g. in relation to borderline papers from the PC chair's own institution), the PC chair is invited to consult an appropriate subset of the PC, with guidance from the Standing Committee if necessary.
The content of this page is mainly due to Olivier Bonami.
It is maintained by St.Mueller@hu-berlin.de.
Last Updated: 13th December, 2021.
