How to begin the Review Stage while Submissions are Open

In the Workflow Timeline, the steps that prepare submissions for review are scheduled relative to the submission deadline. To start reviewing while submissions are still open, move the Activation Date of each of the following steps to a time before the deadline. For each step, expand it, click Edit next to Dates, change the Activation Date and click Submit.

1. Create Reviewers Submission Group: creates a Reviewers group for each submission. Once this step is active, a group is also created for each new submission as it comes in.

2. Create Reviewers Conflict and Create Reviewers Affinity Score: compute conflicts of interest and affinity scores between your reviewers and the submissions that exist when the step runs. Before the activation date, choose the conflict policy with Edit next to Policy on the conflict step, and the expertise model with Edit next to Model on the affinity score step.

3. Run the reviewer matching: go to the Assignments page, at https://openreview.net/assignments?group=<venue_id>/Reviewers, or use the Reviewers Paper Assignment link in your Program Chairs console. Click New Assignment Configuration, fill in the form and click Submit. Then click Run Matcher for that configuration and wait until its status is "Complete".

4. Create Reviewers Assignment Deployment: click Edit next to Match and set Match Name to the title of the matching configuration you want to deploy. The configuration must have status "Complete". When the step runs, it deploys the assignments and schedules Create Submission Change Before Reviewing to run 30 minutes later. That step gives assigned reviewers access to their submissions.

5. Official Review: set the Activation Date to when reviewers can start submitting reviews, and set the Due Date and Expiration Date. Once this step is active, new submissions also get a review form when they're posted.

The Create Reviewers Assignment Deployment step, as Program Chairs see it.

The Create Reviewers Assignment Deployment step deploys assignments only once. If a configuration has already been deployed, the step does nothing when it runs again. PCs can make manual assignments for any submissions that arrive after the first matching is deployed.

Conflicts and affinity scores only cover the submissions that exist when the steps run. To include later submissions, set the step's Activation Date again so it runs once more after the deadline.

While submissions are open, authors can still edit them. Each edit sets the submission's readers back to the Program Chairs and its authors, so the committee loses access to it until Create Submission Change Before Reviewing runs again. After the submission deadline, set its Activation Date to the current time to restore access.

If you move the Submission deadline (or the Full Submission deadline) later, any submission group step scheduled before the new deadline is moved to 30 minutes after it, so the groups are no longer created early. After changing the deadline, check the Activation Date of Create Reviewers Submission Group and the Area Chair and Senior Area Chair submission group steps, and set them again if needed.