Frequently Asked Question for PCCs - PC Meeting

P6.1) Is it possible to hold an e-mail PC meeting to save travel expenses?

Yes, this is possible.

But before holding an e-mail PC meeting, we recommend to start the discussion between the assigned reviewers. This way many disagreements can be eliminated and it is typically much easier to do discussions in smaller groups. Please have a look at P5.1) for details.

If this discussion is finished, or if you want to skip it, you can start with an e-mail PC meeting. In the e-mail PC meeting you can discuss papers with all reviewers, who do not have a conflict with the paper. But be careful, it is very important, that all conflicts of interest are set correctly. If not, reviewers with conflict of interest will get detailed information about the review process. If you are not sure about the conflicts of interest, please only discuss papers with assigned reviewers according to P5.1).

Conflicts of interest can be added manually at [Contributions - Conflicts by Paper] or [Contributions - Conflicts by Reviewer]. It is important, that you add "Confirmed Conflicts" and not "Hidden Conflicts".

Now you should segment papers into different discussion groups according to the chances of acceptance. It is up to you how these groups are built, but the report [Reports - Rating Reports - Ratings by Contribution] can help to do this job.

The discussion for each discussion group can be started with the e-mail template [Office - Compose E-Mails - Mail to Reviewers - E-mail pc meeting for specific contributions]. In a first step, you should enter the papers of the discussion group into the only editable field. In a second step you can globally edit the discussion e-mail. Please remember to enter your recommendation. Individual changes to each e-mail can be done in a third step.

In the title of the e-mail template the contribution id is automatically inserted, so that your e-mail browser can sort all discussion e-mails. If you also want, that your e-mail browser can also sort discussion e-mails by discussion category, please do not forget to enter the discussion category into the title of the e-mail ahead of the contribution id.