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Review Process

The submissions are reviewed by two committees:

  • Program Committee (PC) Members assign reviewers and make final recommendations for a subset of submitted papers. 
  • Reviewers provide an evaluation for a set of papers. Each paper is assigned to three reviewers. The reviewers are recruited by the program chairs, and their competence is carefully verified in consultation with the PC members and senior MICCAI scientists.

Each PC member acts both as a Primary and a Secondary PC member:

  • Primary PC Members assign the three reviewers. Primaries know the identity of the authors and the reviewers and manage the assignment of reviewers. They make sure that there are at least three reviewers confirmed for each paper, at least one of which is a senior reviewer. Furthermore they ensure that the reviewers have no conflict of interest with the assigned paper and present a good spread of institutions and geographical locations. They facilitate the discussion process with the three reviewers after the rebuttals are received. Primary PC members ensure three detailed, solid external reviews for each of their primary papers. However, they do not make any recommendation or decision about these papers themselves.
  • Secondary PC Members are ultimately responsible of making the recommendation for acceptance/rejection of manuscripts. They do not know the identity neither of the authors or reviewers and make a recommendation for papers that do not belong to the set of manuscripts in their Primary PC Member set. At the PC Meeting, each paper discussed will have two independent recommendations from two Secondary PC members.

Note: The terms "Primary" and "Secondary" are not physical members but rather roles that all PC Members will play in relationship to different papers in this double-blind process. These roles help to reduce any possible biased arising from knowledge of the identity of either reviewers or authors.

The review process proceeds as follows:

  • Assignment of PC Members. Each submitted paper is assigned to one Primary PC Member and two Secondary PC members. The assignment is based on the preferences expressed by the authors (at submission time) and on the matching between the expertise of the PC Member and the contents of the paper.
  • Assignment of Reviewers by Primary PC Members. The Primary PC member assigns three reviewers to evaluate each paper. Conflicts of interest are herewith taken into account; no reviewer from the same organization of the author will be allowed and geographical spread will be taken into account. At least one senior researcher or expert in the subject. Primary PC members will make their best effort to assign the appropriate reviewers to each paper.
  • Review by Reviewers. Reviewers work on their reviews without knowing the identity of authors. The Primary PC member monitors the build-up of reviews and contacts reviewers if their reviews are lacking in content or tone.
  • Early Acceptance/Rejection. The papers for which there is consensus among the reviewers are accepted (rating 4-4-5 and above) / rejected (rating 3-3-3 and below), as appropriate, with no further discussion by the PC. Reviews of those papers are sent to the authors for information only.
  • Rebuttal Period. For the remaining papers (papers with at least one rating above 4), the authors receive the reviews and are invited to submit a short rebuttal.
  • Discussion among Reviewers. The Primary PC member engages reviewers in a discussion, urges them to consider the authors' rebuttal and to update their reviews and scores, accordingly. The purpose of discussion is not necessarily to reach consensus among the reviewers but to eliminate any misunderstanding and strengthen the consistency of the reviews. Throughout the entire process, the Primary PC member instigates interaction between reviewers but refrains from influencing their views.
  • Second Acceptance/Rejection Phase. The papers for which there is consensus among the reviewers after the discussions are accepted (rating 4-4-4 and above) / rejected (rating 3-3-3 and below), as appropriate, with no further discussion by the PC. Reviews of those papers are sent to the authors for information only.
  • Recommendation by Secondary PC Members. For each remaining paper, two Secondary PC members make a recommendation about acceptance or rejection of the paper and may also recommend the paper for oral presentation and awards. When making the recommendation, Secondary PC members do not know the identity of the authors or reviewers.
  • Final Decisions. The Program Chairs compile all recommendations for the PC Meeting. The Program Committee then finalizes acceptance/rejection decisions and generates the long-list for paper award nominations. The award winners are decided later by the MICCAI Award Committee chaired by a designated board member.
  • Notification of Acceptance. The authors are notified about the decision and are provided the reviews and notes from the PC that offer additional information on how the decision was made. In the case of a procedural error, the authors may submit a formal complaint to the Program Chairs who will promptly investigate the case.
  • Preparation of Camera Ready Copy. The accepted papers must be finalized for publication in the proceedings. Papers not received by the deadline will not be included in the program.