WhatFocusGroupsDo
* People bid as usual and we assign reviewers as usual - that is, we use the traditional way of getting reviews done with bidding and some manual assignment. This way people who are expert in a thing are reviewing such things, and there is no unbalance because of focus groups, as we have been batting around. The primary review process is thus the traditional review process and the focus groups are an add-on.- People volunteer to be focus group leaders in either the established areas of expertise or in others as appropriate - such as aspects. So, there are focus groups, but they are for the purpose of heading off problems with papers early and not for acting the center of the reviewing process. I have assigned people to the focus groups based on your declared expertises as expressed via cyberchair. The focus groups are of various sizes.
- Some people volunteer to be focus group leaders. I think there is no reason to have just one leader per focus group, but we need one for each.
- As review happens, if a reviewer or a focus group leader or I notice a paper that might cause a controversy at the meeting, the focus group springs into action and looks at it roughly to the depth that happens when at the committee meeting someone says "I'll take a look at that over lunch" (or perhaps "over night"). This can result in a refinement in the reviews, new reviews if appropriate (I can assign people most any time to be a reviewer), or in a discussion over email that short-circuits a longer discussion at the PC meeting. These mini-reviews by the focus group don't have to be deep. The idea is that the declared experts become familiar with problematic papers before the meeting instead of during.
- Papers without at least one A rating ("I will champion this paper at the PC meeting (Advocate/Accept)") will be rejected without discussion. If a paper does not have an A and a reviewer believes that it's because there is a better qualified reviewer in a focus group, that reviewer should contact the appropriate focus group(s).
- Near the time of the program committee meeting, each focus group leader will look over the papers in their area and determine whether their group needs to spring into action to look at them or at some of them.
- At the committee meeting, the focus group is ready to spring into action. This can mean caucusing or sorting paper or anything else, but if the focus group has done its job before the meeting, there will be fewer postponed discussions while people read papers over night or over lunch.
The idea is that because we normally have only 3 reviewers per paper, there is the possibility that a slight mismatch of detailed expertise can result in a disturbance in the discussion of or with the acceptance of the paper. This usually results in other experts volunteering to "look at the paper" during the meeting days and evening. The focus groups as defined here do that looking at the paper beforehand, and also perhaps have some of the discussion beforehand.
Otherwise, the process is very much as it was before, with the focus groups as a low-overhead add-on. If the focus groups do nothing, everything should be fine.