Datasets and Benchmarks Track Reviewer Guidelines

 

The Datasets and Benchmarks track serves as a venue for high-quality publications, talks, and posters on highly valuable machine learning datasets and benchmarks, as well as a forum for discussions on how to improve dataset development. 

This page provides an overview of reviewer responsibilities and key dates. Please note, some dates differ from the main track.

Contact Information

The Area Chair (AC) assigned to a paper should be your first point of contact for that paper. You can contact the AC by leaving a comment in OpenReview with the AC as a reader. 

If you encounter a situation that you are unable to resolve with your AC, please contact the Datasets and Benchmarks chairs atdatasetsbenchmarks@neurips.cc. 

Important Dates 

Dates may be subject to change.

  • Paper submission - Wed, June 7 2023
  • Reviewers bid on papers: Thurs, June 1 - Wed, June 7 2023
  • Check paper assignments: Wed, June 14 2023
  • Reviewing period: Wed, June 14 -  Fri, July 21 2023
  • Ethics review period: Mon, July 24 - Tues, Aug 1 2023
  • Reviews released to authors: Wed, Aug 2 2023
  • Reviewer-Author Discussions: Wed, Aug 2 – Wed, Aug 30 2023
  • Reviewer-AC Discussions: Wed, Aug 30  - Fri, Sept 8 2023
  • Metareviews due:  Fri, Sept 15 2023
  • Author notifications: Fri, Sept 22 2023

 

 

Main Tasks

Fulfilling your responsibilities as a reviewer in a high quality and timely manner is critical to the success of the review process. Here is a list of key dates and tasks for reviewers:

  1. Preparation:
    • Read and agree to abide by the NeurIPS code of conduct.
    • NeurIPS 2023 is using OpenReview. Please make sure that your OpenReview profile is up to date. If you have changed or plan to change your email address, please update the address set as “preferred” in your OpenReview profile and confirm it. It is crucial that we are able to reach you quickly. We will send most emails from OpenReview (noreply@openreview.net). Such emails are sometimes accidentally marked as spam (or classified as Updates in Gmail). Please check these folders regularly. If you find such an email in there, please whitelist noreply@openreview.net so that you do not miss future emails related to NeurIPS 2023 Datasets and Benchmarks.
    • Note that your assignments and tasks will appear at the reviewer console in OpenReview
    • Read what constitutes a conflict of interest for NeurIPS 2023 and how to declare them in your profile.  
  2. Bid on papers: Thurs, June 1 - Wed, June 7 2023.
    • Your bids are an important input to the paper matching process. 
    • Unfortunately, in past years there have been a small number of reviewers who engage in deceptive bidding practices. If we have a reason to suspect that a reviewer is engaged in deceitful bidding to influence reviewing outcomes, we will request an ethics investigation, and malicious actors may be removed from future involvement in the program committee. 
  3. Check paper assignments: Wed, June 14 2023.
    • As soon as you are notified of papers to review, you are expected to log in to OpenReview to check for conflicts and to check that papers fall within your area of expertise.
    • If you don’t feel qualified to review a paper that was assigned to you, please communicate this to your AC right away.
    • These assignments may change during the first week, as some reviewers and ACs request re-assignments. Please watch for notification email from Openreview.
  4. Reviewing: Wed, June 14 -  Fri, July 21 2023.
    • We know that serving as a reviewer for NeurIPS Datasets and Benchmarks track is time consuming, but the community depends on your high quality reviews to uphold the scientific quality of NeurIPS. 
    • Please make your review as informative and substantiated as possible; superficial, uninformed reviews are worse than no review as they may mislead the review process.
    • You can see the review form questions and guidance on how to answer each question in the "Review Form" section below.
    • Make sure to flag any questionable papers for ethics review. These papers will be assigned ethics reviewers, who will effectively join the paper's assigned program committee. See the NeurIPS ethics guidelines.
    • Please  use the NeurIPS paper checklist included in each paper as a tool when preparing your review (some submissions may have the checklist as part of the supplementary materials). Remember that answering “no” to some questions is typically not grounds for rejection. In general, authors should be rewarded rather than punished for being up front about the limitations of their work and any potential negative societal impact. You are encouraged to think through whether any critical points are missing and provide these as feedback for the authors.
    • Do not worry about minor violations of the required format (e.g., papers that exceed the page limit by a few lines), but immediately report any major violations that you notice to your AC.
    • When writing your review, please keep in mind that after decisions have been made, reviews and meta-reviews of accepted papers as well as your discussion with the authors will be made public (but reviewer and AC identities will remain anonymous). This year, authors of rejected papers will have the option to make this information public for their rejected papers as well.
    • Please note that the review form this year asks for some additional fields such as text fields for the strengths and weaknesses, and questions and suggestions for authors. There are also additional ratings on soundness, presentation and contribution, in addition to the overall rating. These are intended to make it easier for the AC and SAC to understand your rationale for the rating, and facilitate better discussions.
  5. Discussion period: Wed, Aug 2 – Fri, Sept 8 2023.
    • Reviews will be released to authors on Wed, Aug 2 2023. 
    • Author-Reviewer Discussions (Wed, Aug 2 – Wed, Aug 30 2023): During this first phase, please carefully read all other reviews and the author responses to all reviews for the papers assigned to you. Then please engage in an open exchange with the authors.
    • Reviewer-AC Discussions (Wed, Aug 30  - Fri, Sept 8 2023): During this second phase, please discuss the paper, the reviews, and the author responses among the reviewers and with the area chair.
    • As you read each author response, please keep an open mind.  Even if the author response didn’t change your opinion about the paper, please acknowledge that you have read and considered it.  
    • Participating in discussions is a critical part of your role as a reviewer.  The discussion period is especially important for borderline papers and papers for which the reviewers’ assessments differ, and we hope that you take discussions seriously.  If your evaluation of the paper has changed, please revise your review and explain the change.
    • When discussing a paper, remember that different people have different backgrounds and different points of view. Reviewer consensus is valuable—only rarely are unanimous assessments overruled—but it is not mandatory.
  6. AC’s metareviews due: Fri, Sept 15 2023
    • Reviewer workload between the end of the discussion period (Fri, Sept 8 2023) and the metareview due date (Fri, Sept 15 2023) should be light, but if ACs come back to you with additional questions, please respond promptly.
  7. Author notification: Fri, Sept 22 2023.