EUROCRYPT 2022 REVIEW PROCESS

Note: This document was originally at this location.

The following is mostly based on the EUROCRYPT 2021 guide prepared by Anne Canteaut and Francois-Xavier Standaert. We would like to thank them for the guideline.

We have adopted the review form of Eurocrypt 2021 (prepared by Anne Canteaut and Francois-Xavier Standaert) with some small modifications. In case you are not familiar with that review form, it's rationale is twofold:

• It decorrelates the more objective (e.g., technical correctness) parts of the reviews from the more subjective (e.g., scientific quality) parts of the reviews; This seems to be well received by both reviewers and authors.
• connect the recommendations to the parts of the review that motivate them, leading to an easier interpretation of the final decisions to the authors.

The review form is given below, with some lines of explanation regarding the interpretation of the recommendations.

Note that the different parts of the review form will be used at different times of the review process, even if all of them will be sent to the authors for rebuttal:

• During the first phase of the discussion (before rebuttal), the PC will try to:
• identify papers for which there is a consensus to reject for novelty, correctness or editorial reasons;
• identify the papers for which rebuttal is critically needed in order to clarify novelty, correctness or editorial questions (i.e., papers with “strong reject” or “weak reject” recommendations for which there are doubts or for which we lack consensus). For the other papers, we will just mention that "rebuttal was not identified as critically needed for this paper but authors are welcome to react if they want to";
• During the second phase of the discussion (after rebuttal); for the papers with “strong reject” or “weak reject” recommendations, the PC will check whether rebuttal/discussion changed recommendations and try to reach consensus for papers that should be rejected for novelty, correctness or editorial reasons.
• During the following phases of the discussion, the PC will iteratively:
  • focus on papers with positive recommendations, try to reach consensus for acceptance candidates and try to identify papers without such a consensus that require more discussion;
  • accept papers by bunches of approximately 25 submissions, with an approval vote.

It is therefore important that reviewers try to structure their reviews based on the questions in the review form!

In case anything is unclear, please contact the PC chairs and we will reflect our answers in the frequently asked questions below.

REVIEW GUIDELINES

• Try to write the reviews that you would like to receive as authors and remember that reviews can fall in the hands of a first-year PhD student.
• Try to be concrete in the the parts of the review related to technical and editorial issues.
• Be respectful and inclusive in the parts of the review related to scientific quality: Eurocrypt is a general crypto conference accepting papers on all theoretical and practical aspects of cryptology. Please note that we want Eurocrypt to represent all sub-communities of the IACR. Hence if a paper could fit any of the area conferences of the IACR (CHES, FSE, PKC, and TCC), it thematically fits Eurocrypt. Obviously, one would expect the level of an average Eurocrypt paper to be higher than the average level of a paper in any of the area conferences, at the same time demanding that the quality of a contribution be at the level of the "Best paper award" of the area conference is too high.
• Whenever in doubt, pose an explicit question in your review so that it can be clarified during rebuttal.

REVIEW FORM

A. Paper summary.

Give a succinct and positive description of the paper's main contributions.

B. Suitability.

Does the paper belong to the conference?

1. Yes
2. No

C. Novelty, methodology and technical correctness

Q1. Does the paper ignore related works that overlap with the claimed results?

Q2. Is the methodology used in order to answer the research question and to demonstrate improvements over previously published state-of-the art solutions appropriate?

Q3. Are there technical flaws that affect the correctness of the claims?

Try to precisely identify the overlapping related works and the methodological/technical flaws.

D. Technical details

Q4. Are there technical details missing to verify the contribution?

(please put here technical questions/comments/suggestions you may have)

E. Editorial quality

Q5. Is the editorial quality of the paper sufficient to understand the contribution?

(please put here technical questions/comments/suggestions you may have)

F. Scientific quality. (In case answers to questions Q1 to Q5 are sufficiently positive)

Q6. How do you rate the scientific importance of the research question?

Q7. How do you rate the scientific contribution to this research question?

Note that there are no universal rules for evaluating scientific quality, and each reviewer is entitled to her or his own view. Try to motivate your opinions based on your specific field of research and whether you, or other members of the IACR community, would be interested to listen to a talk on the paper content during the conference.

G. Confidence level

1. Weak: an educated guess
2. Medium: quite confident but I could not check many of the details
3. Good: I know the area and I studied the paper in sufficient detail

H. Recommendation

1. Strong reject (novelty, methodology or correctness issues)
2. Weak reject (editorial quality requires improvement or technical details are missing)
3. Borderline (the research question is deemed of limited interest or the result is deemed incremental by the reviewer)
4. Accept (the paper is found to improve the state-of-the-art on an important research question)
5. Strong accept (breakthrough paper, best paper award candidate)

I. Comments to the PC.

This part will always remain hidden to the authors.

INTERPRETATION OF THE RECOMMENDATIONS

Strong reject

recommendations indicate fundamental errors so that the submission should not be re-submitted without substantial corrections and revisions.

Weak reject

recommendations indicate that the submission lacks a minimum level of editorial quality or technical details so that the reviewers could not be convinced by the result. Hence, a re-submission clarifying these aspect may lead to a different outcome.

Borderline

recommendations indicate a (subjective) lack of interest of the PC members who reviewed the paper. In case it is a first submission, re-submitting to a different PC may be worth trying; if the paper has already been submitted multiple times, it is advisable to try a less competitive venue.

Accept and strong accept

recommendations indicate that the paper could appear in the conference. If it did not with a majority of accept recommendations, it is most likely due to a limited number of slots, so re-submission addressing the reviews is encouraged.