ijcai-review-process

IJCAI Review Process

Use this to reason about review-stage strategy. Reopen the current CFP, FAQ, peer-review

principles, and conflict policy before making process claims.

Process model

• Phase 1 can be decisive. IJCAI-ECAI 2026 gave every paper two PC reviews first; papers

with two good-quality but insufficiently positive reviews could receive summary rejection

without author response.

• Papers advancing to full review receive additional review and discussion by PC/SPC members,

with AC coordination and SAC cross-checking.

• The response is concise and visible to the decision group specified by current rules; it is

not a dialogue with reviewers.

• Ethics concerns can be flagged by reviewers and escalated to the Ethics Chair.
• Conflicts include recent coauthors, advisor/student relationships, same institution,

current grants/projects, sponsorship, personal relationships, or animosity under the IJCAI

COI policy.

• Authors must not try to identify or contact reviewers, and reviewers must preserve

submission confidentiality.

Decision actors and where leverage lives

| Stage | Who decides | Author leverage | Forbidden |

| --- | --- | --- | --- |

| Phase 1 summary reject | Two PC reviewers, AC | None: there is usually no response here | Treating phase 1 as if a rebuttal will save it |

| Full review | PC, SPC, AC discussion | Concise response on pressing questions and factual errors | New experiments, code links, or scope changes |

| Decision | AC recommends, SAC cross-checks, chairs finalize | Clarity already in the paper, ethics flags resolved | Contacting or guessing reviewer identity |

| Ethics escalation | Ethics Chair | Confidential channel for unethical-review concerns | Using ethics box to argue scores |

Because IJCAI spans many AI subcommunities, a paper can draw one in-area and one out-of-area

reviewer; the out-of-area reviewer is often where summary-reject risk concentrates, so the

phase-1 readability of the contribution matters more than at single-topic venues.

Worked vignette: surviving phase 1

A constraint-reasoning paper gets two competent reviews that are lukewarm because the second

reviewer, from a learning background, could not locate the contribution by page two. Under

IJCAI rules this profile is a summary-reject candidate before any response. The leverage is not

in the rebuttal: it is in writing so a non-specialist PC member sees the novel claim on page

one. Diagnose this risk pre-submission, since phase 1 may give no chance to reply.

Reviewer pushback and the venue-specific fix

• "Reviewer misread the method." If it is decision-critical, correct it precisely in the

response with a pointer to the submitted section; do not relitigate the score.

• "Two okay-but-tepid reviews." Recognize this as the classic IJCAI summary-reject pattern and

fix readability upstream; you cannot count on a response stage.

• "Suspected reviewer is a competitor." Do not investigate; raise a conflict or ethics concern

through the official channel only.

Output format

[Current stage] submitted / phase 1 / full review / response / decision
[Decision actors] <PC/SPC/AC/SAC/chairs>
[Likely leverage] <paper clarity / factual correction / ethics / reproducibility>
[Forbidden moves] <contact reviewers / new results / identity leakage>