ICLR 2026 Senior Area Chair Guide

ICLR 2026 Senior Area Chair Guide Thank you for agreeing to serve as an SAC for ICLR 2026! This document contains an overview of your responsibilities and some guidelines for how to fulfill your role as an SAC. As an SAC, your role is to oversee the work of a small number of ACs, making sure that the reviewing process goes smoothly. SACs serve as the first point of contact for ACs if they need assistance or guidance. SACs are responsible for helping ACs chase late reviewers, assign emergency reviews, calibrating decisions across ACs, and discussing and deciding borderline papers. During the final decision-making phase, SACs will be expected to consult with the program chairs (PCs) on particularly borderline or difficult paper decisions. If you have questions that are not answered by the info below, you can email: program-chairs@iclr.cc . Contact Info If you encounter a situation that you are unable to resolve on your own, please contact the program chairs at program-chairs@iclr.cc . Any questions about conflicts of interest or ethics should go to the program chairs. If the issue is related to OpenReview, email the OpenReview support team directly at info@openreview.net. Important Dates Subject to Minor Changes (please consult the conference webpage for the latest version): Sep 19: Abstract submission Sep 24: Paper submission Sep 28: Assign Papers to ACs/SACs/Reviewers Oct 01: Reviewer Negative Bids Due Oct 05: AC confirming/adjusting reviewer-paper assignments Oct 10 - Oct 31: Review period Nov 01 - Nov 10: Chasing late reviews Nov 11: Paper review released to authors Nov 12 - Dec 2: Author/Reviewer/AC Discussion. Note: Reviewers cannot comment after Dec 2, but authors can update their papers until Dec 3 Dec 3 - Dec 10: Reviewer/AC Discussions (slightly overlaps with NeurIPS) Dec 10 - Dec 20: Discuss Meta-review with SAC Dec 20: Meta review due Jan 22: Author notification Main Tasks Preparation & AC assignment: Please ensure that your preferred email address is accurate in your OpenReview profile. We will send most emails from OpenReview (i.e., noreply@openreview.net). Such emails are sometimes accidentally marked as spam. Please check your spam folder regularly. If you find such an email in there, please allowlist the OpenReview email address so that you will receive future emails from OpenReview. Please log into OpenReview and make sure that your profile is up to date, so that you will be assigned relevant ACs to work with. Read and agree to abide by the ICLR code of conduct . In addition to the guidelines below, please also familiarize yourself with the AC guidelines , author guidelines and reviewer guidelines. In particular, please review the LLM policy for authors as well as the timeliness and quality reviewing requirements for reviewers, as ACs will flag violations for you. You will be interacting significantly with ACs, so please make sure you understand what is expected of them. You will be assigned ~15 ACs to work with. When you receive your assignment, look it over carefully and email the PCs if you have any concerns. Help ACs with reviewer assignments if needed ACs will be reviewing and modifying reviewer assignments during this period. Your workload during this period should be light, but do make sure that each AC you work with has four qualified reviewers for each paper (three are automatically assigned; ACs can replace all but one but must add a fourth reviewer manually) . If an AC has difficulty finding a qualified reviewer not in conflict with the paper, please help them. Recall that ACs do not have access to author identities. Ensure that all papers have at least 3 quality reviews Reviews are due on Nov 2 and will be released to the authors on Nov. 11. Prior to Nov 11, ACs should ensure that the reviewers have completed their reviews, send reminder emails if needed, and read all reviews to ensure they are high quality reviews. Your role during this period is to ensure that ACs perform these checks, and that they are able to find emergency reviewers successfully and on time. We ask that all SACs check on their ACs if they have missing reviews, and provide appropriate guidance on how to make sure that by Nov 11, all papers have at least 3 high-quality reviews. We encourage SACs to quickly skim all of the reviews and point out any potential issues to ACs. You are ultimately responsible for making sure the reviews are all there and high quality, so if an AC is unresponsive you will need to step in. Emergency reviewers should be assigned no later than Nov 5. Author response period During this period, reviews will be available to authors. If any reviews are still missing, it is urgent to help your ACs track them down or invite additional reviewers. Otherwise, no action should be needed from you during this period. Ensure that ACs initiate reviewer-author discussions, oversee the discussions As soon as the author response is entered in the system, ACs should lead a discussion via OpenReview for each submission and make sure the reviewers engage in the discussion phase. If your assigned ACs have not initiated discussions, prompt them to do so. This discussion period will be primarily for the reviewers to engage with the authors before the closed discussions among the reviewers and ACs. During these dates the reviewers should interact with the AC and among themselves. Please make sure there is active engagement, especially for the papers where there are positive and negative reviews. We strongly recommend that each SAC go through all borderline papers (where there is not unanimous agreement among the reviewers) and make sure the AC and reviewers are engaging in a discussion. If they are not, please contact the AC and guide them on conducting the discussion. If the AC flags extremely delayed reviews, low-quality reviews, or papers with significant LLM usage not disclosed in the paper, weigh in on the AC’s determination. If you agree with the AC, flag these cases to the program chairs. Meta review due: Dec 10 Make sure that the ACs submit a high-quality meta-review by this date. Encourage them beforehand not to submit short meta-reviews, or override reviewers' recommendation without discussing it with them. ​Discuss Meta-review with SAC: Dec 10 – Dec 20: ACs are instructed to prepare their meta-reviews by Dec 05, and your role during this period will be to help ACs with borderline decisions and calibrate decisions across ACs. We recommend reaching out to ACs prior to Dec 05 about any borderline papers and to invite discussion from them. Immediately after Dec 05, please go through all meta-reviews and perform a calibration pass to ensure a uniform standard for acceptance/rejection across ACs, point out any potentially questionable decisions that you would like to discuss with the ACs further, and ensure that the meta-reviews are of high quality. Good meta-reviews should clearly explain the reasons for the decision, explain how the paper should be improved for the final if accepted, or provide some indication for how the flaws in the paper might be addressed for a rejection. We also ask that SACs ensure that the meta-review takes the author response into account. ​Finalize decisions with program chairs: Jan 2 – Jan 8 Be prepared to discuss all borderline papers and cases in which the recommendation of the AC goes against the recommendations of the reviewers. Update meta-reviews to accurately reflect the final decision. Best Practices Be responsive. Respect deadlines and respond to emails as promptly as possible. Make sure that your preferred email address is accurate in your OpenReview profile and that emails from noreply@openreview.net don’t go to spam. If you will be unavailable (e.g., on vacation) for more than a few days—especially during important windows (e.g., decision-making)—please let the program chairs know as soon as possible. Be proactive. It is your responsibility to ensure that the review process goes smoothly. Check in to make sure that the ACs you work with are responsive, help them find emergency reviewers, and make sure discussion is happening on their papers. Be kind. It is important to acknowledge that personal situations may lead to late or unfinished work among reviewers and ACs. In the event that a reviewer or an AC is unable to complete their work on time, we encourage you to be considerate of the personal circumstances; you might have to pick up the slack in some cases. If necessary, make a back-up plan with another reviewer or AC, and be flexible to the extent possible. In all communications, exhibit empathy and understanding. Respect conflicts of interest. Since the reviewing process is double blind at the level of ACs, it is your responsibility to be on the lookout for uncaught conflicts of interest. If you notice a conflict of interest with a submission that is assigned to one of your ACs, contact your assigned program chair right away. Do not talk to other SACs about submissions assigned to your ACs without prior approval from program chairs since other SACs may have conflicts with these submissions. Do not talk to other SACs or ACs about submissions you are an author on or submissions with which you have a conflict of interest. Confidentiality You must keep everything relating to the review process confidential. Do not use ideas, code, or results from submissions in your own work until they become publicly available (e.g., via a technical report or a published paper for ideas/results, via open source for code). Do not talk about or distribute submissions (whether it is the code, or the ideas and results described in them) to anyone without prior approval from the program chairs. Code submitted for reviewing cannot be distributed. If you wish to invite an external reviewer, do so through OpenReview rather than sharing submissions through another channel. Successful Page Load ICLR uses cookies for essential functions only. We do not sell your personal information. Our Privacy Policy » Accept