Resources · Reviewing Guidelines
Reviewing Guidelines
Thank you for serving as a reviewer or area chair for ML4H. Your contributions are essential to maintaining the quality and integrity of the symposium.
Timeline
| Milestone | Date |
|---|---|
| Fill out the questionnaire | TBA |
| Submission deadline | TBA |
| Reviews assigned | TBA |
| Reviews due | TBA |
| Reviews available to authors | TBA |
| Author private rebuttal period | TBA |
| Author–Reviewer discussion period | TBA |
| AC–Reviewer discussion period | TBA |
| Meta-reviews due | TBA |
| Decision released | TBA |
Tracks
ML4H accepts submissions in two tracks:
- Proceedings (8 pages): polished work with technical sophistication and clear impact in health. Each reviewer is assigned up to 4 submissions, at most 3 of which are Proceedings submissions.
- Findings (4 pages, non-archival): work prioritized for its likelihood to generate good discussion at the symposium.
Area chairs receive 6–10 submissions collectively.
Registration and assignment
Reviewers and area chairs must complete OpenReview registration by the questionnaire deadline and consent to collection, retention, and analysis of participation data by the Association for Health Learning and Inference (AHLI). Papers are matched with reviewers based on declared data modalities and subject area expertise.
Upon receiving assignments, reviewers must immediately report any conflicts of interest and verify that submissions fall within their areas of expertise.
Confidentiality
Do not discuss or distribute submissions, reviews, or any ideas from the submissions outside of the review process. The process is double-blind: authors and reviewers do not know each other’s identities, though assigned reviewers and area chairs can see each other’s identities.
Format
Submissions must use official ML4H templates with strict page limits. Reviewers are not obligated to read supplementary materials. Major formatting violations (e.g., a 20-page journal-like submission) are grounds for rejection.
Writing your review
Reviews should provide actionable, constructive, and respectful feedback while helping program leadership identify the highest-impact work. Critique the work, not the authors. Be specific: if something is unclear or incorrect, say exactly what and why.
When evaluating a submission, consider:
- Relevance — Is the work within scope for ML4H?
- Novelty — What is new relative to prior work?
- Technical soundness — Are the methods correct and well-described?
- Experimental rigor — Are baselines appropriate and results reproducible?
- Clinical validity — Does the clinical context justify the approach?
- Clarity — Is the paper well-written and easy to follow?
Discussion phase
During the author–reviewer discussion period, reviewers are expected to engage with one another and their area chair to reach a unified consensus. Area chairs will lead this discussion and flag reviews that lack quality or sufficient engagement with author responses.
Area chair responsibilities
Area chairs should:
- Check assignments for expertise and conflicts promptly after assignment
- Flag reviews lacking quality or sufficient responses during the author rebuttal period
- Lead reviewer discussions during the discussion period
- Submit meta-reviews by the deadline
Meta-reviews should summarize reviewer opinions, provide salient points for the author, identify areas for improvement, and highlight excellent papers and reviews for potential awards.
Conflicts of interest
Declare any conflicts of interest immediately. Do not review work from authors at your institution, former advisees or advisors, or anyone with whom you have a close personal relationship.