ACCV 2026 Area Chair Guidelines
Area Chairs play a central role in maintaining the quality, fairness, and efficiency of the ACCV 2026 review process. In this role, each Area Chair is expected to oversee the evaluation of assigned submissions with independence, care, and professionalism; to facilitate constructive communication among reviewers; and to help the conference reach decisions that are well reasoned and consistent across papers. Each submission should be evaluated on its own merits and in light of its intended contribution. Submitted papers use the LNCS format and are limited to 14 pages including figures and tables; additional pages are permitted only for references. Area Chairs are typically expected to oversee between 10 and 20 papers. Because the workload may vary depending on the number of submissions and the need for emergency handling, Area Chairs should inform the Program Chairs early if their assigned load becomes difficult to manage.
Core Responsibilities
For each assigned paper, an Area Chair is expected to:
- help ensure that the paper is assigned to reviewers with appropriate expertise and no conflicts of interest;
- monitor the progress of the review process and check whether reviews are substantive, technically informed, and sufficiently specific;
- intervene when reviews are delayed, missing, overly weak, or otherwise inadequate, and help arrange additional or emergency reviews when necessary;
- help ensure that each paper receives the required number of meaningful reviews;
- initiate and actively guide reviewer discussion after the author rebuttal period;
- evaluate the paper by considering the reviews, the rebuttal, and the reviewer discussion as a whole; and
- write a clear and informative meta-review that explains the reasoning behind the recommendation.
Reviewer Assignment and Review Quality
Area Chairs should use their own judgment when overseeing reviewer matching and review quality. Automated matching tools can be useful, but they should be treated only as an aid and not as a substitute for expert assessment. If a reviewer assignment appears unsuitable, or if a submitted review is too brief, generic, factually questionable, or otherwise unhelpful, the Area Chair should take timely action through the appropriate process.
When suggesting or assessing reviewer assignments, Area Chairs should prioritize subject-matter expertise and a balanced set of perspectives.
Discussion After Rebuttal
After author rebuttals become available, Area Chairs should promptly open and lead reviewer discussion for each assigned paper. The purpose of this stage is not merely to collect updated scores, but to clarify the main technical issues, determine whether the authors have addressed the most important concerns, and help reviewers converge on the points that matter most for the final assessment.
This responsibility is particularly important for papers with mixed, borderline, or conflicting reviews. In such cases, the Area Chair should identify the central disagreements, encourage reviewers to engage seriously with one another’s reasoning, and help keep the discussion focused, professional, and evidence-based.
Meta-Review and Recommendation
The meta-review should provide a concise but self-contained explanation of the recommendation. It should identify the main strengths and weaknesses of the paper, explain how the rebuttal and reviewer discussion affected the assessment, and state the reasoning that led to the final recommendation. A strong meta-review should do more than restate reviewer scores or summarize isolated comments; it should explain how the available evidence supports the recommendation.
Area Chairs are expected to exercise independent judgment while also taking reviewer consensus seriously. When reviewers broadly agree, that consensus should normally be respected unless there is a clear and well-justified reason to depart from it. When opinions remain divided, the Area Chair should read the paper carefully, weigh the arguments on both sides, and provide a reasoned explanation for the recommendation.
Final acceptance decisions are made by the Program Chairs based on the full set of recommendations and conference-level considerations. Area Chairs are therefore expected to provide recommendations that are carefully reasoned, consistent with the review record, and helpful to the final decision process.
AC Triplet Meetings and Coordination with Program Chairs
In ACCV 2026, the review process is organized through Program Chairs, Area Chairs, and Reviewers. To support consistency and careful evaluation, Area Chairs will also participate in AC triplet meetings. These meetings provide an opportunity for small-group discussion of borderline papers, difficult cases, and papers for which calibration across recommendations is especially important.
AC triplet meetings are intended to promote consistency, identify cases that merit closer scrutiny, and help Area Chairs refine their recommendations through peer discussion. They do not replace the Area Chair’s responsibility for making an independent assessment and writing the meta-review for assigned papers.
If an Area Chair encounters a serious procedural issue, a potential ethics concern, a conflict-related problem, or a paper for which a recommendation remains especially difficult even after reviewer discussion and triplet consultation, the matter should be brought promptly to the attention of the Program Chairs through the designated channel.
Area Chairs may also be asked to participate in additional calibration or consultation coordinated by the Program Chairs, especially for borderline cases or for papers being considered for oral, spotlight, or award-related distinctions.
Professional Conduct, Ethics, and Confidentiality
Area Chairs must follow the rules set out in these guidelines concerning conflicts of interest, confidentiality, ethics, and professional conduct. Submissions, reviews, rebuttals, reviewer discussions, and meta-reviews must be handled only within the official review process and must not be disclosed or discussed outside it.
Area Chairs must not use ideas, methods, data, results, or other unpublished materials from submissions under review for their own research or other purposes before the work is publicly released.
Any local copies or locally stored materials created for the purpose of handling assigned papers, including notes, downloaded files, draft meta-reviews, or other derived materials, should be retained only as long as needed for the official review process and should be deleted or destroyed once that process is complete, unless the Program Chairs explicitly instruct otherwise.
Any serious concern involving reviewer misconduct, conflicts, ethics issues, policy violations, or other procedural problems should be reported promptly to the Program Chairs through the review system.
Area Chairs should also help ensure that discussions remain respectful and constructive. Strong disagreement about technical merit is acceptable; dismissive, hostile, or careless conduct is not.
Use of Tools and Writing of Meta-Reviews
Area Chairs are expected to personally carry out their evaluative responsibilities. In particular, the reading of reviews, interpretation of rebuttals, assessment of reviewer discussion, participation in triplet consultation, and writing of meta-reviews must reflect the Area Chair’s own judgment. These responsibilities must not be outsourced to external agents, including Large Language Models, in any form that substitutes for the AC’s own evaluation or authorship of the recommendation.
If an Area Chair encounters suspicious hidden prompts, improper use of external tools, or other review-integrity concerns, the matter should be reported promptly to the Program Chairs through the review system.
Area Chairs should treat the use of external links that expand the content of a submission, compromise anonymity, or bypass review constraints as a submission-policy issue. Code, videos, images, and similar media intended for review should instead be provided directly in anonymized supplementary files.
Availability and Commitment
Area Chairs are expected to remain actively engaged throughout the review cycle. This includes monitoring assigned papers regularly, responding promptly when issues arise, participating in reviewer discussion and AC triplet meetings, and meeting all deadlines for reports and meta-reviews. Because review-process problems sometimes emerge unexpectedly, Area Chairs should remain available for timely intervention whenever possible. If an extended period of unavailability is anticipated during a critical phase of the process, the Program Chairs should be informed as early as possible.
Area Chairs should also maintain a complete and up-to-date OpenReview profile so that reviewer matching and conflict detection can be handled accurately.
Timeline for Area Chairs
The timeline below summarizes the current ACCV 2026 AC schedule and may be adjusted if the official conference schedule changes.
- Before June, 2026
Recommend candidates for the reviewer pool. - July 5, 2026
Paper submission deadline. - July 8-12, 2026
Suggest reviewers for assigned papers. - July 19, 2026
Papers assigned to reviewers. - July-August, 2026
Monitor review progress and identify missing or insufficient reviews. - August 12, 2026
Reviews due. - August 13-25, 2026
Emergency review period; check review quality and help secure emergency reviews as needed. - August 26, 2026
Reviews released to authors. - September 2, 2026
Author rebuttals due. - September 2, 2026
Reviewer discussion begins. - September 8, 2026
Final reviewers recommendations due. - September 9-16, 2026
AC triplet meeting period; participate in triplet discussions, calibrate recommendations, and prepare meta-reviews. - September 12, 2026
Initial AC consolidation reports due. - September 17, 2026
Final AC meta-reviews due. - September 20, 2026
Final decisions released to authors. - August 26, 2026
Oral, sppotlight, and award decision period.