I was curious as to why reviewers are exempt from having to acknowledge rebuttals after submitting them to a conference recently.
Reviewers are busy people, and it’s difficult to respond in-depth most of the time. However, I fail to see why reviewers aren’t obliged to at least respond to rebuttals (even with a note as basic as “Thanks for your response!” or “I’ve noted the additional information and have adjusted my score accordingly”).
Because they are not getting paid for reviewing. There is no incentive for continued engagement. Also, the PCs are afraid to lose reviewers if they discipline them.
Wait until you are on the job market. You’ll be excited about a position at a company for three weeks and do 2 calls then a day-long onsite, and the next day you’ll have exactly this in your inbox:
“Thank you for your interest in exploring career opportunities at and taking the time to interview for the opportunity. We were impressed with your skills and experience, however, the team has decided not to move forward with your candidacy for this role.”
While time-consuming, reviewing is incredibly selfless. Almost no gain comes from reviewing, particularly if you are not in academia or are thinking about entering it. At several conferences, I read papers by authors and conversed with them for days, offering advice on how to improve their proofs and other things, all without receiving any kind of acknowledgment (top x% reviewers).
Besides, writers aren’t exactly easy to get along with. These days, authors will flatly ask you to increase your score just because they implemented several of your suggested adjustments. Some writers reply to my “thanks for the reply” even though I’ve already made up my mind by continuing the conversation. If I tried to be courteous, I may.
I found a paper I was interested in, but it was rejected because one reviewer felt it didn’t meet the conference standards unless it outperformed the state-of-the-art. Despite multiple reminders on Open review, this reviewer didn’t respond to rebuttals.
I’m noticing that many papers with questionable content about “LLM anything” are being accepted at the same conference.
Requiring a paper to beat the state-of-the-art (SOTA) is a narrow viewpoint. A new, novel method might not yet be fully refined but could have significant potential in the future. For example, a quantum computer might not be the best solution now, but it holds promise for advancements in certain applications.
However, the future application depends on the reach of the existing paper. If it is rejected, other researchers will avoid it as they wouldn’t want to cite the rejected paper.
It’s always frustrating when reviewers don’t reply to rebuttals. When I review papers, I try to reply and adjust the score accordingly but for one of the top conferences this year, I just gave up. They assigned me 6 papers to review and then asked me to review an additional 3 papers as an emergency reviewer. There is no way I could respond to 9 rebuttals during a semester while teaching a couple of classes, grading exercises, and preparing for exams. It’s an insanely time-consuming task with literally no benefit.
I see some replies asking, “What’s in it for me?” The answer is straightforward: you were or will be in the same position as the current authors. When you agree to review, you should be aware that author rebuttals are part of the process. If you don’t have the time to review properly, it would be better not to participate. This would send a stronger signal to steering committees that the conference’s review process needs improvement and better management.