REVIEWER GUIDELINES

1. Keep the Confidentiality of the Submitted Material

As a reviewer for MICCAI, you have the responsibility to protect the confidentiality of the ideas represented in the papers you review. MICCAI submissions are by their very nature not published documents. The work is considered new or proprietary by the authors; otherwise they would not have submitted it. Sometimes the submitted material is still considered confidential by the author's employers. These organizations do not consider sending a paper to MICCAI for review to constitute a public disclosure.

Therefore, it is required that you strictly follow the following recommendations:

2. Avoid Conflict of Interest

The blind reviewing process will help hide the authorship of many papers, and primary Program Committee (PC) Members will try hard to avoid conflicts of interest. But if you recognize the work or the author and feel it could present a conflict of interest, send the paper back to the primary PC Member and inform the Program Chairs at

You have a conflict of interest if any of the following is true: you belong to the same institution, you co-authored together in the past 5 years, you hold a grant together, you have applied for a grant together, you currently collaborate, you plan to collaborate, you have a business partnership, you are relatives, or you have a close personal relationship.

3. Stay Anonymous

Reviewer's identity should not be revealed to the authors at any point in times, during and after submission phase. Requesting citations primarily to one's own work may break anonymity so it should be carefully considered.

4. Write a "good review"

The role of a reviewer is to identify papers that the MICCAI community must hear about. It is not to reward authors for their hard work and dedication. As such, the review should tell area chairs which papers are exciting and could have a great impact on the field.

A good review expresses an opinion about the paper and backs it up with details on strengths and weaknesses of the paper. It is not sufficient to simply summarize the paper and add a couple of questions about low-level details in the paper. Nor it is acceptable to express an opinion without backing it up with specifics.

A good review is polite. Just like in a conversation, being rude is typically ineffective if one wants to be heard. Given the page limit, it is unfair to ask the authors to substantially expand their paper. Similarly, it is not useful to recommend acceptance conditional on substantial revisions of the paper. The paper should be evaluated as submitted since the conference has no mechanism to ensure proposed changes will be carried out, and the authors have no room to add derivations, plots, or text.

While the format might vary, a good review typically includes the following components:


Before submitting a finished report, a wise referee asks "Would I be embarrassed if this were to appear in print with my name on it?"