Itcs review process

ITCS Review Process

Understanding how ITCS decides tells you where your effort matters — and at ITCS, almost all of it matters before the deadline, because there is no rebuttal, no revise-and-resubmit, and no second round. The submission is judged as it stands. This skill models the pipeline so you can calibrate expectations and pre-empt the objections you will never get to answer.

The pipeline

1. Registration then submission. Title/abstract/authors/conflicts lock ~2 days before the paper (early September); the abstract drives PC bidding. Then the anonymized full PDF with complete proofs is uploaded to HotCRP.
2. PC + external review. A program committee (order of a few dozen members) handles the load; PC members review directly or solicit external reviewers (subreferees) for expertise. The PC — not the external reviewers — owns the decisions.
3. Reviewing on the novelty axis. Reviewers are briefed to weight conceptual contribution — a new model, question, or connection — over incremental technical depth. "Is this a new question worth asking, and is the model alive?" carries more weight than "is this the year's hardest theorem?" (contrast STOC/FOCS; see itcs-topic-selection).
4. PC decision. The committee reaches accept/reject. There is no Major Revision category and no author-response phase — the reviews are formed and the decision made without your input.
5. Notification (~November), then camera-ready for LIPIcs.

Lightweight double-blind, precisely

• The submitted PDF omits author names, affiliations, and emails; the prose avoids identity-revealing self-reference.
• But it is lightweight: the reference list is not anonymized, and authors are encouraged to post a non-anonymous full version to arXiv/ECCC/ePrint. Reviewers are not forbidden from encountering the preprint. The blinding reduces first-impression bias; it does not attempt airtight anonymity.
• Some editions have handled this as a "reveal after initial review" middle ground; treat the exact mechanism as cycle-volatile and read the current call (see ../../resources/official-source-map.md).

The no-rebuttal reality

This is the single biggest difference from many CS venues, and it reshapes strategy:

• You cannot correct a misunderstanding after the fact. If a reviewer misreads your model or doubts your novelty, the paper must have forestalled it in the text.
• The submission is the whole argument. Everything a depth venue's authors would save for a rebuttal — the "is it trivial?" defense, the novelty delta, the scope caveats — must be present at upload.
• See itcs-author-response for how to operate when there is no response phase, and how the pre-emption work happens inside the paper.

Where the (limited) leverage is

Stage	Leverage	How to use it
Before submission	High	Pre-empt the three objections (trivial? new? why-care?) in the paper; prove the anchoring result in full
Abstract/registration	Medium	A precise, honest abstract improves PC bidding and reviewer match
Preprint	Low-medium	A clear full version helps a reviewer who wants more detail (allowed under lightweight double-blind)
After reviews arrive	~None	No rebuttal; reviews are usually returned with the decision
After reject	Medium (next venue)	Reviews are typically substantive; use them to sharpen a STOC/FOCS/SODA or journal resubmission

What reviewers are looking for (calibrate to these)

• A genuinely new idea, checkably new against the ITCS/ICS back-catalog and the connected area.
• A model that is alive — an anchoring separation/possibility/impossibility result.
• Complete, correct proofs of every central claim (the appendix counts; the external preprint does not, on its own).
• Honest scope — a bold first foray with candid open problems is a feature here, not a weakness.
• A reason the community should care — a connection, a reframing, an application sketch.

Common misreadings to avoid

• Treating ITCS like STOC and optimizing for depth — the PC may find the paper strong but "not innovative enough."
• Assuming a rebuttal will let you fix a gap — there is none; the gap sinks the paper.
• Assuming the external full version will be read — the PC judges the submitted PDF.
• Anonymizing references or self-citations — that breaks the lightweight rule and can read as evasive (see itcs-related-work).

Output format

[ITCS review calibration]
[Novelty] is the new idea legible and checkably new to a briefed PC? yes/no
[Alive] anchoring result present? yes/no
[Proofs] all central claims fully proved IN the submitted PDF? yes/no
[Objections pre-empted] trivial? / new? / why-care? all answered in-text (no rebuttal to rely on)? yes/no
[Anonymity] names/affil/email removed, references NOT anonymized? yes/no
[Risk read] likely reviewer objection + where the paper already answers it (or must)