“I never get the good papers for review.“
If this thought has ever crossed your mind, you are probably not alone. Good conferences in the HCI field typically accept only 20-25% of the papers submitted for review.
So how many papers to accept for review
… to review at least one good one?
It may seem obvious: the number should depend on the acceptance rate of the conference: 4 papers for 25%, 5 papers for 20%, 6 papers for 16.6%.
So, you are doing this already, and you still seem to get only the to-be-rejected ones?
This is, because probability computation does not always follow the intuitive approach.
Compute by rejection rate
The key is to compute by rejection rates and multiply them per paper.
If you review one paper from a conference with 20% acceptance rate, it’s likelihood to be rejected is 80%.
For two papers from the same conference, the likelihood that both are rejected is 80% * 80% = 64%. (not 60%, as what our intuition might tell us)
The row continues:
- three papers = 51.2%
- four papers = 41.0%
- five papers = 32.8%
So, even if you review five papers in this conference, the likelihood is 32.8% that all of them will be rejected.
See the diagram below for different acceptance rates (25%, 20%, 15%).
So, how many papers to accept for review?
If you want to have a 20% 80% chance of reviewing at least one accepted paper, you have to accept the following number of papers for review:
- 6 papers for a venue with a 25% acceptance rate
- 7-8 papers for a venue with a 20% acceptance rate
- 10 papers for a venue with a 15% acceptance rate
