An increasing number of NLP submissions are going through ARR. To make sure that we can handle this growth, and to maintain a diverse and balanced reviewer pool, we would like to set up a reviewer mentorship program in the spirit of previous programs run at ACL. The goal of this program is to help researchers with less reviewing experience to quickly get up to speed with the help of more experienced reviewers.
## Overview
The program operates as follows:
1. Mentees and Mentors apply to join the program–see the application forms below.
2. We match mentors and mentees based on availability, review experience, topical alignment etc.
3. Mentees and Mentors work through our online material. This will prepare the mentee for their first assignment and remind the mentor what to look for when reviewing for ARR.
4. Once ready, in the following ARR cycle, we assign a paper to the mentee (provided there is a good match).
5. In the beginning of the cycle, mentor and mentee meet for an introduction and for high-level advice from mentor to mentee.
* This meeting can also be a place for the mentee to raise open questions from reading the online material below.
6. The mentee prepares their review in 14 days (so 10 days earlier than normal).
7. Right after, the mentor and mentee discuss the review and what might need to be improved
* This can involve the action editor too.
* It can happen via video chat or asynchronous communication, down to availability and preferences of mentees and mentors.
8. The mentee improves the review until stakeholders (mentee, mentor, action editor) decide it has sufficient quality.
9. After the cycle, mentor and mentee decide if more mentorship is necessary or if the mentee can continue to review independently.
Mentees
We are looking for researchers in the area of NLP that have experience with NLP paper authoring and/or reviewing (e.g. have an EMNLP or ACL paper, done some reviewing), but don’t yet feel ready to review for ACL conferences and ARR. If you fall into this category and are interested in becoming a review mentee at ARR, stay tuned for updates on our mentoring program.
Note that we cannot guarantee a place for everyone as the number of mentors is limited. The form asks for your OpenReview User ID so please create an OpenReview account if you haven’t already done so.
Mentors
We are looking for current ARR reviewers and action editors willing to mentor junior reviewers. If you are interested (and already an ARR reviewer/action editor), please stay tuned for updates on our mentoring program.
Material for Mentors and Mentees
The primary reading material for mentors and mentees is our ARR tutorial.
We ask mentees to go through this material (in full). While we expect mentors to have sufficient review experience, we still recommend them to review the material too in order to align with ARR expectations and help with communicating what good and bad reviews are.
Timeline
We hope that the first mentees and mentors are matched and ready to review by the February 15 cycle.
Contact
For questions and feedback please email mentorship@aclrollingreview.org.