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My domain is Image processing.

While submitting papers to conferences, authors are usually asked to select a primary and secondary topic for there paper.

  1. What is the actual purpose of this?

  2. What if authors by mistake select a wrong (not completely) topic instead of a more suitable topic? Does this get changed before/during the review process?

  3. What if this is not corrected and paper is assigned to a reviewer who thinks this is not the proper topic of the paper? Does this affect the paper review process or increase chances of rejection?

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Conferences often use some sort of semi-automated system for matching papers and reviewers, in which case keyword/topic selection will be very important. Even when it is done by hand or by bidding, keyword/topic selection will typically guide who the paper gets assigned to. Moreover, some conferences also have special reviewing procedures or criteria for certain tracks.

Thus, what you select determines the audience you are claiming will best appreciate your paper, and thus which reviewers will be looking at it. If you pick the wrong ones, you'll get unappreciative reviewers, and have a much higher chance of getting rejected. If might get noticed and corrected on your behalf, but in my experience it is more likely that you will simply have a mismatch and get poorly reviewed.

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Yes, this helps organize the papers for the reviewers and structure the conference. Ticking the wrong box can indeed cause a paper to be rejected, as not all reviewers read all of the papers and realize that it is just misplaces. Do choose these with care.

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As Jake and Debora have said, the topics are used to allocate papers to the most suitable reviewers.

I know of a technical committee that had received approximately 400 papers for their conference. They wished to have 3 reviewers to each paper for a total of 1200 reviews.

They printed off the 400 submissions, laid them out on a very large floor and proceeded to attach post-its with reviewer's names on them. They had choose the 3 most suitable reviewers for each paper and keep a tally to ensure that no reviewer was overloaded. The whole process took almost a day of back and forth, and there were still errors when they had finished.

An online system can make a first pass on the allocation in minutes, taking into account paper topics, reviewer area of expertise, no of reviews per submission, nepotism and other factors. The chair can then tweak the allocation before inviting the reviewers to get started.

In answer to part 3, some abstract/paper management systems* will allow a reviewer to view the abstract/paper and if they feel it is not in their area of expertise, they can notify the chair who may re-allocate it to another reviewer. (Even though this is a useful feature that should, we have found that some chairs elect not to turn it on, believing that it gives reviewers an easy opt-out

*Disclosure - I'm a co-founder at Ex Ordo, an online abstract management system that includes these features.

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  • In connection to your answer to question 3 (last para), is this generally the case in flagship and/or top quality conferences? I mean, since these conferences are known for follow fair/strict procedures.
    – kunal18
    Commented Apr 13, 2016 at 17:09
  • Stalin: yes, this happens mostly in smaller conferences, but also in newer conferences where the reviewer pool is still being established, or not as familiar with the conference.
    – Dermot Lally
    Commented Apr 20, 2016 at 7:25

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