<p>Why do conferences in TCS take so long to send reviewer's comments and to publish the list of accepted papers?</p>

<p>I guess that sending reviewers comments some days after notification makes some sense, since it may avoid complaints from angry authors of rejected papers. I mean after receiving the news that their papers was rejected some authors may feel compelled to complain with the chairs  in case some review is considered unfair or so. I believe that the probability of such complaints decreases after some days because the authors have some time to accept the bad news. </p>

<p>The reasons why lists of accepted papers are not published right away is less obvious to me. The only reason I can see is if there are some papers that have been accepted conditionally. But does this occur in top conferences like SODA, STOC, FOCS, ICALP etc? </p>

<p>An example is SODA 2018. Notification was 29/September. Reviewers comments were sent on 06/October. Nevertheless, today, 09 October the list of accepted papers is still not public.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-10-09T10:58:30.160Z
The list of accepted papers for SODA 2018 is here: http://www.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/~czumaj/SODA_2018_List_of_accepted_papers.htm
Arnaud
CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-10-09T17:16:30.247Z
Sometimes the title or author list of a paper gets changed after acceptance and some time is given for that.
Thomas Steinke
CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-10-10T20:27:22.933Z
The reviews may be delayed because they are scrutinized for information which may unintentionally de-anonymise the reviewer, or for phrasing which may come as too harsh, or sometimes to add summaries of the anonymous PC discussion. The list of accepted papers may be delayed for the reasons Thomas mentioned. For example, often two sets of authors are asked to merge their papers. Also, I saw the list of SODA 18 accepts last week.
Sasho Nikolov
CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-10-13T12:40:06.547Z
Speaking as a conference organiser for a conference not listed there... remember that these are busy people with busy lives. It often takes a bit of non-trivial time and effort to do such things. A simple answer might be: it's just not that important.
selig
CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-10-15T16:13:40.290Z
[Academia.se] might be a better place for this.
Yuval Filmus
<conferences>
Notification vs List of Accepted Papers
Conferencist
# Notification vs List of Accepted Papers

(Asked by: username_0 on 2017-10-09)

Why do conferences in TCS take so long to send reviewer's comments and to publish the list of accepted papers?

I guess that sending reviewers comments some days after notification makes some sense, since it may avoid complaints from angry authors of rejected papers. I mean after receiving the news that their papers was rejected some authors may feel compelled to complain with the chairs in case some review is considered unfair or so. I believe that the probability of such complaints decreases after some days because the authors have some time to accept the bad news.

The reasons why lists of accepted papers are not published right away is less obvious to me. The only reason I can see is if there are some papers that have been accepted conditionally. But does this occur in top conferences like SODA, STOC, FOCS, ICALP etc?

An example is SODA 2018. Notification was 29/September. Reviewers comments were sent on 06/October. Nevertheless, today, 09 October the list of accepted papers is still not public.

**Tags:** conferences

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: The list of accepted papers for SODA 2018 is here: http://www.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/~czumaj/SODA_2018_List_of_accepted_papers.htm  
> **username_2**: Sometimes the title or author list of a paper gets changed after acceptance and some time is given for that.  
> **username_3**: The reviews may be delayed because they are scrutinized for information which may unintentionally de-anonymise the reviewer, or for phrasing which may come as too harsh, or sometimes to add summaries of the anonymous PC discussion. The list of accepted papers may be delayed for the reasons Thomas mentioned. For example, often two sets of authors are asked to merge their papers. Also, I saw the list of SODA 18 accepts last week.  
> **username_4**: Speaking as a conference organiser for a conference not listed there... remember that these are busy people with busy lives. It often takes a bit of non-trivial time and effort to do such things. A simple answer might be: it's just not that important.  
> **username_5**: [Academia.se] might be a better place for this.  

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