The purpose of this document is to define the Review Process for the MICCAI 2025 conference. It is to be passed on each year, from successive MICCAI organizing committees, with the goal to refine and include feedback from the full set of past conference organising committees to create a continuity and consistency over the years. The document has been initiated, edited, and endorsed by the MICCAI 2017-2025 organizing committees. The MICCAI 2025 Program Committee has made some substantial changes to the process from previous years, and in particular, has updated the review procedure and criteria for early accept/reject decisions as detailed below.
The policies set within are designed to continuously improve the review process, with the following objectives:
The goal of the MICCAI conference review process is to select the best papers in each submission category. This selection should be: fair, taking into consideration the specialized nature of our discipline and the size of our community; efficient, in not wasting valuable time, effort, and funding from our peers; and just, in relying on consensus of peer comments.
This summary is made public for transparency, so that all participants understand the review process and its implications on the final paper decisions.
The MICCAI 2025 review process will be overseen by the following individuals:
James Gee
Daniel Alexander
Juan Eugenio Iglesias Gonzalez
Jaesung Hong
Carole Sudre
Archana Venkataraman
Kitty Wong
Jinah Park
Polina Golland
Jonghyo Kim
The Program Committee of MICCAI 2025 consists of three bodies of participants that are essential to the review process:
The following documents supplement this guide, and will be made available on the MICCAI 2025 conference website:
The MICCAI Society maintains a database of past ACs and Reviewers. Top performing ACs and reviewers are identified after each event. The MICCAI 2025 organizing committee will build on the list provided by earlier editions. Information about the number of times a member has served as an AC will be kept indefinitely. Information on the performance of reviewers or ACs will also be maintained.
MICCAI 2025 will issue a call for participation in the Program Committee via newsletter and mailshots. Individuals will submit relevant information regarding their past participation in MICCAI and similar conferences, as well as other biographical details.
Individuals will be chosen from the database, the received applications and other sources, and invited to join the MICCAI 2025 Program Committee, as ACs or Reviewers. When they apply, ACs and Reviewers will need to update their Toronto Paper Matching System entries, create/update their CMT profiles and associate themselves as being either MIC, CAI or MICCAI with additional information about their expertise in the Clinical Translation of Methodology and Challenges special to the Pan-Asian region. We encourage ACs and Reviewers to use their institutional email address. The MICCAI PCs will select the Program Committee using the following guidelines:
A webinar for ACs will be held to explain the review process, the AC role, responsibilities, tasks and important dates.
A webinar for Reviewers will be held to explain the review process, what is expected from reviewers, and how to provide high-quality and constructive reviews.
The initial list of potential Reviewers is drawn from a database of active reviewers of good standing from MICCAI 2019 to 2024.
In addition, all members of the community and all prospective authors are invited to apply to serve as reviewers. Applicants will be vetted by the PCs. While students are encouraged to serve, they must satisfy special eligibility requirements in order to be considered. ACs will also have an important role in updating and expanding the pool of reviewers.
Reviewers selected to serve for MICCAI 2025 must agree to the following:
Authors will register an intention to submit 14 days prior to the paper submission deadline. Authors must provide: i) a list of all co-authors and their affiliations and email addresses; ii) Google Scholar, Semantic Scholar, and DBLP IDs if available, and publication email addresses , as requested in the CMT User Profile; iii) conflict of interest domains for all authors; iv) the title of the paper; and v) the abstract of the paper.
At least one co-author of the paper must review for MICCAI 2025. Authors will be asked to provide the name and email address of the co-author who will participate as a reviewer. All nominated reviewers will be vetted for eligibility. If the same research group submits multiple papers, a unique reviewer should be nominated for each paper.
All co-authors will be asked to fill out their CMT User Profile including Google Scholar, Semantic Scholar and DBLP IDs if available and publication email addresses. This information will be used to start building the assignment of papers to ACs and potential reviewers. Authors and co-authors should use their institutional email addresses whenever possible.
Authors will submit papers through CMT. The MICCAI Conference review process will be double-blind, i.e., the names of the authors will be hidden from the ACs and Reviewers, and the names of Reviewers and ACs will not be revealed to authors. Papers must be fully anonymized before submission and a paper that is non-compliant with the anonymization or other paper submission rules (e.g., paper length) will be desk rejected. ACs and Reviewers will bring concerns about potential rule breaches to the attention of the Program Chairs.
Each paper must be submitted with Primary and Secondary areas selected from the CMT system. Authors must also identify to which stream the paper belongs, i.e., either MIC, CAI, MICCAI, Clinical Translation of Methodology, or MICCAI Addressing Pan-Asian Challenges. These areas, the stream, and the paper itself, will be used by the automated TPMS paper matching system embedded in the CMT system (see Stages 6 and 7) to identify potential reviewers.
The goal of this step is to ensure the breadth and depth of expertise within the Program Committee and the number of ACs are sufficient in response to the submissions actually received from the community. This step will allow for the adjustment of the Program Committee composition based on the paper domains represented at a particular conference edition.
Each paper will automatically be assigned to an AC by the CMT system, based on the TPMS and CMT subject areas, while balancing the workload across AC pool. Note that the AC is blind to the paper's authorship. The PCs will check to make sure all papers receive an adequate assignment.
The essential role of the AC is to shepherd each of their assigned papers through the review process, up until final decisions by the PCs. ACs will use their knowledge of the relevant topic(s) and of the appropriate reviewers to ensure high-quality, informative, and constructive reviews.
The goal of the paper allocation step is to find the most appropriate reviewers in terms of expertise for a given paper. This is achieved in two phases using the CMT system:
In phase 1, the CMT system automatically provides a list of potential reviewers for each paper to the ACs. This ordered list is generated based on indicated topic areas and TPMS scores. Using their expertise and judgment, the ACs then creates a ranked list of 10-15 suggested reviewers for each paper, avoiding reviewers who already have more than 25 papers pre-assigned. In phase 2, reviewers bid for papers by categorizing them into "Eager to review”, "Willing to review”, "In a pinch”, and "Not willing”. Reviewers will be asked to bid on all the papers for which the ACs suggested them as possible reviewers.
The CMT system optimizes the matching of reviewers to papers using as input the ranked list provided by the ACs, reviewer bids, TPMS scores, and topic areas, while load balancing across all papers, reviewers, and ACs. Three reviewers are ultimately assigned for each paper.
Note that the reviewers and ACs remain blind to the paper's authorship at all times. The PCs will ensure ACs have suggested reviewers on time. The PCs and Platform Manager will check reviewer assignments and manually adjust where needed.
The goal of the review step is to provide high-quality, informative, and constructive feedback for each submitted paper.This feedback will derive largely from the work of the reviewers, who will:
MICCAI 2025 will use a 7-point reviewing scale, associated with specific semantic meaning, as follows:
| Score | Semantic meaning |
|---|---|
| 6. strong accept | must be accepted due to excellence |
| 5. accept | should be accepted, independent of rebuttal |
| 4. weak accept | could be accepted, dependent on rebuttal |
| 3. weak reject | could be rejected, dependent on rebuttal |
| 2. reject | should be rejected, independent of rebuttal |
| 1. strong reject | must be rejected due major flaws |
| 0. out of scope | does not fit in the MICCAI remit |
The ACs are tasked to check the daily progress of the review process and monitor the quality of submitted reviews. ACs may ask a Reviewer for a more detailed assessment if needed. Should the ACs be unsatisfied with the quality of a review, and fail to obtain further feedback from the reviewer, then the ACs can ask for additional reviewer(s) to evaluate the paper, beyond the three originally assigned reviewers. Reviewers who perform poorly will be identified and recorded as such in the reviewer database.
Continuing a practice initiated in 2021, reviews and rebuttals of accepted papers will be made publicly available (without disclosing the reviewers' names) on the MICCAI website. By reviewing for MICCAI, reviewers give permission to have their reviews published.
In 2025, recommendations for early acceptance and rejections of submittted papers will be provided by the ACs. At this stage, AC meta-reviews will only be produced for rejected papers.
Historically, after the initial review in this stage, 15-20% of papers will be accepted; 40-50% will be rejected, and the remaining papers will be sent to the rebuttal stage.
Reviews of and early decisions for the papers are then sent to the authors. Authors of rebuttal papers will have one week to submit their response.
The goal of the rebuttal stage is to provide authors the opportunity to respond to reviewers' assessments; this response must be considered by reviewers and ACs in formulating their final recommendation for a paper. Rebuttals will be published along with the reviewers' comments if the paper is accepted. Rebuttals are not permitted to include any new results, experiments, or data beyond what was provided at paper's original submission. Non-compliant rebuttals will lead to desk rejection of the paper.
The original reviewers will be required to carefully consider the authors' rebuttal and revise their initial reviews accordingly. Reviewers will be asked to provide a final decision of acceptance or rejection for rebuttal papers
All rebuttal papers will be assigned to 3 ACs (the original, primary AC who handled the paper, and 2 secondary ACs) based on TPMS matching and CMT subject areas, while balancing workload over AC pool. Secondary AC assignments will be checked, and if necessary adjusted, by the PCs. After reviewers have considered the rebuttal, updated their reviews and provided final decisions, the 3 ACs will read the reviews and the rebuttal, and, if necessary, the paper; each AC will then independently make a recommendation for accept or reject. They may optionally write justifications for acceptance decisions, but are required to write a brief justification for all reject decisions. The ACs will also indicate whether rebuttal papers recommended for acceptance should be highlighted in the program (e.g., orals, awards) and provide their rationale for nominating a particular paper for this distinction.
The final decision for rebuttal papers will be determined by the PCs based on the AC recommendations. The PCs will adjudicate among the recommendations should there be disagreement between ACs while preferentially weighing primary AC's recommendation.
Taking into account the number of papers that can be accepted to the conference and in consultation with the Organizing Committee and the MICCAI Board, the PCs will prepare the final list of accepted papers (early and rebuttal).
A set of dedicated teleconferences (in different timezones) will be held by the PCs to inform the ACs about the overall outcomes and statistics of the review process as well as to solicit feedback and recommendations for potential future improvements to the process.
The number and format of the oral sessions will be determined by the Organizing Committee, in consultation with the MICCAI Board, and will reflect the overarching objectives of the conference and the specific themes of the submitted papers. The recommendations of the ACs and reviewers will be taken into consideration when deciding which papers to select for oral presentation. An emphasis will be made in showcasing Young Investigators by providing them with the opportunity to present.
Final decisions on oral versus poster presentations may be take up to two months after acceptance notification.
The PCs will issue the following, via email, to all authors:
All paper decision-related concerns raised by authors will be recorded and addressed by PCs.