ICDE Review Process
Use this to reason about review-stage strategy. Reopen the current call, important-dates page,
and any reviewer instructions before making process claims; ICDE re-declares its review model
each edition.
Process model
- ICDE takes research papers in two rounds per edition (ICDE 2027: ≈June and November).
Each paper draws at least three reviewers, coordinated by an area chair who
synthesizes the reviews into a recommendation.
- The ICDE 2026 model ran two reviewing phases inside a round: the first phase returned
Revise & Resubmit, Accept, or Reject; invited revisions were re-reviewed (≈4-week window)
before a final Accept/Reject. Whether the current edition keeps the R&R phase is
edition-specific (待核实).
- Review is single-blind: reviewers see author identity; authors do not see reviewers. This
changes the calculus — reputational priors exist, so the paper must earn belief on evidence,
not on names.
- A Round 1 reject is terminal for the edition; the paper cannot re-enter Round 2. That
raises the stakes on getting the evaluation right the first time.
- Accepted papers publish in IEEE Xplore; camera-ready compliance and IEEE metadata matter
as much as the acceptance itself.
Who reviews here
- The committee is builder-heavy: reviewers who have implemented indexes, optimizers, and
storage engines. They read an evaluation the way an engineer reads a benchmark — skeptical of
untuned baselines, single-point results, and hidden costs.
- Because scope overlaps SIGMOD and VLDB, at least one reviewer will likely know the nearest
prior system intimately; a novelty claim that ignores it is caught, not skimmed past.
- Borderline systems papers usually fail on one of three edges: an untuned or unfair baseline, a
performance claim with no operating point, or a mechanism whose benefit is never isolated by
an ablation.
Scoring leverage table
| Review dimension |
What raises it |
What sinks it |
| Novelty |
A named mechanism a builder could not have trivially derived |
"Yet another index" with no isolable new idea |
| Evaluation |
Tuned baselines, scale curves, variance, disclosed cost |
Single-point wins on one synthetic workload |
| Soundness |
Ablations that isolate the mechanism's contribution |
Gains that could come from unrelated engineering |
| Reproducibility |
Runnable supplement whose availability is evident |
Empty or unrunnable supplemental material |
| Significance |
A primitive an ecosystem can adopt |
A narrow tweak with no downstream reach |
Stage-by-stage realism
-
Phase 1 reviews: read them as the area chair will — is the central evaluation objection
answerable? A Revise & Resubmit is an opportunity, not a soft reject; treat the requirement
list as binding.
-
Revision re-review: the same reviewers check the list; unrequested scope changes hurt.
-
Decision: one unresolved fairness or cost objection outweighs several resolved clarity
nits, because a builder-heavy committee anchors on the evaluation.
-
Round choice as strategy: since Round 1 rejects skip the edition, aiming an immature
evaluation at the earlier round is a common self-inflicted loss.
Output format
[Current stage] submitted / phase-1 reviews / revision / decision / camera-ready
[Round] Round 1 or Round 2 (edition)
[Decision actors] <reviewers / area chair / program chairs>
[Likely leverage] <novelty / evaluation / soundness / reproducibility>
[Central objection] <the one thing the area chair will weigh most>
[Next response move] <one action>
