reviewpaper.ai
ModeledACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval

The SIGIR 2026 review form, explained

Simulate SIGIR 2026 full-paper reviews: relevance to the conference, Relevance / Novelty / Technical Soundness / Presentation ratings, Strengths, Weaknesses, an Overall Recommendation (−3 to +3) with justification, and confidence.

Modeled, not official. SIGIR does not publish its review form. Field order and the values seen (e.g. "-1 poor" … "2 excellent", "1 weak accept", "0 borderline") come from public SIGIR 2026 Short Papers reviews on OpenReview; the Full Papers form is assumed to match, and the unseen ends of the overall and confidence scales are ours.

SIGIR 2027 abstract deadlineJan 14, 2027 · 23:59 AoE–d ––h ––m
Review my paper in SIGIR format Official source
Overall score
Overall Recommendation Score, -3–3
Sub-scores
Relevance Score, Novelty, Technical Soundness, Quality Of Presentation (-1–2)
Confidence
1–5
Form fields
12
Author checklist
8 items

How SIGIR reviewers read your paper

SIGIR 2026 moved to OpenReview. Each paper gets at least three PC reviews and a senior PC meta-review; decisions weigh novelty, technical depth, elegance, practical or theoretical impact, and presentation. Reviewers rate relevance, novelty, technical soundness and presentation, list strengths and weaknesses, and justify an overall recommendation. Generic, empty, insulting, late or LLM-generated reviews are "highly irresponsible" and can lead to sanctions.

  • Fair, thoughtful and respectful; never generic or empty.
  • Check experimental rigor explicitly: baselines, statistical significance, generalizability, reproducibility.
  • Back "done before" claims with citations.

Where the bar sits. SIGIR full papers are historically accepted at about 20–21%; 2026 figures are not published. On the −3…3 scale a mean of ≥ 1 (weak accept) is a rough proxy for acceptance, 0.25–1 borderline.

The reviewer form, field by field

In the order reviewers see it, with every score and its official wording.

  1. 01

    Relevance To Conference

    Free text

    Is this an information retrieval paper of interest to SIGIR? Explain briefly.

  2. 02

    Relevance Score

    Score · -1–2

    Fit to SIGIR.

    1. 2excellent
    2. 1good
    3. 0fair
    4. -1poor
  3. 03

    Novelty

    Score · -1–2

    What is new beyond prior work; cite prior work for any "done before" claim.

    1. 2excellent
    2. 1good
    3. 0fair
    4. -1poor
  4. 04

    Technical Soundness

    Score · -1–2

    Experimental design, baselines, statistical analysis, claims within the evidence.

    1. 2excellent
    2. 1good
    3. 0fair
    4. -1poor
  5. 05

    Quality Of Presentation

    Score · -1–2

    Clarity of motivation, scope and results.

    1. 2excellent
    2. 1good
    3. 0fair
    4. -1poor
  6. 06

    Strengths

    List of points

    Specific strengths, substantiated with evidence from the paper.

  7. 07

    Weaknesses

    List of points

    Specific weaknesses: unsuitable baselines, unreliable or non-generalizable results, evaluation mismatched to the research questions, missing statistical tests, insufficient detail to reproduce.

  8. 08

    Additional Notes

    List of pointsoptional

    Minor comments and suggestions.

  9. 09

    Overall Recommendation

    Free text

    Justify the overall score: the decisive strengths and weaknesses, weighing novelty, technical depth, elegance, impact and presentation.

  10. 10

    Overall Recommendation Score

    Score · -3–3

    Overall recommendation.

    1. 3strong accept
    2. 2accept
    3. 1weak accept
    4. 0borderline
    5. -1weak reject
    6. -2reject
    7. -3strong reject
  11. 11

    Nominate For Best Paper

    Single choice

    Nominate only exceptional papers.

    • 0 no
    • 1 yes
  12. 12

    Reviewer Confidence

    Score · 1–5

    How certain you are about your assessment.

    ScoreMeaning
    5I am absolutely certain that my evaluation is correct.
    4I am confident, but not absolutely certain that my evaluation is correct.
    3I am fairly confident that my evaluation is correct.
    2I am fairly confident that my evaluation is correct, but I have significant doubts.
    1My evaluation is an educated guess.

Area chair meta-review

SIGIR senior PC members write the meta-review; PC chairs decide.

  • Accept
  • Reject

SIGIR checklist to strengthen an IR paper

Reviewers check these. Gaps are easy points to lose.

  1. Why the problem matters is clearly motivated
  2. What is new beyond prior work is explicit
  3. Claims stay within the evidence; scope (what was and was not done) is explicit
  4. Research decisions are justified
  5. Experimental design and scale fit the study; suitable baselines
  6. Evaluation matches the research questions; proper statistical analysis
  7. Enough detail, data and code to reproduce
  8. Results presented clearly and discussed thoughtfully

Policy on LLMs in reviewing

SIGIR follows the ACM Peer Review Policy and requires that referees not use AI systems to create their reviews; LLM-generated reviews are treated as highly irresponsible.

Read the official policy

Author mode is for your own unpublished work. If you are an assigned reviewer, follow these rules: you are responsible for your review.

See your paper through SIGIR reviewers' eyes

Three simulated reviewers fill in exactly this form for your draft, then an area chair writes the meta-review. Every point links to the passage it's about. Your first three runs are free.

Review my paper — 3 free

reviewpaper.ai is not affiliated with SIGIR or its organizers. Forms change between cycles; always check the official source.