Reviewer Guidelines

Thank you once again for agreeing to review for CCN Proceedings.

In order to create a review process that yields the highest quality, as a grass-roots organization, we have adopted a system that is more common at machine learning conferences.

As this is the second CCN Proceedings track, the timeline and guidelines may evolve. We appreciate your understanding and patience as we develop this new process for CCN.

Role

As a Reviewer, you carry the important responsibility of evaluating submissions, thereby identifying work that should be included and highlighted at CCN as well as giving feedback to other's work that is vital to the scientific process.

Each submission to the CCN 2026 Proceedings will receive at least 3 high-quality reviews from Reviewers like yourself. After the review period concludes, the Authors can respond to the reviews and sustain discussion with the Reviewers. Your work and that of your fellow Reviewers will be supported by an Area Chair (AC). The AC will write a meta-review that summarizes the reviews and discussions and makes a recommendation for acceptance. Your area chair will be supervised by a Senior Area Chair (SAC). Your communications with authors, other reviewers, and area chairs will take place via OpenReview.

OpenReview Console

The OpenReview console provides an overview of all papers assigned to you. Use the console to track review progress, deadlines, and discussion status. The console allows you to filter papers by status (e.g., "Missing Reviews," "Ready for Decision").

The console points to the forum page for individual submissions, where you can view details, post comments, and engage in discussions specific to a single submission. For a quickstart on how to use the OpenReview forum page, see Using the New Forum Page.

Setting comment visibility

To set comment visibility in OpenReview, use the "Readers" dropdown when posting your comment. Check carefully that the appropriate people can see the comment before posting. For example, to engage in private discussion with an AC or SAC, the comment should be set visible to the AC or SAC and "Program Chairs" only. (The "Program Chairs" on OpenReview are the CCN TPC.)

Timeline

Assignment

review-period

We have done our best to match reviewers with the most appropriate submissions. However, if you find that a manuscript assigned to you is too far outside of your area of expertise, or if you recognize a potential conflict of interest; please let your AC or the TPC know straight away so that we can re-assign the manuscript by posting a comment on the OpenReview forum for the submission with the readers set to your Area Chair and the TPC (see Setting comment visibility).

A conflict of interest arises when an author on one of your assigned submissions is a current or former advisor, family member, or close personal relationship, a current or recent collaborator, or someone who works in your current or recent immediate organization, or when you have a financial interest in the work.

In addition, please make sure that your OpenReview profile has your latest email listed and keep an eye on emails possibly landing in spam.

Review deadline

reviews-due, 11:59 PM Anywhere on Earth (AoE), is the reviewing deadline. We are counting on you to submit your review(s) on or before this date so that we can move onto the next step of the process.

Reciprocal reviewers

As stated in the submission guidelines, if you are a Reciprocal Reviewer (reviewing as part of a proceedings submission) and do not submit all assigned reviews by the author response stage, the relevant submissions may be desk-rejected and may not be considered for Contributed Talk when converted to the Extended Abstracts track.

Reviews

review-period

As a reviewer, you will evaluate submissions assigned to you and provide high-quality feedback to help identify work that should be included and highlighted at CCN.

Review form

Your review should include the following components:

Title

Briefly summarize your perspective on this manuscript.

Ratings

Rate the submission on the following criteria (details on the scales in the review form):

Interest

To what extent is this work relevant to the CCN community, in terms of scope and impact?

• 5: Landmark (contributions have transformative implications for multiple disciplines at CCN)
• 4: Broad (contributions have significant implications with interdisciplinary relevance)
• 3: Disciplinary (contributions have significant implications within one of AI, cognitive science, or neuroscience)
• 2: Incremental (contributions have minor implications for one of AI, cognitive science, or neuroscience)
• 1: Limited (contributions are out of scope for CCN, or are covered by prior work)

Soundness

Does the evidence support the claimed contributions? Are the right methods used?

• 5: Exceptional (establishes new standards of evidence for a field)
• 4: Compelling (rigorous, e.g., convergent evidence from multiple methodologies)
• 3: Convincing (appropriate methodology and evidence consistent with claims)
• 2: Incomplete (evidence only partially supports the claims, or more appropriate methods are not used)
• 1: Inadequate (lacks critical evidence, or has methodological flaws that undermine conclusions)

Clarity

Are the contributions clearly communicated?

• 5: Exceptional (understandable to all of CCN; highly reproducible; pedagogical)
• 4: Accessible (coherent; understandable beyond immediate subfield; reproducible)
• 3: Adequate (understandable to an expert audience)
• 2: Underdeveloped (hard to follow and/or missing key details)
• 1: Poor (difficult to understand even for experts in the subfield)

Confidence of Expertise

Do you feel confident in your ability to judge this work?

• 5: You are absolutely certain about your assessment. You are very familiar with the related work and checked the methodological and/or technical details carefully.
• 4: You are confident in your assessment, but not absolutely certain. It is unlikely, but not impossible, that you did not understand some parts of the submission, or that you are unfamiliar with some pieces of related work.
• 3: You are fairly confident in your assessment. It is possible that you did not understand some parts of the submission, or that you are unfamiliar with some pieces of related work. Methodological and technical details were not carefully checked.
• 2: You are willing to defend your assessment, but it is quite likely that you did not understand the central parts of the submission, or that you are unfamiliar with some pieces of related work. Methodological and technical details were not carefully checked.
• 1: You are unable to assess this paper.

Comments

10,000 characters

Please explain your evaluations of the interest, soundness, and clarity of this submission to the CCN Proceedings track (as detailed in the reviewer guidelines) and provide any additional comments to the authors. You can incorporate Markdown and Latex into the comments section.

Your comments should:

• Summarize the manuscript's claims and approach

• List the strengths and limitations of the manuscript

• Cover the dimensions above (Interest, Soundness, Clarity) and motivate your rating. It can also be helpful to explain why you don't believe a higher or lower rating is appropriate

• Note any questions you have for the authors, or requests to clarify something, that could be helpful for the authors when presenting the work at CCN

• Make suggestions for improvement of the work

Things to flag

Reviewers are instructed to look out for the following in their submissions. If you note any of the below, please escalate them with your SAC or the TPC by posting a comment on the OpenReview forum for the submission with the readers set to your Senior Area Chair and the TPC (see Setting comment visibility).

Breaches of anonymity

If you find that the identity of the authors is revealed (e.g., names or affiliations can be found in the text, or in included or linked supplementary material), please flag this to your AC or SAC.

Ethical concerns

This includes, for instance, harm, injury, or unfair bias. If you notice unethical behavior involving authors or reviewers assigned to you, please notify your SAC.

Dual submission

Submissions that are identical or substantially similar to papers that are under review, have been accepted to, or have been published in other archival conferences and journals should be deemed dual submissions.

Discussion

discussion-period

After reviews are in, authors will be given the opportunity to respond to their reviews, and then a conversation will follow. Engage with the authors regardless of your evaluation of the manuscript.

After this, please update your review and explain how and why the author's response has or hasn't affected your evaluation. Based on your review, the AC and SAC will come to a recommendation on whether the manuscript is accepted for publication in the CCN proceedings. The program committee will also use these to determine which submissions will be asked to present the work in the form of a talk.

Policies

Availability

Respect deadlines and respond to emails as promptly as possible. Make sure that your preferred email address is accurate in your OpenReview profile and that emails from noreply@openreview.net don't go to spam. Please ensure your availability and engagement during your active periods of work. If you will be unavailable (e.g., on vacation) for more than a few days during important windows (e.g., decision-making), please let the TPC know as soon as possible.

If you are unable to meet these expectations, please let your AC or the TPC know as soon as possible.

Kindness

It is important to acknowledge that personal situations may, in rare instances, lead to late or unfinished work. If you find yourself unable to complete your work on time, please communicate this as soon as possible. If you oversee others who are unable to complete their work on time, we encourage you to be considerate of their personal circumstances and be ready to pick up the slack in such cases. If necessary, make a backup plan, and be flexible to the extent possible. In all communications, exhibit empathy and understanding.

Confidentiality

Do not discuss, distribute, or use ideas, content, or code of the submissions. Reviews are double-blind; authors and reviewers do not know each other's identity. Maintain strict confidentiality for all review materials. Don't use or share submission content (ideas, results, code) until publicly available. Never distribute submissions outside the OpenReview platform.

For reviewers: The use of LLMs or other automated tools is prohibited for generating review text or summarizing submissions. Inputting a paper submission into such a tool is a violation of confidentiality.

Conduct

Abide by the CCN Code of Conduct. Take part in an active, polite, and constructive manner.

Transparency

Please note that all reviews and meta-reviews of accepted papers will be made public.

Anonymization

Authors and other reviewers do not know your identity.

However, ACs do know your identity.

Interdisciplinarity

Keep in mind that a submission may have a greater affinity with a domain other than yours.

Flexibility

Despite our best efforts to plan this year's process, this is very much a recent endeavor, and therefore, the timeline and guidelines may shift now and then. So please keep an eye on our communications, and we ask for your understanding and patience as we keep developing CCN.

Contact Info

If you encounter a situation that you are unable to resolve on your own, please contact the Technical Program Committee (TPC) at tpc@ccneuro.org.

If the issue is technical issue related to the OpenReview platform, email the OpenReview support team directly at info@openreview.net and CC the TPC.