Reviewer Guidelines

Peer-Review Process Overview

The primary purpose of the HRI peer-review system is to systematically and fairly evaluate submissions for publication at the HRI conference. As such, there are many checks and experts involved along the way. The process is as follows:

  • Authors submit their paper
  • The paper is assigned a Program Committee member (1AC) by a Track Chair (TC)
  • 1AC finds three external expert reviewers for the paper
  • The external reviewers submit their detailed evaluations
  • 1AC reads the paper, the reviews, and completes a meta-review with an initial recommendation
  • The reviews and meta-review are returned to the authors
  • The authors can submit a rebuttal to address reviewer concerns
  • 1AC facilitates discussion with the reviewers to address the rebuttal, reviewers update their reviews if needed
  • A second Program Committee member (2AC) is assigned the paper. 2AC reads all reviews, the meta-review, and the rebuttal, and writes a grand overall review
  • The Program Committee meets (in person or virtually) to discuss papers and make final accept/reject decisions

Throughout this process you, as the external reviewer, will be in contact mainly with your 1AC—that is the program committee member who invited you to review a specific paper. If you are reviewing more than one paper, the 1AC of each paper might be different. You might also be contacted by track chairs or the program committee chairs (Maartje de Graaf, Matthew Gombolay, Ilaria Torre) with reminders or other instructions.

Review Deadline

Reviews are due on November 3, 2025 (Tuesday) AoE. This is a hard deadline. After receiving all reviews the 1AC will need to read them in detail and write a meta-review that summarizes all the reviews, within only three days. Hence your 1AC will greatly appreciate your timely submissions of the review. Any delay in submitting the reviews can result in delaying the whole process.

Conflict of Interest

To ensure objectivity in the review process, we ask you to please disqualify yourself from submitting a review for papers authored by people with whom you are in any of the following relationships, as per ACM policies for conflict of interest:

  • Working at the same institution or company
  • Co-authorship in the last 24 months
  • Active collaboration on a project or serving as co-investigators on a grant
  • Graduate advisee/advisor relationship

As we are following a double-blind review process for HRI 2026, whether or not you have a conflict with a paper might not be clear. If you suspect that you have a conflict, please contact your 1AC as well as the program chairs at pc2026@humanrobotinteraction.org.

Reviewer responsibilities

Your main responsibilities as an HRI 2026 reviewer include:

  • Reading the paper in detail and providing an assessment of the paper’s quality and the significance of its contributions to inform decisions about what should be included in the HRI 2026 program
  • Providing clear feedback and suggestions that allow authors to improve their paper, whether it is accepted or rejected
  • Keeping submissions confidential
  • Providing reviews in a timely manner
  • Authoring reviews that are concrete and informative for the program committee and constructive and actionable for the authors
  • Ensuring the reviews are thorough as well as polite, professional, and kind

All reviewers should follow the ACM peer review policy. This policy includes information about the use of Generative AI during the review process:

“Reviewers may use generative AI or other third-party tools with the sole purpose of improving the quality and readability of reviewer reports for the author, provided any and all parts of the review that would potentially identify the submission, author identities, reviewer identity, or other confidential content is removed prior to uploading into third party tools.”

Please be reminded that the use of generative AI for writing reviews is restricted and misuse will be reported.

Review Calibration and Quality

HRI is a premiere, highly competitive venue for publishing top-quality HRI work. Papers are expected to meet a high standard of originality, soundness, and quality of presentation. The acceptance rate of the conference is typically around 25%. 

Reviewers play a key role in selecting which papers get accepted and helping authors improve their papers. The review needs to be of high quality (1) to help the program committee make an informed decision and (2)  to give authors a positive experience, whether their paper is accepted or rejected. 

To support point 1, reviews need to be detailed, claims backed by evidence (e.g., citations), and consistent, with numerical scores reflected in the verbal review (e.g., avoid highly positive reviews with a score of 2).

To support point 2, reviews must be professional, polite and constructive, and whenever possible, positively framed. Reviews will be checked throughout the process to ensure  these criteria are followed.

Review quality is particularly important given that about three-quarters of the papers are rejected. If we are to expect authors to continue to submit their best work to this venue, authors need to know that their papers are carefully and fairly considered. Authors should be respected for the amount of work put into their submission, even if the paper has flaws. Negative, condescending, or unsubstantiated reviews will fracture our community by pushing people away. While writing your review, always put yourself in the author’s position: what type of feedback would you like to see that could actually improve your work? 

We count on you to make HRI a more inclusive and welcoming community! Imagine you are a first-year graduate student who has worked on this paper for a year – is your review sufficiently thorough to provide the respect their work deserves? Is your review encouraging? There are ways to give negative feedback in a way that is still constructive and encouraging for the author to try again in the future.

Review Criteria

HRI is the place for innovative work, and we welcome big-idea, provocative, and visionary papers, even if they may not be perfectly implemented. HRI also invites broad participation from a range of fields involving humans and robots including robotics, psychology, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, HCI, human factors, organizational behaviour, simulation, design, anthropology, and many other fields.

Submissions should not have been previously published or be under simultaneous review for any other conference or journal. Please consult with your 1AC and the program chairs if you have concerns about pre-published or simultaneous-submission work.

Remember that no paper or study is perfect. Please keep an eye on potential impact and novelty, even in the face of minor issues with the paper. Favor slightly flawed, impactful work over perfectly executed, low-impact work.

Review Form Overview

The online review form has the following fields that the reviewer will respond to.

  • Experience: Indicate your experience in the field of HRI or a field of study related to the topic of this submission, not including your graduate studies, but including postdoctoral appointments and/or industry experience. Possible responses are:
    • Graduate student
    • 0 – 2 years 
    • 2 – 5 years
    • 5 – 10 years
    • Over 10 years
  • Contribution: Briefly describe (a) what you believe to be the paper’s key findings and contribution, (b) the authors’ claimed contribution, and (c) how well these align. Please remember that there are many types of contributions in HRI and the types of contributions may vary by the track and theme of the paper.
  • Detailed review: Write detailed comments about your assessment of the paper and how the paper could be improved. A suggested outline for this part is given below. 
  • Comments to Committee (hidden from authors): Provide additional comments on the relevance, originality, and significance of the paper that you wish to only share with the Program Committee.
  • Overall rating: Provide your overall rating of the paper on a 5-point scale. Possible answers are:
    • Definite accept: I would argue strongly for accepting this paper.
    • Probably accept: I would argue for accepting this paper.
    • Borderline: I am on the fence, I could go either way.
    • Probably reject: I would argue for rejecting this paper.
    • Definite reject: I would argue strongly for rejecting this paper.
  • Long-Term Comparative Rating: Rate the paper’s quality and significance compared to previously published HRI papers.
  • Sustainability Recognition: Indicate whether, in your opinion, the paper addresses sustainability issues, or demonstrates a commitment to sustainable research practices.

Suggested Outline for Detailed Review

While no review format is enforced, the following suggested outline covers the required components:

Summary — Start with a brief summary of the work, the main findings, and potential contributions.

Strengths and Weaknesses — List the strengths and weaknesses of the paper in brief paragraphs or a bulleted list form.

Detailed Comments — Expand on the strengths and weaknesses with more details. Discuss the contributions, make recommendations on design, implementation, and evaluation, provide pointers to additional relevant work, and add information that might benefit the authors’ research program. Make sure to comment on the track-specific review criteria.

Suggestions for Improvement — Provide concrete and actionable suggestions for improving the work and the paper. For example, give clear explanations of why something is a problem, and provide steps that should be taken to improve it. If limited related work is a problem, explain why and provide example references. If the paper lacks clarity, the review can pose specific questions that authors can address.

Recommendation — Conclude with a brief but clear statement of whether you recommend the paper to be included in this year’s program, including nuances of your opinion not clearly reflected in the numeric score. For example, 

“I believe that this paper makes a significant contribution to HRI and should be included in this year’s program,”

“While the paper has some weaknesses, it could be included in the program, as it makes the following contributions: …,” 

“Although the paper has some weaknesses, they can be addressed by making the following improvements: …,”

“While the work presented in the paper is promising, it does not seem to be ready for publication due to major weaknesses in …,”

“The paper does not seem to be appropriate for the topics and goals of the conference and the authors should be encouraged to submit their work elsewhere such as ….”

The review should clearly support the reviewer’s overall recommendation. The review should consider which weaknesses can be addressed through the rebuttal and camera-ready timeline, and specify what is needed in the rebuttal. We want the best work at HRI: if minor edits and reframing can make a paper publishable, propose this to the authors. If addressing the critical weaknesses of the paper would require major work (e.g., data collection, new analysis, major restructuring) then the paper should be recommended for rejection.

The program committee member who recruited you will be checking your review for quality and might reviewers to clarify points in a review or rephrase certain points. If you have any questions about the paper or the process, please contact your 1AC.

Paper Format, Length, Accessibility, Anonymization

All papers should follow the paper preparation guidelines provided on the HRI 2026 website. These guidelines cover:

  • Instructions for what information to include in papers that present studies with human participants (e.g., demographics, study environment, data analysis methods, etc.).
  • How to format papers according to ACM guidelines
  • How to ensure accessibility of papers for all reviewers and readers
  • How to anonymize paper submissions
  • How to prepare supplementary materials, videos, and appendices
  • How to include artifacts as part of a paper submission
  • Policy on Use of ChatGPT or Similar Models

Reviewers should keep an eye on the papers they review to ensure they follow these guidelines. If you encounter a submission that does not follow these guidelines, please contact your 1AC and the program chairs.

The length of the paper should be proportional to its contributions, rather than trying to “fill up” an 8-page submission. You should not negatively rate a paper if it is shorter than the maximum allowed length. In addition, you can weigh the length of the paper in making your assessment of the contribution.

While we expect authors to follow the guidelines for anonymizing submissions, we recognize that there are cases in which complete anonymization becomes difficult (e.g. prior publication in public archives, a very unique robot, …). If you feel that knowing the full identity of the authors might be biasing your review, please contact your 1AC as soon as possible so another reviewer can be assigned.

Full Paper Tracks

Each paper is assigned to a primary track which determines the subcommittee that will discuss and make decisions about the paper. There are five different tracks at HRI 2026:

  • User Studies
  • Design
  • Technical
  • System
  • Theory & Methods

Reviewers should read the information about the different tracks provided for authors on the HRI 2026 webpage. Although 1ACs will ensure that the expertise of the reviewers matches the track for which a paper is being considered, reviewers would benefit from understanding the track and their differing expectations. If you are unsure about the track of the paper you are reviewing or the expectations for the track you are reviewing for, please contact your 1AC.

Post-Rebuttal Discussion and Review Updates

Authors will have the opportunity to respond to your review with a rebuttal after they receive the reviews and meta-reviews. Rebuttals will be submitted by November 12, 2025 AoE and the discussion phase will begin immediately after.

If the authors submit a rebuttal, you will be contacted by your program committee member to read the rebuttal, enter into a discussion, and possibly modify your review. Typically, you append a section titled “Post Rebuttal Comments” to your review, where you acknowledge the rebuttal and indicate whether it addressed any questions or concerns you had posed in your original review. You can also mention any changes to your score in that section.

Please note that rebuttals are supposed to be self-contained within the 5000-character text box. It should not contain links to external resources. Please disregard any links within a rebuttal, and just read the rebuttal text itself.