For those of you new to the SciPy community, we wanted to demystify the process we use to select talks, tutorials, and posters. The talks, posters and tutorials go through a similar process consisting of open reviews (i.e., the identities of the submitter and the reviewers are open).  

Submissions are automatically assigned to reviewers with expertise in the domain specific topic. Each submission is reviewed by at least 3 reviewers and rated in the following categories:  

- Overall evaluation. (numerical score -2 to 2 + text evaluation)  

- Is the proposal interesting to a broad range of people in the SciPy community? (numerical score -2 to 2)  

- Is the proposal clear? (numerical score -2 to 2)  

- Is the proposal complete? (numerical score -2 to 2)  

- How relevant and immediately useful is the topic? (numerical score -2 to 2)  

The submissions and their reviews are provided to the Track Chairs. The Program Committee Co-Chairs fill this role for the general track. The Chairs review the abstracts, scores and comments for all the submissions and make recommendations to the Program Committee Co-Chairs. The Program Committee Co-Chairs take the recommendations and build the initial SciPy schedule.  

Those that submitted talks or posters that are selected are contacted by the Committee and they are asked to confirm their attendance at the SciPy Conference. The Program Committee works with the Track chairs to identify a second tier of talks that will be added to the schedule in the event that some of the initial selections are not able to attend.  

The Tutorial Co-Chairs review the scores and comments for all tutorials and build the schedule. They consider the scores as well as balancing the level of the tutorials (beginner, intermediate, advanced) and striving for a broad mix of topics.  

If you have questions about the process, feel free to reach out to the Program Committee Co-Chairs at community@scipy.org.