Dear members of the PC,

based on your meta-reviews (for which we are very grateful), our ongoing discussions with the LOs regarding the location and availability of rooms, as well as further discussions on quality insurance, we have decided to shift our cut-off in several submission categories.

This will make it possible to accommodate a wider range of papers:

• Long Papers: 105 submissions accepted with a cut-off at 78,3 points (44,68%)
• Short Papers: 105 accepted with cut-off at 76,7 (35,96)
• Posters: 112 accepted with cut-off at 64,0 (71,79%)
• Panels: 14 accepted with cut-off at 85,7 (32,5%)
• Workshops: 25 accepted with cut-off at 79,7 (75,75%)

The overall acceptance rate (with workshops) is 47,56%; without workshops 46,28%

This will translate into 7 parallel sessions during the conference. Accepting more submissions than that would get us into the territory where we wouldn’t feel comfortable with the kind of quality level that we’d like to see at DH2023. 

While this is, in the end, a purely numerical approach, we have decided to opt for it after long discussions on the fairness of the results. We balanced the flaws of the review process for quite a while (wide spans, extremely harsh reviews, 100 point reviews with no explanation of the grade) etc. but couldn’t find a qualitative solution that would be realistically accomplishable for the PC without introducing new challenges: for instance, cherry-picking submissions solely on the basis of a wide span for additional consideration would privilege those submissions over similarly graded submissions with a smaller grade span. 

We have gathered a few suggestions on how to improve the review quality; we will pass them on to the next PC. This is a work in progress into which the community can (and will) certainly be able to contribute to. We have all learned a lot from this year’s take on Open Identities in the review process… one thing that we have learned for sure is that it does not necessarily make the PC’s life easier.

We will be communicating the selection results to the authors via conftool on Wednesday (March 8th). We hope the final selection meets your approval and would like to thank you again for your efficient support in the process!

We are currently in touch with the keynotes to discuss the topics of their talks and will let you know about that as soon as they are final. We will also get back to you regarding the best reviewer award in a couple of weeks.

All best,

Anne and Toma