TCB Guidelines for Reviewers

This document provides instructions for reviewers. Before reading this section, make sure to also read and be familiar with the Editorial Policies, the Acceptance Criteria, the Ethics Guidelines, and the Code of Conduct.

Reviewing Responsibilities

As a reviewer, you are expected to hold the following responsibilities.

Single blind. The TCB review process is single blind. As a reviewer, you will know the identities of the authors, but the authors will not know your identity. You are expected to maintain the confidentiality of your review and not to disclose your involvement in reviewing a particular submission.

Open Reviewing. As soon as all reviews are submitted for a submission, they will become publicly visible (but anonymous). The authors' response to your review and subsequent discussion will also be immediately visible. You are expected to actively engage with the authors until the issues you have raised have been sufficiently explored. During this process, you are expected to be respectful and abide by our Code of Conduct.

Annual Quota. Reviews are assigned on a rolling basis, as submissions are received. By default, TCB will not assign you more than six reviews per year. You can update your availability through OpenReview, including marking yourself temporarily unavailable for periods such as illness, vacation, or work leave. You are expected to perform all assigned reviews that fall within your expertise and quota.

Review deadline. TCB is committed to a reviewing process with fast turnaround. Reviews must be submitted within 2 weeks of their assignment for submissions up to 12 pages of main content, and within 4 weeks for longer submissions. Two weeks after all reviewers have submitted their reviews (and no later than 1 month), each reviewer will be able to submit a final decision recommendation to the Action Editor.

Conflict of interest. You are responsible for ensuring your affiliation and education/career history information is up to date in your OpenReview profile, so we can properly enforce our conflict of interest policy. We consider in conflict any individual or institution with which you have shared a collaboration within the past three years. After being assigned a submission, if you suspect or believe that you have a conflict of interest with any of the authors, consult with the Action Editor for next steps.

LLM use. Reviewers are expected to have read the paper themselves, formed their own opinion, and take responsibility for the writing of their reviews. Reviewers may use LLMs and other tools to assist in polishing language or checking grammar, but the reviewer must form their own understanding of the paper and write a review that reflects their own judgment.

Submission Acceptance Standard

Please see the page Acceptance Criteria. Note that unlike some other venues, TCB requires novelty in addition to correctness. Reviewers must explicitly evaluate the novelty of the contribution.

Review Format

A review should have the following content.

Summary of contributions Brief description, in the reviewer's words, of the contributions of the submission, including key strengths and/or weaknesses.

Are the claims made in the submission supported by accurate, convincing and clear evidence? Yes/No answer to this first TCB acceptance criterion, along with an explanation.

Does the submission make a novel contribution to computational biology? Yes/No answer to this second TCB acceptance criterion, along with an explanation. Describe what is new relative to the existing literature and why it constitutes a meaningful advance.

Is source code included and sufficient for reproducibility? Yes/No answer to this third TCB acceptance criterion, along with a brief assessment of whether the submitted code is present, reasonably complete, and sufficient for reproducing the main results. Detailed code review is not required.

Would at least some individuals in TCB's audience be interested in knowing the findings of this paper? Yes/No answer to the final TCB acceptance criterion, along with an explanation.

Requested changes List of proposed adjustments to the submission, specifying for each whether they are critical to securing your recommendation for acceptance or would simply strengthen the work in your view.

Broader impact concerns Brief description of any concerns on the ethical implications of the work that would require adding or improving a Broader Impact Statement.

Immediately after submitting your review, the crucial period of discussion with the authors starts. You should engage with the authors by responding to their requests for clarifications, acknowledging the changes they make to their submission, and signaling to them as soon as you are willing to recommend acceptance.

Official Recommendation

Once two weeks have passed since all reviews have been submitted, reviewers will be able to submit their official recommendations to the Action Editor. Specifically, they will be asked for the following.

Decision recommendation (accept, leaning accept, leaning reject, or reject) Whether or not you recommend accepting the submission, based on your initial assessment and the discussion with the authors that followed.

Certification recommendations Certifications are meant to highlight particularly notable accepted submissions. Certification selection is the responsibility of the Action Editor; however, you are asked to submit your recommendation.

Outstanding Certification. Awarded jointly by the TCB editorial board to papers deemed to be exceptionally high quality and broadly significant for the field. Equivalent to a best paper award at a top-tier conference.
Featured Certification. May be awarded to papers that are very high quality, presenting significant, novel, and clearly explained contributions well-supported by evidence, theory, or analysis.
Software Certification. Awarded to papers whose primary contribution is a high-quality, well-documented, and publicly available software tool for computational biology.
Reproducibility Certification. Awarded to papers whose primary purpose is the careful reproduction and extension of previously published computational biology results, providing significant added value through additional baselines, analysis, or insights.
Survey Certification. Awarded to papers that provide an exceptionally thorough or insightful survey of a topic or methodology in computational biology.