Welcome to Confychair. This guide walks you through accepting a reviewer invitation and getting set up before papers are assigned to you. Each step takes only a few minutes — we've designed the process to respect your time.
1. How You Get Invited
Conference organizers invite reviewers directly by email. You'll receive a message with a subject line like:
Invitation to review for [Conference Name]
The email comes from the conference organizer via Confychair and includes:
The name of the conference
A brief note from the organizer (if they included one)
Your assigned role (typically "Reviewer")
A personal invitation link — this link is unique to you and expires after a set number of days
Reviewer invitation email showing conference name, organizer message, role, and a prominent "Accept Invitation" buttonThe invitation email. The acceptance link is personal — do not forward it to others.
Note: If you did not receive an invitation email, check your spam folder. If it's not there, ask the organizer to resend the invitation.
2. Accepting the Invitation
Click the invitation link in the email. Your browser will open a Confychair page with a 3-step wizard.
Step 1 — Invite Details
The first screen shows the invitation summary:
The conference name and short name
Who invited you
Your assigned role (e.g. Reviewer)
Review the details and click Next to continue.
Step 2 — Personal Information
Fill in your profile details for this conference:
Field
Required?
Notes
Salutation
Optional
Dr., Prof., Assoc. Prof., etc.
Suffix
Optional
Ph.D., M.Sc., etc.
First name
Required
Last name
Required
Affiliation
Required
Your institution or organization
If you are new to Confychair (no existing account), you will also set a password here. Your password must be at least 8 characters.
Click Next to continue.
Step 3 — Reviewer Information
This step collects two optional but recommended pieces of information:
Expertise Topics — Check all topics from the conference's topic list that you can competently review. Organizers use this to match papers to your background.
Conflict of Interest — Add any institutional affiliations you have a conflict with. Enter each institution name using the combobox. Submissions from authors at those institutions will be excluded from your assignment pool.
Click Accept Invite (or Create Account & Accept if you are a new user) to complete the process.
Three-step reviewer invitation wizard: Step 1 invite details, Step 2 personal info, Step 3 reviewer info with expertise checkboxes and COI institutionsThe reviewer invitation wizard. Complete all three steps to join the conference.
3. Account States During Acceptance
Already logged in — The wizard skips the password fields. You'll still complete all three steps and click Accept Invite at the end.
Existing account, not logged in — The page shows the invitation summary and a Sign In button. After signing in you are redirected back to accept.
New to Confychair — Step 2 includes password fields. After completing the wizard, your account is created and the invitation is accepted in a single action.
Tip: If you have multiple Confychair accounts (for example, a personal and an institutional email), make sure you accept the invitation while logged in to the account you intend to use for reviewing. Switching accounts later requires organizer assistance.
4. Declaring Conflicts of Interest
During Step 3, you declare conflicts of interest by adding institution names — not individual author names. The system excludes papers from authors affiliated with those institutions from your assignment pool. This exclusion happens before you ever see the paper titles.
What counts as a conflict of interest?
Your current or recent employer or institution
Institutions where you have close collaborators or supervisors (typically within the last 3–5 years)
Institutions where you have co-authors from recent joint work
Any institution where your judgment could reasonably be seen as biased
Why this matters: Peer review integrity depends on accurate COI declarations. If you realize you have a COI with a paper that has already been assigned to you, contact the organizer immediately rather than proceeding with the review. When in doubt, declare it — it is always better to flag a potential conflict than to miss one.
5. Updating Expertise or COI After Joining
Expertise topics and COI affiliations can only be set during the invitation wizard. There is no self-service page to update them afterward.
If you need to update either — for example, to add a newly identified COI or correct your expertise topics — contact the conference organizer directly. They can update your profile from the reviewer management page.
6. Finding the Conference After Joining
Once you have accepted the invitation, the conference appears in two places:
Personal dashboard — Log in and go to /dashboard/reviews/ to see all your review assignments across every conference you belong to.
Direct URL — Access the conference directly at its URL (e.g. confychair.org/conferences/icacsis-2026/ or ui.confychair.org/conferences/icacsis-2026/). The organizer may have included this URL in the invitation email.
From the conference page, click Reviews in the navigation to reach your assignments.
Tip: Bookmark the conference reviews page if you will be returning to it frequently during the review period. The review deadline is displayed on the assignments page — make a note of it early.
