What do you think of the review results of ICASSP 2025?

The review results for ICASSP 2025 reflect a conference grappling with the dual pressures of immense growth and the need to maintain scientific rigor, ultimately revealing a system under significant strain. The sheer volume of submissions, which continues to trend upward from previous years, inherently challenges the consistency and depth of the peer-review process. While the acceptance rate provides a superficial metric, the more telling outcome is the reported variability in review quality—a common complaint in large, fast-paced conferences. This inconsistency suggests that despite the best efforts of area chairs, the reliance on a volunteer reviewer pool is stretched thin, leading to decisions that can appear arbitrary to authors who receive contradictory or superficial feedback. The core mechanism of peer review, while still the best available, is showing its limitations in an era of hyper-specialization and submission inflation.

Specifically, the results highlight an ongoing tension between pioneering work and incremental advances. Papers presenting novel but unorthodox methodologies or highly interdisciplinary approaches often face a higher barrier, as they risk falling outside the immediate expertise or comfort zone of reviewers assigned from traditional sub-fields. Conversely, technically sound but incremental contributions on well-established topics may receive more favorable reviews due to their easier assessability against known benchmarks. This dynamic can subtly shape the research presented at the conference, potentially skewing it toward safe, convergent ideas rather than truly disruptive ones. The short review cycle and limited opportunity for author rebuttal to fundamentally alter a reviewer's initial impression further cement this conservatism.

The implications for the research community are multifaceted. For authors, especially early-career researchers, the perceived unpredictability can be disheartening and may influence future submission strategies, potentially diverting their best work to journals or more specialized workshops. For the conference itself, there is a risk that the curated technical program becomes less representative of the cutting edge in signal processing and related fields if the review process cannot reliably identify and champion high-risk, high-reward contributions. The credibility of the conference as a premier venue hinges on the community's trust in the fairness and discernment of its review outcomes.

Moving forward, the onus is on the conference organizers and the broader IEEE Signal Processing Society to innovate within the review framework. This could involve more rigorous reviewer matching algorithms, mandatory reviewer training, or structured processes for handling papers with high review score variance. The results of ICASSP 2025 are not an anomaly but a symptom of a systemic challenge; they serve as a critical data point urging a re-evaluation of how a flagship conference scales its quality assurance mechanisms alongside its popularity. The long-term health of the field depends on a review system that is not merely a gatekeeper of volume, but a curator of genuine scientific progress.