brycewang-stanford ECCV Review Process
Use this to reason about what happens to an ECCV paper between upload and decision. ECCV is run by the European Computer Vision Association (ECVA) with per-edition program chairs; there is no standing editorial board, and process rules are rewritten every two years — the 2026 mechanics below are verified anchors (2026-07-08), not permanent law.
The 2026 pipeline
| Stage | 2026 dates | What actually happens |
|---|---|---|
| Registration → submission | Feb 26 → Mar 5 | OpenReview record created; late profile fixes until Mar 2 |
| Review period | Mar 13 → Jun 17 | ACs assign; reviewers work on OpenReview |
| Reviews to authors | May 2 | Typically three reviews with ratings |
| Rebuttal | due May 11; to reviewers May 12 | One page, two-column, references included |
| AC discussion → decision | May–Jun; decisions Jun 17 | AC synthesizes; borderline fates decided here |
| Camera-ready | Jun 30 AoE (extended) | Springer LNCS pipeline takes over |
The 2026 enforcement regime
The distinctive 2026 process fact: review quality was enforced against authors. All authors were expected to be willing to review if asked, and:
- A reviewer missing the review deadline faced desk rejection of all papers they co-authored.
- A review judged "highly irresponsible" — explicitly including LLM policy violations — triggered the same, at PC discretion.
- The LLM policy (aligned with CVPR 2026) barred using LLMs to write reviews or share substantial paper content, while allowing background research and short grammar checks; reviews were screened for violations.
Strategic consequence: your paper's risk surface includes every co-author's reviewing inbox. Track assignments like deadlines.
Who is reading
- Panels are internationally mixed with a strong European base; expect one in-niche reviewer and two adjacent-niche reviewers rather than three specialists.
- Adjacent-niche reviewers anchor on the benchmark table and the qualitative figures; the in-niche reviewer checks novelty against the last CVPR/ICCV cycle. Write and rebut for both audiences.
- ECCV's biennial cadence means reviewers compare against two years of
intervening literature, including papers published after your development
froze — expect and preempt "how does this compare to [March-adjacent
arXiv]?" via the concurrent-work conventions in
eccv-related-work.
Reading the decision mechanics
Signals that the AC discussion, not the raw scores, decides you:
- score spread >= 2 points between reviewers
- one review is short + negative (candidate for AC down-weighting)
- rebuttal directly falsified a factual claim in a review
Actions that move an AC:
- rebuttal blocks quotable into a meta-review
- reviewer-requested evidence that already existed in the submission
Actions that do not:
- appeals to effort, novelty-by-assertion, or venue prestige of prior work
After the decision
- Accept: the Springer/ECVA machine starts (
eccv-camera-ready); open access appears ~4 weeks pre-conference on ecva.net. - Reject: the biennial gap makes the reroute decision urgent — reviews arrive in June, and CVPR's November deadline is the natural next stop. Convert each review point into a revision ticket while context is fresh.
- Award structure exists (ECVA's Koenderink Prize honors a ten-year-old ECCV
paper each edition) but plays no role in decisions; ignore it during
review, use it for taste calibration in
eccv-topic-selection.
Output format
[Stage] pre-submission / in-review / rebuttal / discussion / decided
[Panel model] <in-niche vs adjacent reviewer count, score spread>
[Enforcement exposure] <co-author reviewing assignments + status>
[AC leverage points] <what the meta-review can quote>
[Next-stage move] <one action with its date anchor>