A Technical Committee may propose to the Technical Program Chairperson an invited session on a topic of special timeliness or interest. However, prior to proposing any session, it should be thoroughly discussed among the members of the Technical Committee. Furthermore, any such recommendation should be made well before the papers for the regular sessions are selected, as any special session necessarily impacts the number of regular sessions that can be held.
If the Technical Program Chairperson approaches a Technical Committee with an idea for a special session, the Technical Committee should try to accommodate it, if at all possible. The proposal should be given a prompt and careful review, the Technical Program Chairperson should be promptly informed of the decision, and any related suggestions should be given to the Technical Program Chairperson at this time. The same holds true for ideas for tutorials presented to the SP Education committee
The principal function of the Technical Committee is to recommend which of the submissions received in response to the Call-for-Papers should be accepted and to recommend how they are to be organized into sessions. Appropriate session chairpersons may also be suggested at this time. This review of papers must occur early in the fall prior to ICASSP. The Technical Committees normally submit their recommendations to the ICASSP Technical Committee during a joint meeting of the Technical Committees early in the October preceding ICASSP.
The Technical Program Chairperson will arrange for the submissions to be sent to the Technical Committees to be reviewed. The Technical Program Chairperson will also provide each Technical Committee with a tentative number of lecture and poster sessions that that committee will be allowed to fill, and the number of papers in each type of session. The Technical Program Chairperson may also provide his committee's recommendations.
To get down to the limit, a Technical Committee may reject more than 50% of the proposals received. Although this requires difficult decisions, it does help keep the quality of ICASSP papers high. Furthermore, no Technical Committee should feel obligated to accept as many submissions as the Technical Program Committee will permit.
Each rejected proposal should be reviewed by at least three people, if not the whole Technical Committee. If a submission is found to belong more properly to another Technical Committee, it should be given to that Committee as soon as this is discovered, and the Technical Program Chairperson immediately notified of the change in status.
A good approach is to divide the proposals into a reasonable number of topical categories, then to subdivide each of these categories into three quality sub-categories -- definitely accept, definitely reject, and a middle group. Then focus on the middle group, ranking each of those proposals. This will make it relatively easy to group proposals into reasonably sized sessions and to accommodate requests from the Technical Program Committee to increase or decrease your committee's total number of sessions.
When each Technical Committee is finished, the Technical Program Chairperson should be given all the rejected proposals, reasons for the rejections, plus, for each session:
Suggestions on when and where to hold each session may also be given to the Technical Program Committee. It is expected that any disagreements between the SP Technical Committees and the Technical Program Committee on any matters related to the Technical Program will be resolved by negotiation during the paper review session.