We are committed to setting a high standard of quality and integrity for the EDM2027 review process. There are two main goals in reviewing:
- To decide fairly whether each paper is worthy of acceptance;
- To provide the authors with feedback on how to improve the quality of their research and writing.
With these goals in mind, we request that all reviewers follow the review guidelines below (based on the EDM 2026 guidelines, which in turn were based loosely on the ICLR 2020, EDM 2023, and LAK conference guidelines).
Please write thoughtful reviews of at least 300 words evaluating relevance, quality, methods, and implications.
The use of LLMs is not permitted beyond spelling and grammar checks.
New LLM Guidance
Grammar and spell-checking with generative AI is permissible, but all other uses of generative AI in the review process are forbidden. There are numerous reasons, such as: (1) AI agents are not peers; (2) when you were asked to review, you were being asked for your expert judgment; (3) some AI software requires pasting or otherwise uploading paper contents online, which is a violation of the confidentiality of the authors’ unpublished work; (4) experiments with AI-driven peer review thus far reveal serious, systematic errors that are difficult to catch (https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-03588-8; https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2023.12500).
Reviewers are also free to confidentially report cases where they observe clear signs of AI-generated content in reviews to the program chairs. The program chairs will collectively assess the review in question and seek a replacement review if necessary. In that case, the program chairs will also examine the reviewer’s other reviews and their paper submissions, if any.
What should my review include?
Please provide 300-500 words of detailed, constructive feedback that offers a comprehensive and balanced assessment of the submission. Your review should clearly identify the submission’s strengths, areas for improvement, and any significant concerns, supported by specific examples and well-reasoned explanations.
For each concern raised, explain why it matters and provide practical, actionable recommendations to help the authors improve their work. Aim to make your feedback clear, thoughtful, and useful, focusing on both the quality of the submission and opportunities for its development.
Please, approach the review with the same level of care, fairness, and professionalism that you would appreciate receiving for your own work. Avoid overly brief, vague, or generic comments, as these do not provide sufficient guidance for meaningful improvements. Ensure that your feedback is respectful, evidence-based, and constructive, even when identifying substantial weaknesses.
The review should include:
- A brief summary of the paper itself (e.g., the question being addressed, the high level approach used, what was found).
- A thorough assessment of the submission’s main strengths and weaknesses in making a substantial conceptual, technical, or empirical contribution to educational data mining
- Where possible, suggestions for improvement should be given
The following categories and questions are useful to consider in writing your review:
- Relevance to EDM:
- Is the submission trying to solve an important educational problem, which is interesting and relevant for the educational data mining community?
- Does the submission attend to the real-world context, including issues of impact, fairness, and equity?
- Novelty and Motivation:
- Is there a novel contribution in the submission in relation to previous work in the area?
- Is the research gap justified in a clear manner?
- If a replication study is reported, is it clear what is the contribution to knowledge in comparison to the original study?
- Grounding:
- Is the work appropriately situated within the current state of research, demonstrating an understanding of relevant literature and developments in the field?
- Does the work clearly articulate how it builds on, extends, challenges, or differs from prior research?
- Methods:
- Are the methods used suitable, well-described and justified with reference to the literature?
- Does the submission show accepted evidence of rigour in the tradition followed (statistical, computational, qualitative, design)?
- Results:
- Are the findings supported by sufficient and appropriate empirical evidence, and are the conclusions justified by the results presented?
- Are the results interpreted critically, considering alternative explanations, uncertainties, and limitations?
- Where findings are negative, null, or inconclusive, are plausible explanations and their implications adequately discussed
- Implications:
- Are the theoretical, methodological, and/or practical contributions of the work clearly articulated and supported by the findings?
- Are limitations with respect to data, analysis or framing factors taken into account?
- Are potential issues of fairness and equity considered?
- Communication:
- Are key concepts, terminology, and arguments communicated effectively, enabling readers from different disciplinary backgrounds to understand the work and its contributions?
- The writing, diagrams, and graphs are clear, and the flow of the paper is appropriate.
Ethics and Reproducibility
The review form provides a separate field to indicate any issues that you would like the authors to cover. In particular, please consider the ethics and reproducibility checklist in the “Instructions for authors” page.
Additional Considerations
- If the paper is not properly anonymized (i.e., the identity of the authors is revealed in the paper) please, review the paper as usual, but indicate this in the “Confidential remarks for the program committee” box on the reviewing form.
- If there are issues with the English in the submission (e.g., grammatical mistakes, misspellings or unusual phrasings), this can be noted in the “Confidential remarks for the program committee” box on the reviewing form, but it should not affect the review and assessment of the submissions with respect to its scientific merit. However, if the language used influenced the reviewer’s understanding of the presented manuscript, you are welcome to reach out to PC chairs.
Meta-reviewers will synthesise all reviews and numeric assessments of quality and confidence as well as author rebuttals (if made) and make final recommendations for paper acceptance or rejection with justification to the program committee chairs.