Paper-reviewer matching at ACL 2023: types of contributions and track sub-areas

One of the big issues that authors often complain about at NLP conferences is “meh” reviews: the reviewer does not really find any significant problems with methodology or execution of the paper, but the overall recommendation is middling. This can be a symptom of paper-reviewer mismatch: the reviewer just is not sufficiently interested in the overall topic or approach, and hence no matter how good the paper is, it would not elicit much enthusiasm. In a recent survey of authors, reviewers and area chairs about their prior experience at NLP venues, many reviewers stated that “the area match was right, but…