Background
As of RV 2018, the ‘Test of Time Award’ was launched to recognize a paper presented at RV (including when RV was a workshop from 2001-2009) that is 10 or more years old for the high impact it has left on the community.
RV Chairs’ Role
The chairs of the upcoming RV conference (where the award will be announced) are responsible for running the election process. The chairs initially identify a Selection Committee, which selects candidate papers, and later assists in identifying an Award Committee, which subsequently elects the winner.
Selection Committee
Essential participants of the Selection Committee are the chairs of the upcoming RV conference and a number of RV steering committee members. In addition, the Selection Committee can contain other people to help with the identification of candidate papers.
Short listing
The first short listing automatically includes all papers with >=50 citations + papers manually added by the Selection Committee (with a justification motivating the addition of the paper). Papers that were considered in previous years (but did not make it) can be re-considered. Previous winning papers cannot be re-considered.
Award Committee
The Selection Committee elects the members of the Award Committee, making sure they are not in conflict with the selected papers. Unless there are conflicts, members of the Selection Committee may also be included in the Award Committee. One of the Award Committee members is appointed as the chair.
Defining Conflict of Interest
A person is considered as having a conflict if s/he is the author of one of the selected papers or the direct supervisor of a student who is the author of a selected paper. Having co-authored some other paper(s) (not on the list) with an author is not considered a conflict of interest. Hence the notion of conflict of interest is weaker than in paper reviewing contexts.
Voting
Members of the Award Committee cast their votes (1 vote each + short motivation). Voting is repeated on the best two papers if there are ties. If there is still a tie, the vote of the Award Committee chair counts as two.
Notification
The winner(s) is(are) contacted by email. The motivations received during the voting phase are used to explain the reason of the award.
Winner’s Obligations
The winner is strongly encouraged to submit an invited paper (receiving a light review with the purpose of improving the paper), and to present it at the conference.