Groups

Groups

An OpenReview Group represents a single entity in the system - for example, a person a group of people, or an organization or institution.

All Groups have a members field, which contains a list of Group IDs that are members of the Group. In this way, Group memberships are represent hierarchies of groups and subgroups. Groups are important for controlling permissions, attributing papers and reviewing credit, and protecting anonymity.

A simplified example for illustrative purposes:

// A group representing UMass Amherst
{
  'id': 'UMass_Amherst',
  'readers': 'everyone',
  'writers': 'UMass_Amherst/Admin',
  'signatures': ['UMass_Amherst'],
  'members': ['UMass_Amherst/CICS', 'UMass_Amherst/Dept_of_Physics', 'UMass_Amherst/School_of_Agriculture', ...]
}

// A group representing the UMass College of Information and Computer Sciences
{
  'id': 'UMass_Amherst/CICS',
  'readers': ['everyone'],
  'writers': ['UMass_Amherst/Admin'],
  'signatures': ['UMass_Amherst'],
  'members': ['UMass_Amherst/CICS/IESL', 'UMass_Amherst/CICS/ALL', 'UMass_Amherst/CICS/SLANG_Lab', ...]
}

Group Fields

In addition to the id, readers, writers, and signatures fields that all OpenReview Objects have, Groups have many type-specific fields. The following JSON represents a simplified Group:

{
  'id': 'ICLR.cc/2018/Conference/Reviewers',
  'signatures': [ 'ICLR.cc/2018/Conference' ],
  'signatories': [ 'ICLR.cc/2018/Conference' ],
  'readers': [
    'ICLR.cc/2018/Conference',
    'ICLR.cc/2018/Conference/Area_Chairs',
    'ICLR.cc/2018/Conference/Program_Chairs'
  ],
  'nonreaders': [],
  'writers': [ 'ICLR.cc/2018/Conference' ],
  'members': [ '~Alan_M_Turing1', ... ]
}

signatories

The signatories field contains a list of Group IDs that have signatory permission for the Group: they have permission to sign Notes using this Group's identity.

Example: A reviewing committee (a Group) of three individuals is assigned to review a paper (a Note), but only the senior reviewer on the committee has permission to indicate the committee's approval of the paper. That senior reviewer is a "signatory" of the reviewing committee Group.

members

The members field contains a list of Group IDs that can be considered members of this Group. Group membership confers the permissions of the Group to its members.

Example: A submitted paper (a Note) has the Group ID ICLR.cc/2018/Conference/Reviewers in its readers field. All members of this Reviewers Group therefore have permission to view the contents of the Note.

Special Groups

There are a handful of special Groups defined by the system:

• everyone

The everyone group represents all entities by default, including guests without a login.

• ~

The ~ group represents all logged in users with a confirmed profile. The group is named this way because Groups representing individuals have IDs that begin with the ~ character: for example, ~Michael_Spector1

• '(anonymous)'

The (anonymous) Group represents a completely anonymous user. everyone has signatory permission on (anonymous)