An expert system study for evaluating technical papers: Decision-making for an IPC

Evaluation of scientific contributions is a typical expert task that can be formalized to only a moderate extent. Therefore, the International Programme Committees collect the opinions of different experts, leaving the final decision to one expert or a small group. The aim of this paper is to model the problem domain, which does not fit into ordinary fixed or probabilistic knowledge-base structures. In this case, the knowledge must be derived and measured by some robust structures which satisfy the expert reasoning. Methods for structuring the rule base and the data dictionary, as well as logical distances between the values of the decision factors, are discussed.