Mentorship

Submission Mentorship Program

The Submission Mentorship Program focuses on pairing less experienced authors with senior researchers to provide feedback on their paper submission, with the overall goal of improving submission quality and fostering future collaboration. Note that the mentors will not discuss possible paper ideas with the mentees, and hence, the mentees who do not already have a paper idea should not participate in this program. Further, authors who do not intend to submit a paper to ML4H2021 should not participate in this program.

We especially encourage less experienced authors and participants from underrepresented groups to sign up as mentees, as well as senior community members to serve as mentors for these programs.

The Submission Mentorship Program organized by the ML4H 2021 has 2 stages which you can apply for, as outlined next.

Stage 1

This stage involves 2.5 months of mentorship. It is for mentees who would like to get feedback on the direction of the design, experiments, and results for a work they plan to submit to ML4H 2021. Specifically, the mentors will give suggestions for improvements to models and experiments as well as results analysis/presentation and paper organizations. Mentors and mentees who are interested in this stage should fill in the corresponding application form below by July 3rd.

The mentors and mentees are encouraged to have a bi-weekly one-hour meeting to discuss the paper’s progress; i.e., the mentors and mentees will have approximately 5 one-hour meetings over 10 weeks. This allows both the mentor and mentee to work on the paper for a longer period of time.

Stage 1 Timeline
  1. July 5: Details about mentee-mentor pair-ups are sent out.
  2. July 5-9: Mentees are expected to initiate contact with their mentor and arrange an initial meeting. In this meeting, the mentees should discuss the paper’s idea and outline with the mentors as well as the plan (dates, format, expectations, etc) for their bi-weekly meetings.
  3. July 9 - Sep 10: The mentors and mentees will meet on a bi-weekly basis to work on the paper. After each meeting, the mentees are expected to incorporate the mentors’ feedback and send an updated draft of the paper to the mentors.
  4. Sept 13th: ML4H Submission deadline.
Stage 2

This stage involves 1.5 months of mentorship. It allows mentees to get feedback on a complete draft, and it is more suitable and helpful for people who would like to get feedback from an experienced mentor to enhance the quality of a paper that they plan to submit to ML4H2021. Mentors and mentees who are interested in this stage should complete the corresponding form below by August 3rd.

Stage 2 Timeline
  1. Aug 5: Details about mentee-mentor pair-ups are sent out.
  2. Aug 5-9: Mentees are expected to initiate contact with their mentor and arrange an initial meeting. Then, the mentees should send a submission / outline draft to their mentor within 1 week of your initial meeting.
  3. Aug 14-27: Mentor provides feedback to mentee on the submission draft in a subsequent meeting.
  4. Aug 27 - Sep 3: Mentees incorporate the mentor’s feedback and send an updated paper to the mentor.
  5. Sep 3-9: Mentors provide final feedback prior to the ML4H submission deadline on 13th September 2021.

Mentors and mentees will be matched at random based on your shared research areas. The matching process between mentors and mentees will start July 3rd for Stage 1 and August 3rd for Stage 2.

Application forms
Application deadline

The deadline for mentors and mentees to fill in the corresponding application form in order to participate in the first stage of the Submission Mentorship Program is July 3rd and the deadline for participating in the second stage of the Submission Mentorship Program is August 3rd .

Reviewer Mentorship Program

The purpose of the reviewer mentorship program is to train junior reviewers, foster new connections and relationships in the ML4H community, and ultimately improve the quality of the review process. The primary expectations of the program are that (1) mentors will provide feedback to mentees on drafts of their reviews and (2) mentees will update their reviews on the basis of that feedback.

If you are interested in participating in the reviewer mentorship program as a mentor/mentee please sign up using the following form

Deadline: September 10th AoE, 2021.

Expectations

Mentees

Mentees are expected to:

  1. Share the PDFs of their assigned papers with their mentors at the beginning of the review period.
  2. Share drafts of their reviews with the mentors at least one week prior to the end of the review period (by September 29) so that there is time for revision following discussion with their mentor.
  3. Meet with their mentor over a video/phone call to discuss the papers and receive feedback on their reviews.
  4. Submit your review to HotCRP by October 6, to allow the authors to provide responses to your review.
  5. Review author responses and other reviewer comments, participate in the reviewer discussion period, and update their reviews.
  6. Share final review versions with their mentor prior to submission.

Mentors

Mentors are expected to:

  1. Read the papers and the reviews that their mentee shares with them.
  2. Provide thoughtful and constructive feedback on the reviews that their mentee(s) share(s) with them. The provided feedback is expected to assess the scientific validity of the reviews and whether they adhere to the reviewer guidelines and best practices.

Joint Expectations

Mentors and mentees are jointly expected to:

  1. Agree upon a date and time to meet and discuss the reviews on or before October 6th. Both members are expected to be timely, thorough, and constructive in their reviews and feedback.
  2. Read and discuss the author feedback and other reviews before participating in the reviewer discussion period and submitting the final updated review.

Timeline

  • Before the review period begins (September 16)
    • Mentors are matched with mentees, by September 13
    • (Optional) Mentors and mentees jointly set a time to have an introductory video call (or audio call if not possible) on or before September 16
  • During the review period (September 16 - October 20)
    • Beginning of review period (September 16): Mentee shares papers with mentor.
    • On or before September 29 : Mentee shares review drafts with mentor
    • September 29 - October 3: Scheduled call where mentor delivers review feedback
    • End of initial review period (October 6): Mentee incorporates mentor feedback and submits the initial review on the system
    • Reviewer discussion period (October 16-20): Mentee reads and discusses author response with the mentor and other reviewers, and updates the review scores if applicable.
    • End of review period (October 20): Mentee submits revised reviews.
  • After the review period
    • Mentors and mentees respond to a survey on the effectiveness of the program

Structuring the feedback session

Mentors are free to structure the feedback session in whichever way they prefer. It is expected that mentors will read their mentees assigned papers and reviews and formulate their feedback prior to the feedback session with their mentee. However, the role of the mentor is not to serve as an additional reviewer on their mentee’s papers. Rather, the mentor should provide feedback to ensure that reviews are high-quality, constructive, and fair. To help facilitate that process, resources on what constitutes a high-quality review have been provided below.

Resources

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Ghada, alzamzmiga@nih.gov, or Alex, alexanderjenkins96@gmail.com