Rubric scoring is powerful because it forces every reviewer to judge the same criteria in the same way, giving you one weighted score out of 100 instead of a single subjective number per reviewer. You set rubric criteria up on a project’s Review Panels tab, one criterion at a time, each with its own Max score and Weight. This article walks through adding, configuring, and editing criteria, and what reviewers see once the rubric is live. Most rubrics take a few minutes to set up.
Where do I set up rubric scoring?
Open the project and select Review Panels from the tab bar, next to Settings, Stages, and Form Builder. Select Create Review to start the process of creating a new Review Panel.
How do I add a scoring criterion?
When running through the setup wizard for review panels, one of the steps is Rubric Scoring and toggling this on will reveal the criteria options.
Toggle on Rubric Scoring
Click Add criterion.
In the Type dropdown, select Score/Vote/Comment.
Enter a Criterion name — this is the label reviewers see (for example, “Originality”).
Add a short description underneath explaining what reviewers should look for at each end of the scale.
Set Max score to the top of the star rating you want reviewers to use (for example, Max 10).
Set Weight to how much this criterion should count towards the overall weighted average, relative to your other criteria.
Click Add criterion again to add more, or Save once you’re done.
Once a panel has been created you can easily edit these criteria later.
What’s the difference between Max score and Weight?
Setting | What it does |
Max score | Sets the star-rating scale reviewers see for that criterion (for example, out of 5 or out of 10). |
Weight | Sets how much that criterion counts towards the overall weighted average, relative to your other criteria. |
Max score changes what reviewers see. Weight changes what Dapple does with the number afterwards. A criterion can have a high Max score and a low Weight — a detailed scale that barely counts — or the reverse: a coarse scale that counts heavily. See What Is Rubric Scoring and Why Use It? for the full weighted-average calculation.
Can I edit or remove a criterion after reviewers have started scoring?
Yes. Open Review Panels and edit the Criterion name, description, Max score, or Weight directly, or click the delete icon next to a criterion to remove it. Changing Max score or Weight after reviewers have already submitted scores changes how those existing scores feed into the weighted average, because normalisation is recalculated from the current Max score and Weight every time — not the values that were set when the reviewer originally scored. Finalise your rubric before opening the Review Panel to reviewers to avoid recalculating scores you’ve already collected.
What do reviewers see once the rubric is live?
Reviewers see each criterion listed on the submission’s review form as a star rating from 0 up to its Max score, alongside its description. Once every criterion has been scored, Dapple shows the Weighted average out of 100 on the submission, with an info icon reviewers and admins can hover over to see how it was calculated.
Best practice
Finalise criteria before reviewers start scoring — changing Max score or Weight mid-review recalculates every existing score.
Name criteria the way you’d say them out loud (“Originality”, not “Criterion 1”).
Add a description to every criterion, even a short one — it’s the difference between five reviewers agreeing and five reviewers guessing.
Order criteria with the most important one first — reviewers pay more attention to the top of the form.
Use the other fields too such as comments. You may want to have an Originality score followed by an Orginality comment box below this so reviewers can explain their decision in more detail.
Preview the review form as a reviewer would see it before publishing the panel.
Score a test submission yourself and check the weighted average tooltip to confirm the maths matches your intent.
Where to go next