A basic goal of the evaluation is to determine if an automated planning routine can consistently and reliably produce “clinically acceptable” plans, which would define its success or failure in practice. It is important to note that “acceptable” (i.e., meeting minimal constraints) does not necessarily imply a plan of highest possible quality. The definition of acceptable is somewhat subjective and may vary from institution to institution and physician to physician. Therefore, we felt that it would be unfair to label the AP plans acceptable or unacceptable based on our internal criteria. Instead, for the initial screening, we adopted the consensus‐driven approach, from the RTOG protocol No. 1016. (19) This particular H&N protocol uses the same primary and secondary dose levels (70 and 56 Gy) and has six dosimetric criteria that determine plan acceptability (Table 2). Of those six criteria, five deal with the target dose level and homogeneity, and one is concerned with the maximum dose to the spinal cord. The rest of the OAR sparing objectives are on the “best effort” basis, although recommendations on dose levels and priorities are provided.