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Author Guide

This year we are asking authors to submit paper abstracts by the abstract submission deadline of  Abstract submission: 28 September 2021, 05:00 PM PDT. The full paper submission deadline is 5 October 2021, 05:00 PM PDT. Abstracts and papers must be submitted using the conference submission system at: https://openreview.net/group?id=ICLR.cc/2022/Conference. Please keep in mind that the deadlines are final and we cannot make any accommodations for missing the abstract deadline or paper deadline. It is key that authors submit genuine and informative abstracts that reflect the content of the full submission, as abstracts will be used in Area Chair bidding before the final paper submission deadline. Placeholder or duplicate abstracts will be removed.

For detailed submission instructions, including paper length and style file, please refer to the call for papers on https://iclr.cc/Conferences/2022/CallForPapers.

Source code submission: Source code associated with a paper can be uploaded as part of the supplementary material. Code submission gives more information to reviewers, especially for replicability of the paper. We encourage all authors to submit code as part of their submission. Note that reviewers are encouraged, but not required to review supplementary material during the review process. All supplementary code must be self-contained and zipped into a single file. Note that supplementary material will be visible to reviewers and the public throughout and after the review period, and ensure all material is anonymized.

Supplementary (text) submission: We encourage authors to submit a single file (paper + supplementary text) this year. Please mark the supplementary material clearly. 

Code of Ethics

All ICLR participants, including authors, are required to adhere to the ICLR Code of Ethics (https://iclr.cc/public/CodeOfEthics). All authors of submitted papers are required to read the Code of Ethics, adhere to it, and explicitly acknowledge this during the submission process. The Code of Ethics applies to all conference participation, including paper submission, reviewing, and paper discussion. 

As part of the review process, reviewers will be encouraged to raise potential violations of the ICLR Code of Ethics. If authors feel that their paper submission raises questions regarding the Code of Ethics, they are encouraged to discuss any potential issues as part of their submission. This discussion is not counted against the maximum page limit of the paper and should be included as a separate section.

Authors who encounter potential violations of the Code of Ethics, e.g., as part of the review or public discussion, should raise these issues in a private message to their paper’s Area Chair through the open review interface.

Authors are encouraged to include an Ethics Statement to address potential concerns where appropriate, topics include but not limited to discrimination /bias / fairness concerns, inappropriate potential applications & impact, privacy and security issues, legal compliance, research Integrity Issues, responsible research practice (e.g., IRB, documentation, research ethics). 

Authors are encouraged to include a paragraph of Ethics Statement (at the end of the main text before references) to address potential concerns where appropriate, topics include, but are not limited to, studies that involve human subjects, practices to data set releases, potentially harmful insights, methodologies and applications, pontential conflicts of interest and sponsorship, discrimination/bias/fairness concerns, privacy and security issues, legal compliance, and research integrity issues. The optional ethic statement will not count toward the page limit, but should not be more than 1 page. 

Reproducibility

It is important that the work published in ICLR is reproducible. Authors are strongly encouraged to include a paragraph-long Reproducibility Statement at the end of the main text (before references) to discuss the efforts that have been made to ensure reproducibility. This paragraph should not itself describe details needed for reproducing the results, but rather reference the parts of the main paper, appendix, and supplemental materials that will help with reproducibility. For example, for novel models or algorithms, a link to a anonymous downloadable source code can be submitted as supplementary materials; for theoretical results, clear explanations of any assumptions and a complete proof of the claims can be included in the appendix; for any datasets used in the experiments, a complete description of the data processing steps can be provided in the supplementary materials. Each of above are examples of things that can be referenced in the reproducibility statement. This optional reproducibility statement will not count toward the page limit, but should not be more than 1 page.

Reviewing Process

Submissions to ICLR are uploaded on OpenReview, which enables public discussion during the review process public discussion phase, which lasts until Tuesday, 15 November 2021, as well as further discussion between authors, reviewers and area chairs until Monday, 22 November 2021.

Authors are encouraged to participate in the public discussion of their paper, as well as of any other paper submitted to the conference. Submissions and reviews are both anonymous and visible as follows:

  • Official reviews are anonymous and publicly visible.

  • Anybody who is logged in can post comments that are publicly visible or restrict visibility to reviewers and up, ACs and up, or just PCs. Login is required before posting any comment.

By Monday, 8 November 2021, we expect all reviews to be completed. Reviews are anonymous and publicly visible in Open Review. Once the reviews are posted, authors are free to upload modifications to the paper during the two week discussion period. The most relevant dates for authors are as follows:

  • Review Release: Monday, 8 November 2021

  • Discussion Stage 1:  Monday, 8 November 2021 - Monday, 15 November 2021

    • Discussions among Reviewers/Authors/Public.

    • Anyone may post comments, but they must be logged in, and their names will be shown. Reviewers remain anonymous (R1, R2, etc.).

  • Discussion Stage 2 -  Monday, 15 November 2021 - Monday, 22 November 2021

    • Discussions among authors, reviewers and AC.

    • Authors can update their draft until Nov 22.

    • ACs encourage reviewers to acknowledge and respond to author responses.

In addition, authors can post "official comments" about their paper before the discussion stage, and restrict visibility to reviewers, area chairs, or program chairs as appropriate. For example, this functionality can be used to post links to supplementary material.

 

Camera-ready Submissions

The deadline for uploading camera-ready submissions will be in March 2022. Additional guidance on preparing your camera-ready version will be provided on this page in due course.

Frequently Asked Questions

  

FAQ Before Submission Deadline

Q: When is the submission deadline for supplementary materials?

The deadline is the same for the full paper and for the supplementary materials.

Q: Should the appendices be added as a separate PDF or in the same PDF as the main paper?

Either is allowed, you can include the the appendices at the end of the main pdf after the references, or you can include it as a separate file for the supplementary materials.

Q: How can we make our code available for reviewing anonymously? 

You can share your code in three ways:

  1. Anonymize your code, put it in a .zip file and submit it as supplementary materials.

  2. Make an anonymous repository and put the link in your paper.
    The above methods will make your code public, along with your paper and reviews/comments for the paper.

  3. After we open the discussion forums for all submitted papers, make a comment directed to the reviewers and area chairs and put a link to an anonymous repository.

    This method will let you keep your code visible only to the reviewers and ACs for your paper.

Q: I can’t modify my submission to include the PDF and supplementary materials. Can you help?

Make sure you logged in using the same account you used to upload the submission. If so, you should be able to click on your submission and see a "Revision" button.

If you are still having problems accessing your submission, follow these steps:

  1. Go to your submission and hover over your name in the ‘Authors’ field.

  2. If your name is associated with an email address that is not currently on your profile, add this email address to your OpenReview profile and confirm it. This will give you access to your submission and the ‘Revision’ button. 

  3. If your name is associated with another profile that is not the profile you submitted the paper with, contact the OpenReview team at info@openreview.net so they can merge your profiles.

If you are still having trouble, please contact OpenReview technical support at info@openreview.net and explain the situation.

Q: Can you explain how to treat de-anonymization in the case where a submitted paper refers to a challenge they won which can identify the authors? 

It is ok to report the results on the leaderboard of a challenge. The authors can include the ranking and the name of the challenge. The reviewers will be advised to not intentionally search the authors by examining the leaderboard.

Q: Can I add or make changes on authors after the abstract submission deadline? 

No. You cannot add authors after the abstract submission deadline.  The orders can be changed if the contribution among the authors changes. Please coordinate among the authors and make sure that everyone has an OpenReview profile before the abstract submission deadline.

Q: Can I submit an abstract to serve as a placeholder so that I can fill in the details of my submission after the abstract deadline? 

No. All placeholder abstract submissions will be deleted. 

Q: Very recently we submitted a paper A on arxiv. Now we are submitting a follow up work B to ICLR.  Should we cite paper A in our submission B? If so, how should I cite the work without violating the double-blind process? 
 

Yes, authors should provide the citaitons to all related work, including paper A. When referring to paper A, please use a 3rd person narrative. 

Q: If my submission does not any ethics issues to the best of our knowledge, do I still need to include an Ethics Statement? 

No, there is no need to include an Ethics Statment for all submisisons. Submisisons with potential ethics issues (such as study invovling human subjects, dataset with sentitive information, etc) should consider including an ethics statement. 

 

FAQ During Discussion Stages

Q. Can we make changes to the title and abstract for the full paper submission?

It is Ok to revise the title and abstract for your full paper submission so long as the revised version stays close to your original abstract submission; The revised version shouldn’t read like a different paper compared to your original abstract submission.

Q. Can we change the title of a paper during the rebuttal?

Yes, you can change the title, abstract, and the paper’s content, including supplementary materials. But make sure any modifications are clearly communicated to the reviewers and the area chair, so that they can efficiently review the modified version of your paper. The set of authors cannot be changed, but the order can be changed.

Q. For rebuttal revisions, are we limited to one upload or can we update the paper several times? 

You can upload as many revisions as you want until Nov 22, but reviewers and area chairs are not required to look at every revision. It is up to you to clearly communicate what’s been changed.

Q. Can you please explain to me the difference between the first and second stages of discussion? Are there things that I must reply/address before 15th Nov (end date of the first discussion phase)?

The key difference is that during stage 1 the discussion is open to the public. This means any user who is logged on to Openreview can comment on papers. This is an opportunity to get the widest possible discussion, and if you have follow up questions to public comments, then these should be resolved by the end of discussion phase 1. Discussion phase 2 allows a more focused discussion between authors, reviewers and area chairs. Authors can respond to reviewer/AC questions up until Nov 22 (End of Day, Anywhere on Earth) both by posting on the forum and uploading a revised PDF. 

Q. Is there a limit on the number of comments we can post? Can we post multiple replies to each reviewer?

There is a word limit for each comment, but there is no limit on the number of comments. You may post multiple replies to each reviewer, but please remain civil and considerate of the reviewers’ time, as they are reviewing and thus engaging in discussions for multiple papers for ICLR. Compared to other conferences in the field, the open nature of the discussion phases allows more interaction among the authors and reviewers. Please see previous versions of ICLR Openreview to get a sense of the interactions (e.g., Openreview forums for ICLR 2020)

Q. How do we contact the Reviewers, Area Chairs, and Program Chairs?

If you have private comments to the area chair and/or reviewers of your paper, please communicate through the Openreview forum for that submission and choose “Area Chairs of the submission” and/or "Reviewers of the submission" from the dropdown menu of the “Readers”.

Your first point of contact in case of questions is the Area Chair assigned to your submission. In cases that cannot be resolved together with the Area Chair, please contact the Program Chairs by emailing iclr2022pc@gmail.com.