A Note for Submitting Authors

Hsuan-Tien Lin, Maria Florina Balcan, Raia Hadsell and Marc’Aurelio Razato

NeurIPS 2020 Program Chairs

The abstract and full paper submission deadlines are now just around the corner! To help authors better prepare, and to ensure that submission runs as smoothly as possible, we would like to share some tips and reminders:

1. The author list and order cannot be changed after the abstract submission deadline. Moreover, the abstract cannot undergo a substantial rewriting after the abstract submission deadline (light editing is fine). The reason for this rule is to prevent authors from entering placeholders for other papers, and to enable us to start assigning papers to relevant program committee members right away.
2. All co-authors will need to login in CMT this year as they may be asked to review depending on how many submissions we receive in each area. Therefore, the submitting author needs to enter the co-author list making sure that email addresses used to identify co-authors match their CMT email addresses; please, make sure to coordinate with your co-authors ahead of time! Co-authors will have till June 4 to login in CMT and to fill out the CMT user information form. This user-information form includes a way to opt-out if you are unable to review due to special circumstances (e.g., health-related issues, family emergencies).
3. Authors will need to declare whether the paper is a re-submission from another peer-reviewed, archival venue (journal or conference) within the past 12 months. Note that under this definition, withdrawn papers that received reviews as well as desk-rejected papers must also be declared. The declaration must include: the venue, a summary of the reviews (if any) and a summary of the changes made since then. This information will be shared with the Area Chair after the desk-rejection phase, who can then share it with reviewers whenever appropriate. Program Chairs reserve the right to verify with other venues the veracity of the information provided by the authors.
4. This year we are asking all authors to include a broader impact section to their paper (included in the new paper template). This section does not count towards the 8-page limit, and it should go before the references. It should include a statement about the foreseeable positive impact as well as potential risks and associated mitigations of the proposed research. We expect authors to write about two paragraphs, minimizing broad speculations. Authors can also declare that a broader impact statement is not applicable to their work, if they believe it to be the case. Reviewers will be asked to review papers on the basis of technical merit. Reviewers will also confirm whether the broader impact section is adequate, but this assessment will not affect the overall rating. However, reviewers will also have the option to flag a paper for ethical concerns, which may relate to the content of the broader impact section. If such concerns are shared by the Area Chair and Senior Area Chair, the paper will be sent for additional review to a pool of emergency reviewers with expertise in Machine Learning and Ethics, who will provide an assessment solely on the basis of ethical considerations. Program Chairs will then review each such case, aggregate all the feedback and make a final decision on the paper. We expect very few, if any, papers to need such further assessment. More information is available in the FAQ.

Note that failure to comply with any of the above requirements may result in the paper being desk rejected.

Finally, do not wait the very last minute to submit but try to submit earlier to avoid server congestion.

We wish all authors good luck and look forward to your amazing contributions and advances!!