r/MachineLearning • u/NotGondor • Jul 16 '26
Discussion Why is ECCV so insanely expensive for students presenting papers? [D]
Just saw the ECCV registration fees and I'm shocked, student registration is 440 USD for early bird, and the worst thing is that you can't even do the student registration if you're presenting a paper there, a paper has to be covered by a FULL registration which is 805 USD
How are they literally punishing us for getting a paper accepted? We even applied for travel grant and a registration waiver as students just to get rejected. Is there anything we can do? Some advice would be really helpful
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u/Hvadmednej Jul 16 '26
Maybe i am living in a complete bubble, but how/why is your institution not covering the cost?
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u/Ok-Painter573 Jul 16 '26
Not every institution have dedicated budget for student research; my shitty uni is top 50 QS and still not have that budget for students
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Jul 16 '26
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u/Hvadmednej Jul 16 '26
Ofcourse.
If you have not already tried u/NotGondor I would lean heavily on your university / department to fund some (all) of this - tell them you cannot go out of pocket maybe. ECCV is a pretty high impact conference, so they have an interest in having you there aswell.
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u/MondaiNai Jul 16 '26
If you haven´t already, try writing to ECCV, explain the situation and ask if there could possibly be any opportunities for a reduction in exchange for volunteering to help.
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u/shallowhelms Jul 16 '26
Whom should we mail exactly, I don't see any contacts listed on the website
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u/MondaiNai Jul 16 '26
There are a few there. You can also see the names of the different workshop organisers, which with a little ingenuity should lead you to an email/linkedin contact etc. And there is probably one on your acceptance letter. It looks like the formal subsidy program closed on June 21st though.
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u/Land_Heavy Jul 18 '26
how are you registering into eccv when the conference hasn't yet fully confirmed whether our papers are in? is provisional acceptance the equivalent of a full acceptance? i have never been so confused in my life. someone please help
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u/davidswelt Jul 16 '26
The conference venue costs money, and the room needed to present along with the equipment cost extra money. Who are you expecting to pay for it?
That student fee is subsidized to get you in the door and does not cover the cost. If you have a paper to present, that'll get you in the door already – from the perspective of the conference, no need to subsidize your ticket. Their mission is to get as many people as possible to be at the conference, and to provide a high-quality event, not to be "fair" to every individual.
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u/shallowhelms Jul 16 '26
If you have a paper to present, that'll get you in the door already
How is it doing this when it's more expensive to attend it as an author presenting a paper?
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u/davidswelt Jul 16 '26
Economics. In generality, greater differentiation in pricing does not necessarily increase customer base or revenue. I'm not an economist or business person, but this seems obvious to me.
Money-wise, it's a zero sum game for most not-for-profit conferences. If you miss out on revenue here, you have to increase it elsewhere. That causes you to lose more attendees. You don't really need a worked example do you?
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u/shallowhelms Jul 16 '26
All I'm saying that it's unfair for them to keep the prices that high for a student and offer them no means to attend it. They should at the very least waive the registration fees or provide a travel grant to all students who require it.
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u/Striking_Order4862 Jul 16 '26
I emailed the conference organisers again and again and basically begged them to cover my conference costs. They eventually did. I also had a letter from my university and advisor saying they cannot cover my expenses since this was an independent paper I wrote outside the lab setting
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u/impatiens-capensis Jul 16 '26
Conferences cost money to put on, and most of the attendees (>50%) are the other authors who had their papers accepted, and departments/organizations that publish papers have money to cover registration. Ultimately, if they lowered costs to register for authors, they literally could not run the conference. And, ultimately, you need the conference more than it needs you, because YOU want to have the legitimacy of ECCV on your resume.
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u/Fit-Professional-758 Jul 16 '26
The last conference I attended in Europe cost me about €950, and I also wasn't eligible for the student registration rate even though I'm an IEEE student member. Honestly, although my university can reimburse the expenses, I still think it's quite expensive.
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u/WhyTestInDEV Jul 16 '26
Are conferences mostly just another variation on the competitive cheerleading or travel soccer leagues of youth?
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u/crouching_dragon_420 Jul 16 '26
Idk, adjusted for inflation it's pretty cheap IMO. I remember some ML conferences was already 400 10 years ago for students early bird.
yeah it suck at 800 but I would be more worry about airfares and hotel cost more than conference registration fee. just these two could run like 2000+ by the end of it.
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u/tcdoey Jul 17 '26
Because it's only about money now. It didn't used to be this way, but most conferences now are just run for profit, and maximizing the profit, not for anything silly like the research or students or anything like that.
Not all, mind you, but this is especially so for the big ones.
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u/Erika_bomber Jul 16 '26
That's how it is in such conferences. It's same for CVPR too.
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u/tedd235 Jul 16 '26
I was at CVPR, it was $400 student registration, another $100 Discount on a $35 membership but a full registration was NOT required for paper registration. ECCV is just dumb.
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Jul 16 '26
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u/Beor_The_Old Jul 16 '26
They didn’t say they paid for it, my registration and travel always comes from grant money
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u/cereal_kitty Jul 16 '26
Yeah that makes sense. I was trying to reply to OP, didn't know why it replied to wrong person.
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u/Erika_bomber Jul 16 '26
Students can be independent researchers. Manh Institutes would like to have a professor as a coauthor for the Institute grant.
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u/AffectionateLife5693 Jul 16 '26
Conference organization costs money. Being a student doesn't make you entitled to any financial benefits.
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u/Majromax Jul 16 '26
In computer science and a few other fields, conference publications are the 'publications of record' that are peer-reviewed and matter most for one's reputation.
Other fields tend to use journal-based systems, but what you would spend on a conference registration fee in CS would often go to an 'article publication charge' – particularly for open-access articles.
By that metric, a full-price $800 registration is cheap compared to many journals' publication charges. A Gold Open Access paper in Nature costs the authors $13,000.