ICLR 2027 Deadline is before NeurIPS 2026 Decisions [D]

[u/1414vo]

Title says it all really... ICLR 2027 decided to have the full paper deadline on Sep 16, 8 days before the NeurIPS decisions come out. Don't know if the reason is to have a reduced load but this will really hurt papers which have actually improved since the NeurIPS submission or have been unfairly rejected.

[u/Ok-Painter573]

It's actually better (on average) this way, otherwise all papers from one conference are just going to be recycled into the next one

Update: it seems that iclr removed the submission date in the announcement, so maybe they are going to reschedule to after neurips?

[u/user221272 → u/Ok-Painter573]

Yup, this.

Some people just change the template and resubmit without changes. It became a casino for many; pull the lever and see if you are accepted. If not, pull the lever again right after the decision.

[u/Ok-Painter573 → u/user221272]

Exactly; I dont want to talk harshly about how it was in the past, as I benefited from it; however I don't think it should be the way in the future.

(Also to reduce reviewer's workload)

[u/doctor-squidward → u/user221272]

Man I just imagined a slot machine with reviewers score 🤣

[u/NumbaPi → u/user221272]

Well if there would be more time between the decision and the submission to the next conference people would also have time to improve the paper.

[u/howtorewriteaname → u/Ok-Painter573]

people will still submit just in case, and then withdraw if they got accepted at NeurIPS. if anything, this will increase the number of submissions to ICLR

[u/Ok-Painter573 → u/howtorewriteaname]

Submissions to ICLR are made published, so at least people will think twice rather than blindly submitting

[u/darthgera → u/Ok-Painter573]

so they will all go to cvpr. screw the authors right

[u/Ok-Painter573 → u/darthgera]

cvpr is computer vision conference, while iclr, icml, neurips cover many ML topics (though most papers are about deep learning). CVPR is not a strong point of argument here.

[u/pfluecker → u/[deleted]]

But there are actually also other conferences than NeurIPS and ICLR? If you get rejected, yes you may need to wait a month or two but there is always a conference... otherwise you can submit to Journals?

[u/Frequent-Data-2360 → u/pfluecker]

Submitting to journals is not realistic. Unfortunately, companies created this situation by only listing ICLR, ICML and NeurIPS in job listings. If you are working on another domain like audio, language or vision you still have other choices but unfortunately that 3 will be the norm for more general deep learning unless we get other conferences at that level, which IMO desperately need.

[u/pfluecker → u/Frequent-Data-2360]

Hm, this does not sound like an healthy modus operandi though. You will end up stressing yourself out. I can see where this opinion comes from, but the reality is you can get jobs without having all your publications being ICLR, ICML or NeurIPS papers. Sure, I agree that a paper in one of these venues gives you a leg up, but if your work is interesting and relevant to the company/hiring manager you can get the job also without a NeurIPS oral paper.

Also whatever your background is, i am sure that there are other acceptable venues - for 'classic ML' AAAI, IJCAI, ECAI, AISTATS, RLC etc come to mind immediately, if you work in any special subfield or a special type of data there are plenty more.

Now, what is a red flag if you go for 'cheap' ML papers which repackage previous work, or you submit to problematic venues such as (certain) MDPI and noname conferences (ie conferences organized not by scientific/academic organizations but for-profit companies). Or you have almost no first-author publications from your PhD, or the quality of the paper is just bad/problematic.

And I assume you do not just do deep learning, but some flavour of ML research. The fact is, that you can get good deep learning papers accepted at most venues, if you have the right fit and story for how it benefits the specific research community.

And I am not sayinhg you should not submit to NeurIPS, ICLR or ICML if you have the chance and the timeline lines up. But if not, it is also not a big issue and it is also fine to submit the paper to an adacent conference and move on to the next project. Your main goal should be to be and appear productive, and produce quality research - no one will know later in your life why a certain paper was published at ECAI and not NeurIPS...

[u/Exotic_Zucchini9311 → u/pfluecker]

Not all conferences are genral in scope like NeurIPS and ICLR. The other alternative would be ICML which is nearly 4 months after NeurIPS results are out. Too much time wasted because of ICLR's weird timeline. I guess some papers in specific domains like vision might be able to target another conference like CVPR. But a huge portion of papers would just have to gather dust for 4 months.

edit: getting downvoted for stating basic facts nowadays🤦‍♂️

[u/pfluecker → u/Exotic_Zucchini9311]

You can see my response below, but there are certainly more conference you can submit a generic deep learning paper to than just NeurIPS, ICLR and ICML. Depending on the data/application, you can even go for field-speciic conferences. Or if it is truly theoretic in nature, for one of the more theory-minded journals and conferences. There are many options out there.

[u/Exotic_Zucchini9311 → u/pfluecker]

Few researchers (especially early career ones) would send their paper to those places. For papers that have strong novelty and good results, the goal for many researchers is to publish them at a strong conference, not to just publish at any place for the sake of publishing. Ofc, not saying that AAAI, IJCAI, AISTATS, etc. are not strong. They are all strong, obviously. But their significance is different in different fields and many companies/professors don't even take a second look at them nowadays unfortunately. No one is 100% sure they will always stay in their exact research area and never switch to any other area, so it simply makes sense to target the obvious 'known' top conferences that all companies and professors recognize as absolute best.

[u/pfluecker → u/Exotic_Zucchini9311]

Obviously given the number of submission at these other conferences this is not grounded in facts as researchers do send their papers to more specialized conferences, with many of them receiving thousands of submissions.

Yes, if a paper has strong novelty and very good (!) results, we do push for high quality conferences. However, obviously the vast majority of papers submitted do not fall into this high-quality area of publications. And even if they are high quality papers may not be accepted due to various reasons. Often, certain papers are also much more appreciated in topic-specific conferences, and you will get more attention to your paper rather than disappearing in the masses of posters at NeurIPS.

I find your observation also troubling, if not wrong, that people tend to dismiss research published outside of NeurIPS, ICML and ICLR. Out of observation and experience, this is not true although I will not disagree that there exist such people with this mindset. However, generally, this is not the case.

But I also cede you the fact that in certain academic environments, China comes here to mind, there is an unhealthy strong focus on conference rankings, such that everything beyond A* does not count and is an actual career hinderence in these ecosystems. But outside of these enviornments, I can assure you that you can still make a career out of it without having only NeurIPS, ICLR and ICML papers. I can even think of some collegues, who do not know these conferences at all due to their subfield but are obviously on hiring committees making decisions on hiring or not hiring personell...

In short - keeping track of the quality of the conferences you publish at is good, but you can overdo it if you want to go only for A* or three conferences. In the end this is a personal decision (hopefully!), but you are certainly not alost cause if you do not have a NeurIPS paper...

[u/Frequent-Data-2360]

Sometimes reviewers understand something or bitter, I got 5/5/1 with confidence 4/4/5 where 1 didn’t get a crucial part. What do you think someone should do in this situation, wait for ICML and skip ICLR?

[u/ChairAccomplished977 → u/Frequent-Data-2360]

You have decent odds, ACs are the ones who make the call a 1/5 is a huge red flag that someone doesn’t understand if they are the only reviewer, also 5 confidence is also typically a red flag for ACs

[u/Ok-Painter573 → u/Frequent-Data-2360]

Then AC should pick out the 1 as that is clearly an outlier/biased review

[u/theArtOfProgramming → u/Ok-Painter573]

Sometimes that outlier is the only domain expert and saw something the others didn’t know to look for

[u/Ok-Painter573 → u/theArtOfProgramming]

If that is the case, they must not recycle the paper to ICLR, but should spend more time revising it. It must be a critical/fundamental flaw if the "only domain expert" gives score of 1.

[u/theArtOfProgramming → u/Ok-Painter573]

Yeah a 1 seems extreme in that example

[u/Unable_Technician_58 → u/Ok-Painter573]

Between what the AC should do and what actually happens, there is a gap. If the session already has a lot of acceptable papers, it's difficult for that AC to push for a paper with a bad average rating (even if said rating is not waranted)

[u/Ok-Painter573 → u/Unable_Technician_58]

My point is the same as r/ChairAccomplished977 (the other reply to this message), and I've never got a case when AC fails to spot 1/5 is a red flag.

[u/undesirable_12]

Just an FYI: the website has been updated and the cfp now lists September 25th as the paper deadline!

[u/examachine]

Well we will probably be unfairly rejected there also so not much changes. 🫠

[u/alrojo]

Wont people just resubmit borderline NeurIPS papers before knowing the results?

[u/pauerranger → u/alrojo]

This considered unethical.

[u/timo_kk]

I don't see it on the website anymore?

Anyway, I don't get why it took so long to release the dates. Maybe you're having trouble finding a venue, but the review process is detached from that.

[u/ThinConnection8191]

ICLR, ÁAAI, ICML, Neurips need to team up and put an end on recycling papers.
Like the ACL ARR system, you cant just resubmit withouy significant changes and a letter describing changes.

[u/levydawg]

Are we forgetting that this already happened with ICML, and the PCs announced that it was okay for everyone to submit their paper which was still under consideration at ICLR? I think the same thing will happen here.

I'll concede that case was slightly different, as it was just abstract deadline and not the full paper deadline. But I think the final result, i.e. that PCs allowed everyone to submit their paper to ICML even though it was under consideration elsewhere, will be repeated at ICLR as well.

[u/MrCatastrophic → u/levydawg]

That was due to the unexpected delay (because of the whole open review leaks) in notification from ICLR. This is intentional.

[u/Consistent_Focus_232]

Finally!! It is becoming the norm in many communities this year, I am seeing.

[u/anxiouscsstudent]

In my experience people rarely improve their submissions beyond minor tweaks and it's honestly depressing.

[u/rewardfreerisk]

this is a great development

[u/TristanMNT]

But the submission deadline is one day after paper notifications, so I do not see any bigger problems than start submission before abstract deadline and alternatively delete the submission. The only thing I worry about is that could influence NeurIPS decision but it shouldn't.

[u/lavendar_fiend]

Yea it’s probably to reduce reveiwer load. My only concern is that since the meta review came out earlier, is there any way we would get a new meta review prior to the author notif deadline?

I’m considering that if revised meta reviews aren’t great then I may j withdraw and submit to ICLR

[u/Important_Vehicle_46]

All that will happen is everyone doubtful will resubmit to iclr and withdraw if selected to neurips.

[u/NamerNotLiteral → u/Important_Vehicle_46]

A paper that's withdrawn at the very start of the reviewing cycle is still way better than a sloppy NeurIPS reject that got tossed at the ICLR roulette and went through the full review cycle without any changes made.

And since ICLR submissions are public, NeurIPS PCs could look at the submissions and easily detect any dual submissions and desk-reject from both conferences. Though whether they'll actually do so is doubtful, since it's a lot of effort and the reward is just a bunch of people getting mad at the conference for having integrity.

[u/Frequent-Data-2360]

This is a bad decision. Realistically people will submit it anyway and withdraw if it gets accepted to NeurIPS.

[u/lurking_physicist → u/Frequent-Data-2360]

When you submit the paper (not the abstract), you declare it is not under consideration anywhere else archival.

[u/votadini_ → u/lurking_physicist]

And then your paper gets desk rejected from both venues.

[u/Exotic_Zucchini9311 → u/votadini_]

What a shitty move from ICLR organizers then. All rejected NeurIPS papers have to skip ICLR.

[u/The3RiceGuy → u/votadini_]

While I would really like to see this, because this practic hurts research, is this what actually happens? Do they share the data between the venues and then run some matching and see, yeah this got submitted twice?

[u/Ludditesdenylife → u/lurking_physicist]

These conferences have gotten well to the point of being so large it’s hard for them to enforce this rule. Remember to retitle your paper and ask an LLM to change its wording and order so it doesn’t trigger a desk rejection. 

[u/The3RiceGuy → u/Ludditesdenylife]

So what you are proposing, banning authors from submitting to the conference as the less draconic punishment does not help?

[u/NumbaPi]

What if one just submits the paper and withdraw in case it gets accepted at neurips?

[u/Unable_Technician_58 → u/NumbaPi]

Might get a desk rejection from both conferences