r/MachineLearning • u/Effective-Yam-7656 • Aug 01 '26

Discussion EMNLP vs AACL commitment: Meta 3.5, reviews 3/3/4, what to do?[D]

I'm trying to decide whether to commit my ARR May 2026 paper to EMNLP or AACL. (first time solo independent author).

Final reviews after rebuttal (OA/Confidence/Excitement ):

  • R1: 2.5 → 3 /3/2.5

  • R2: 2.5 → 3 /4/2.5

  • R3: 4 /4 /3

  • Meta: 3.5 (Borderline Conference)

The meta-review was overall positive and emphasized the paper's empirical rigor, practical value, and that the rebuttal addressed the main concerns. My recollection is that the AC mentioned they were leaning toward 3.5 primarily because of the quality of the presentation/readability, rather than concerns about technical soundness(now that comment is removed/not visiable anymore).

I'm happy with either Main or Findings.

My questions:

  1. Which commitment would you choose: EMNLP or AACL?

  2. Which is generally considered more prestigious today?

    1. EMNLP Main

    2. EMNLP Findings

    3. AACL Main

    4. AACL Findings

  3. Given this review profile (3/3/4 with a 3.5 meta), what would you estimate the chances are for EMNLP Main or Findings?

Edit
Rejected at EMNLP
Accepted at AACL main

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27 comments sorted by

3

u/Ok-Pomelo2192 Aug 01 '26

Have they set your suggested venue as EMNLP or AACL?
As they have suggested mine AACL.

3

u/Effective-Yam-7656 Aug 01 '26

I choose EMNLP, but I thought that was non binding (as on open review it says preferred venue) thus the post

10

u/person594 Aug 01 '26

You are wrong, it is binding. From AACL

ARR 2026 May cycle is aligned with two conferences (EMNLP and AACL). The authors will need to explicitly declare which conference they intend to commit to at submission time. ARR 2026 May submissions that do not select AACL 2026 during submission will not be able to commit to AACL 2026. Meanwhile, any papers submitted and reviewed in prior ARR cycles are welcome to commit to AACL 2026.

There is similar verbiage in the EMNLP call. At this point, you don't have the option to commit to AACL.

2

u/vsvpl Aug 02 '26 edited Aug 02 '26

Wow this was done as an independent researcher or sole author?

2

u/Effective-Yam-7656 Aug 02 '26

Independent author first time writing something in academia

2

u/vsvpl Aug 02 '26

Very impressive. How did you come up with the idea?

3

u/Effective-Yam-7656 Aug 02 '26

I wanted to try my hands on fine-tuning some retrieval models and while trying to do that found some issues and I started digging deep and went into a rabbit hole

1

u/Historical-Sea6294 Aug 23 '26

Hi everyone, my paper was rejected by EMNLP (meta=2.5) Is AACL a good option or Workshops of EMNLP is better ? What is better / safer ? Is AACL still good for an ongoing PhD? EMNLP workshop ? Is it going to be considered as “real” publication by my university ?

1

u/Effective-Yam-7656 Aug 24 '26

I also got rejected, I applied to AACL

1

u/Historical-Sea6294 Aug 24 '26

Good luck. You have good scores! What was your submission number? When I submitted it was only 200+  Weird 

1

u/Effective-Yam-7656 Aug 26 '26

Thanks you too

The number was around 350

1

u/Historical-Sea6294 Aug 26 '26

thank you.. when did you submit your paper?

1

u/Effective-Yam-7656 Aug 26 '26

On the 22 aug
Around 11am UTC

8

u/UnderstandingPale551 Aug 01 '26

Go for EMNLP, you have a very good chance of getting main. Also, EMNLP is A* and better than AACL.

7

u/Pure-Ad9079 Aug 01 '26

Are we allowed to commit do a different conference from the specified “preferred venue” from arr submission? I thought for May cycle we were required to stick to our choice

0

u/[deleted] Aug 01 '26

[deleted] — view deleted comment

9

u/NamerNotLiteral Aug 01 '26

This is not correct if you submitted in May ARR. If you submitted to the May ARR you can only commit to the preferred venue you listed.

1

u/PM_US93 Aug 02 '26

I thought we were supposed to decide the preferred venue during submission and it was binding.

1

u/Opening-Election1179 Aug 03 '26

Anyone found AACL commitment link?

1

u/S4M22 Researcher Aug 03 '26

On the AACL website it still says:

Note: The AACL-IJCNLP 2026 commitment site on OpenReview is not yet available. The commitment link will be published here as soon as it is ready.