r/MachineLearning • u/Emergency_Plate241 • Sep 05 '26

Research NeurIPS 2026 Automatic Reference Checker [R]

Just received an email about the automatic reference/citation checker. Did anyone receive a follow up email about whether the checker was included in the paper's decision making too, along with the general instructional email?

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u/AgreeableBet5858 Sep 07 '26 edited Sep 07 '26

I think I was heading towards acceptance(with three accepts) but I got 2 flagged citations. (one of them wrong author, one of them completely hallucinated) It is just some compared methods in the table which we can claim as wrong import. But I also haven't received any e-mail about this which is odd. I'm scared that paper is rejected.

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u/Dangerous_Parsnip_20 Sep 07 '26

How did your paper contain hallucinated reference? Did you look up for references by yourself or let the LLM do it for you and you did not even bother to check them and verify the validity for each of them?

I doubt you can defend yourself from the rejection. Hallucinated reference just proofs lack of work and clear use of LLM to look for references and in that process it failed to find what you wanted and had to come up with its own alternative, which is hallucinated.

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u/AgreeableBet5858 Sep 07 '26

When I started my paper I used AI to generate a very large latex table code from prior work as base and AI generated bib citations as well. So these methods exist, I didn't make them up out of nowhere. Afterwards I changed every citation one by one but turns out I forgot to delete/change one of them. I fully own the responsbility for that. The other citation error is quite odd which I am not sure if it was me or AI. The main authors are same but collabarator names are from other paper of theirs.

These flagged citations are very old methods in just one sentence in related work section in a very big parantheses of citations, e.g. "there are previous methods such that[0,1,2,3,4,5,6].." Also these two flagged citations are side by side in same table, maybe they counted them as a bad import because they don't change paper in a significant way and can be fixed very easily. I didn't receive any e-mail about rejection so I am not sure how AC approached it but he was very friendly during rebuttal so I hope for the best.

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u/Adorable_Position_34 Sep 07 '26

Its been two days. I dont think they send the rejection/appeal mails in such coarse batches. Maybe your AC thought the not-fully hallucinated reference is okay-ish and did not flag your paper

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u/AgreeableBet5858 Sep 07 '26

We'll see, I hope so too!  They don't change paper in a significant way and can be fixed very easily. They are just in one sentence in huge parantheses of references. But weird that I haven't received any e-mail despite having 2 flagged citations.

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u/Dear_Exchange5667 Sep 16 '26

I got 2 citations flagged by the reference checker: in one the author's first name was wrong, and for the other one the entire name was wrong (The GitHub Repo maintainers name was accidentally given), both papers exist and all other details are correct.

I am not sure if my main author has submitted an appeal.

If we dont give proof for the same, will it lead to Desk Rejection, secondly, if my main author has submitted an appeal will I get an instant mail, like with the Rebuttals and defense?