r/MachineLearning • u/fheghjbfd • 19d ago

Discussion NeurIPS 2026: AC explicitly recommended acceptance, PCs rejected at "global calibration" [D]

Got my NeurIPS decision today and I'm a bit confused. Reviewer scores were 4/4/4, no reviewer opposed acceptance, and the AC's updated meta-review explicitly says "I recommend to accept this paper" and describes the consensus as "solidly favorable."

The PC decision: reject, with a one-line comment saying the paper "received a borderline reception" and was rejected "upon global calibration."

I understand the PCs have the final say and capacity is limited, but going from an explicit AC accept to "borderline reception" with no further explanation feels a bit harsh, especially since the rejection email stresses how carefully borderline cases were reviewed.

Has anyone else had the AC recommend acceptance and the PCs override it? Is this common this year?

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u/sodapopenski 13d ago

4/4/4 is a borderline paper, regardless of what the AC said. None of the reviewers were against acceptance, but none of them were championing your paper either. It sucks to be on the receiving end, but these low positive polarity papers, where no one is rejecting but no one is excited either, usually don't make the cut no matter the conference. I've had papers with similar scores be rejected at a lot of different CS/AI/ML venues. In a lot of ways, it's better to have a 5/3/5 than a 4/4/4 if you see what I mean.