Frequently Asked Questions

This document has an updated list of frequently asked questions about the IJCAI-ECAI 2018 paper process. If you have a question that is not on this list, please feel free to send a mail to me at pcchair@ijcai-18.org.

Jérôme Lang
Program Chair, IJCAI-ECAI 2018

• FAQ Submissions
• FAQ Rebuttal

Frequently Asked Questions about Submissions

1. Can I submit a paper to IJCAI if it is already on arXiv?
2. A preliminary version of my paper has
   already been presented at a workshop or a conference
   without proceedings. It it ok to submit it to IJCAI?
3. How strict is the author anonymity
   requirement in the submissions?
4. Can I submit the title and abstract of
   paper which is under review for a conference whose
   notification date is between January 25 and January 31?
5. My paper has been rejected from AAAI-18.
   Do I have to attach the reviews and the response letter?
6. Is supplemental material allowed for IJCAI submissions?
   

7. Are color images allowed in a submission?
8. When does a paper qualify as student paper?
9. Can I submit a paper consisting of an extension of a previously published short paper / extended abstract?
10. Is there a maximal length for titles and abstracts to be submitted on the website?
11. I have already registered a paper and I want to update the author list. How can I do?
12. What does ‘abstract submission’ mean? Do I have to submit an abstract if I intend to submit a full paper? Can I submit an abstract only?
13. When submitting a paper I have to tick the box “Check this box when the list of authors is complete. No additional name will be allowed after paper submission deadline has passed.”: will I be allowed to change the author order if the paper is accepted?

1. Can I submit
a paper to IJCAI if it already on arXiv?

Yes. We require that any submission to IJCAI must not
be under review at any other refereed publication venue including
archival conferences and journals. Papers put on arXiv
do not violate this rule as long as they are not
refereed.

2. A preliminary
version of my paper has already been presented at a
workshop or a conference without formal proceedings.
It it ok to submit it to IJCAI?

Yes. This applies more generally to papers presented in
any non-archival venue (that is, as long as there are no
formally published proceedings with a publisher and an
ISSN).

3. How strict is the
author anonymity requirement in the submissions?

IJCAI requires that all submissions be anonymised so
that the review of the submission is done on objective
criteria, and is not influenced by author identity. To
facilitate this, we require that the authors follow both
the letter and spirit of the normal anonymisation
guidelines. Any paper that obviously violates this
requirement will be rejected without review. 

The anonymity requirement holds only for the submitted
paper. If a non-anonymous version of your paper or its
title has appeared in a workshop, on ArXiv, in a seminar
announcement, etc., that’s ok to submit it to IJCAI.
Program committee members will be explicitly instructed
not to actively seek to figure out author identities
with the help of search engines.

4. Can I submit the
title and abstract of paper which is under review for
a conference whose notification date is between
January 25 and January 31?

Yes. In case your paper is accepted to this conference,
you will have to withdraw the title and abstract as soon
as you learn it. (This applies in particular to papers
submitted to AAMAS 2018 and ICAPS 2018.)

5. My paper has been
rejected from AAAI-18. Do I have to attach the reviews
and the response letter?

You may (and I recommend it) but it is not compulsory.

6. Is supplemental
material allowed for IJCAI submissions? Are anonymised
links to supplemental material allowed?

No supplemental material is allowed for submissions to
the IJCAI main track. On the other hand, you are welcome
to provide an anonymised  link to supplemental
material containing, for instance, full proofs,
additional figures or examples, or more complete data
sets. Note however that reviewers won’t be required to
look at this supplemental material, and that your paper
should be self-contained.

7. Are colour images
allowed in a submission?

Yes. (The style instructions suggesting black &
white images are a holdover from the days of hard copy
proceedings).

8. When does a paper
qualify as student paper?

A paper is considered a ‘student paper’ and thus a
potential winner of the ‘Best Student Paper Award’ when
the first author is as a student who, at the time of
submission, has not obtained any PhD degree yet. When
submitting a paper, this should be indicated by marking
the appropriate checkbox.

9. Can I submit a paper consisting of an extension of a previously published short paper / extended abstract?

Yes, provided that the extension is significant. If, for instance, the short paper is a two-column two-page paper, the answer is clearly yes. I consider that a short paper is indeed ‘short’ if its length is no significantly more than half the length of an IJCAI submission. If you are not sure, ask the Program Chair.

10. Is there a maximal length for titles and abstracts to be submitted on the website?

Title:

This is the longest title that can be submitted, which, as you can see, is quite long, so long that I would certainly not advise anyone to submit such a long title, that would be ridiculous, now we are approaching the limit, soon, very soon, very very soo

Abstract:

There is no word limit for abstracts. However, as a courtesy to the reviewers who will read your abstract when bidding for papers, please keep it at a reasonable length. A paragraph twice or thrice the length of this one is perfect (lengthwise, I mean). Four times is still ok. Five times is too long. As to the minimal length, it is … one sign.

11. I have already registered a paper and I want to update the author list. How can I do?

You should first untick the box “The list of authors is complete. Check this box when the list of authors is complete. No additional name will be allowed after paper submission deadline has passed.”. Update the list, tick the box again, and submit.

12. What does ‘abstract submission’ mean? Do I have to submit an abstract if I intend to submit a full paper? Can I submit an abstract only?

By ‘abstract submission’ we mean that you should register your paper by giving a title and a short abstract (see FAQ 10). This abstract is intended for helping program committee members selecting the papers they are competent for reviewing. There are no abstract-only submissions, nor any paper-only submissions: in all cases, you must submit an abstract, and then you must submit a full paper, cf., from the call for papers, “The paper title, author names, contact details, and a brief abstract must be submitted electronically by January 25, 2018 (11:59 UTC-12). All papers are due electronically on January 31, 2018 (11:59 UTC- 12).”

13. When submitting a paper I have to tick the box “Check this box when the list of authors is complete. No additional name will be allowed after paper submission deadline has passed.”: will I be allowed to change the author order if the paper is accepted?

Yes, it will be possible to change the order of authors. Also, in some cases where an mistake was made in a name (e.g., interverting first and last name or introducing a typo), you will be allowed to change it (after some a quick check by the program chair). But you will not be allowed to add an author to the list or to remove an author from the list.

Frequently Asked Questions about Rebuttal

This page is intended to help authors use the rebuttal to answer some of the points raised by the reviewers.

1. How many reviews should I see?

Normally, four. One of them has been written by a senior program
committee member; it typically focuses on the high-level aspects
of the paper and less on details. Sometimes you will see less
that four reviews. This is due to the fact that one of the
reviewers has not had time for completing their review. In this
case you should normally get all your reviews at notification
time, although there may be cases where you will get only three
reviews instead of four. It can also be the case that you
receive a new review during the rebuttal (but no later than
Tuesday 20 March midnight GMT). In this case you will receive a
notification from me.

2. Can reviews be added or updated during rebuttal?

Only up to Tuesday 20 March midnight GMT. If a review is added
or significantly updated on March 20, you will receive an email
from me.

3. Why can’t I see scores?

I prefer not to show scores because I prefer authors to focus on
reviewer comments, without being biased by scores. (Similarly,
journal reviews do not show recommendations to authors but only
comments.) Also, scores can change during discussion and showing
scores at an earlier stage can sometimes give authors a wrong
expectation that their paper will be accepted.

4. Is rebuttal compulsory?

Not at all. PC members will receive instructions not to consider
the absence of rebuttal as a charge against the paper.

5. What should I write in the
rebuttal?

The rebuttal is meant to address specific points raised by the
reviewers and to point specific errors or misunderstandings in
the reviews.  Writing a rebuttal that is longer than needed
and that contains irrelevant information may only harm the
paper, because the reviewers will be tempted not to read the
rebuttal not attentively enough and will miss important points.
Be concise and to the point. You don’t have to use the 2000
characters!

Here are some examples of sentences that are totally useless in
a rebuttal.

“Dear reviewer, you write that programming an intelligent
frying pan is not in the scope of IJCAI. We strongly disagree.
Moreover, a paper about an intelligent bread toaster has been
published at IJCAI a few years ago.”

Useless. A few lines rebuttal will not convince the various
persons involved in the reviewing of your paper what AI is
about. If the reviewer is wrong about rejecting papers on
intelligent frying pans, they will be told so by the other
members of the program committee involved on that paper.

“Dear reviewer, you write that the performance if our
algorithm is only a small improvement over the state of the
art. We think it is a huge improvement.”
 
Useless. The appreciation of the significance of the
contribution is left to the personal appreciation of the
reviewers and such a disagreement won’t change anything.

“Dear reviewer, you write that our contribution should have
be positioned with respect to a paper by Moet and Chandon. You
are right, this is an important omission. In the final version
we will include a detailed comparison between their work and
ours.”

No, no and no. It’s useless to promise vague things in the final
version. Be specific and tell exactly what you will say.

Here are now some examples of sentences that are useful in a
rebuttal.

“Dear reviewer, you write that our work on an intelligent
saucer should have be positioned with respect to a paper by
Spielberg et al. However, the latter considers intelligent
*flying* saucers, while our work is about cooking.”

This is fine, because this is specific and to the point.
 
“Dear reviewer, you write that our contribution should have
be positioned with respect to a paper by Moet and Chandon. You
are right, this is an important omission. We were unaware of
their work. We read it and found out that their paper
identifies the computational complexity of deciding whether
two KDGGYA4$+++  databases are superweakly equivalent,
which subsumes our Proposition 17. However, all our other
results remain unconcerned.”

This is fine.

6. What should I do if I find a
review unacceptable?

You may view a review as unacceptable because it is overly thin
and uninformative. In that case, be assure that other members of
the program committee involved with this paper will do
everything ensure that it is expanded before the end of the
process. It may sometimes be the case that the reviewer did not
have time to write a complete review. Be aware that the number
of submissions was 1.5 the number of submissions in 2017 and
that the workload for some program committee members was heavier
than expected.

You may view a review as unacceptable because the tone is overly
harsh, sarcastic or impolite. We try to make sure that such
reviews are corrected before they are shown to the authors, but
due to the small elapse of time between review submission and
opening of rebuttal, we have not always been able to do so. You
may write an email to me. (However, please don’t write just to
complain that one of the reviewers has a negative opinion about
your great paper.)

7.

Who can
see the rebuttal?

All reviewers can see the rebuttal to all reviewers.
Therefore, in order to avoid repeating the same answer about a
specific issue raised by more than one reviewer, you can ask
some of the reviewers to see the answer you give about it to
another reviewer.

8. Who can submit the rebuttal?
Can the rebuttal be updated?

Only the contact author can submit or update the rebuttal. It
can be updated as many times as you want.

9. How long can the rebuttal be?

Maximum 2000 characters per rebuttal, and one rebuttal per
review. The pdf that you will upload in some (rare) cases does
not count.

10. Why don’t I get an answer to
my question immediately?

Because there are more than 3400 submitted papers and perhaps
you are not the only one asking a question. It is useless to
send me a reminder after a few hours. If I don’t answer, ask
again one day after, unless it can really not wait until then.
If your question is not about rebuttal and can wait longer, it
will be answered after March 23.