NeurIPS Review Process

Use this skill to reason about what reviewers and ACs are likely to do with a submission. Do not use it to infer acceptance odds from folklore; use it to identify decision-relevant weaknesses.

Process model

• Reviews happen in OpenReview under double blind.
• Reviewers are asked to evaluate quality, clarity, significance, and the submission's declared contribution type.
• ACs coordinate reviewers, handle conflicts and quality issues, write or supervise meta-reviews, and make recommendations.
• Ethics concerns can be flagged and routed to ethics reviewers; severe cases can affect decisions.
• Authors who are also reviewers or ACs face reciprocal-reviewing obligations; gross negligence can create sanctions affecting their own submissions.

Reviewer mental model

Reviewers are overloaded cross-area specialists. They need to see: