ACL Conference Awards Policy

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This document lays out a standard protocol for awards at ACL conferences (Note that for conferences colocated with a non-ACL event there may need to be some adjustments depending on the policies of the other event. Also, this process was not developed for workshops or journals.). The goal of introducing the policy is to have a consistent approach that suits the scale of our conferences today. The policy is designed to highlight work that is interesting along a variety of axes in ways that encourage discussion. Recognizing valuable work in a consistent way also means the value is clearer (e.g., for hiring and tenure cases).

Award Types and Criteria

Best Paper Award

We define "Best" as work that is particularly fascinating, controversial, surprising, impressive, and/or potentially field-changing.

  • "Best Paper Award": No more than 0.25% of accepted papers, counting all accepted main conference and findings papers, receive the "Best Paper Award". For smaller conferences with less than 2,000 accepted papers, the maximum number of "Best Paper Award" slots should be kept at 6.
    • There are additional best paper award slots for non-publicized papers that remained anonymous to the public during the whole process. See #Additional Award Slots for Unpublicized Work for more details.
    • These papers are presented in a plenary session at the conference. PCs should consider scheduling this plenary session early in the conference, to encourage discussion of the papers during the conference.
    • The Best Paper Awards Committee of each conference has some discretion about the number of awards based on the number of accepted papers, nominations, etc, within the range of the maximum number of award slots.
  • "Outstanding Paper Award": 1.5–2.5% of accepted papers (counting all accepted main conference and findings papers), selected as part of the same process for the "Outstanding Paper Award". This allows for broader recognition of work that meets the criteria.
    • There are additional outstanding paper award slots for non-publicized papers. See #Additional Award Slots for Unpublicized Work for more details.
    • The Best Paper Awards Committee of each conference has some discretion about the number of awards based on the number of accepted papers, nominations, etc, within the range of the maximum number of award slots.
  • "Area Chair's Award": Up to one paper per track. These are selected by the SACs for each track.
  • Short and long papers are considered together for these awards.


Test of Time Award

See the policy at Test-of-Time Papers Award.

Special Categories

Two special awards will recognise work with a particular focus as described below. Papers that receive an award in a special category are also eligible to receive a general award.

  • Social Impact Award - For papers that have the potential for significant positive societal impact.
  • Resource Award - For papers that announce, describe, and share a fascinating, valuable, or potentially field-changing new resource (e.g., a dataset or knowledge graph).

Program Committee Chairs may also choose to include awards for other categories. Examples of additional special categories include:

  • Software Award - For papers that describe and share (ideally via source code) a fascinating, valuable, or potentially field-changing new piece of software. Note that this is not the same as the Demonstration Paper Award since there could be papers outside of that track that meet this criterion.
  • Demonstration Paper Award - For papers in the Demonstration Track.
  • Theme Paper Award - For papers on the conference’s theme.
  • Linguistic Insight Award - For papers that make a particularly significant contribution to our understanding of language.
  • Low-Resource Paper Award - For papers that contribute to work on languages or domains with limited data.
  • Interdisciplinary Research Award - For papers that contribute to NLP and another field in new and interesting ways.
  • Reproduction Award - For papers that reproduce prior work in a particularly enlightening way, revealing additional features of the prior work.

Additional Award Slots for Unpublicized Work

In January 2024, the ACL Executive Committee voted to adopt recommendations allowing for extra award slots for unpublicized work. These recommendations were further clarified in March 2025, and now read as follows:

  • Add new best and outstanding paper awards for submissions that remained anonymous to the public during the whole process, to ameliorate the "publicity deficit" for such submissions. (The precise eligibility criteria for these awards would be at the discretion of the awards committee. Of course, such submissions would remain eligible also for all other awards.)
  • Non-publicized submissions are eligible for both "Best/Outstanding Paper Award" and "Best/Outstanding Non-publicized Paper Award". Publicized submissions are only eligible for the former. The set of Best/Outstanding Paper Award recipients is selected first from the full set of papers, given the available number of slots (0.25% for Best and 1.5-2.5% for Outstanding). Once those awards are decided, additional Best/Outstanding Non-publicized Award recipients are selected only from the set of non-publicized submissions (and excluding those which were already selected as a Best/Outstanding Paper Award recipient), given the available number of slots as stipulated below.
  • The number of non-publicized award slots is calculated as follows: Best Non-publicized Paper Award slots = 0.25% of the total number of accepted papers that remained anonymous; Outstanding Non-publicized Paper award slots = 1.5-2.5% of the total number of accepted papers that remained anonymous.The method of identifying the total number of papers that remained anonymous will be determined by the PCs.
  • There should not be distinction in titles of "Best/Outstanding Paper Award" and "Best/Outstanding Non-publicized Paper Award"; papers selected for either of these awards receive the common tile of “Best/Outstanding Paper Award”.


Selection Process

The ACL conference handbook describes the implementation of the selection process.


Announcement, Certificates, and Financial Awards

Announcement: All awardees will be announced on the conference website or blog before the conference. Titles and authors do not need to be announced during a plenary session.

Certificates: All awardees will receive a certificate with the name of the conference, name of the award, title of the paper, and author names, signed by the Program Chair(s) and/or General Chair(s).

Financial Awards: Conferences may choose to have a financial component for any of the awards, which may be sponsored, and may be split between the authors as the authors choose.

Documentation

The ACL Anthology will have an indication of which papers received awards (as it does now). Eventually, a page will be created that lists all papers that have received awards.

The ACL will track the research area and author demographics (gender and country of affiliation) of papers that are (a) nominated, and (b) receive awards. This information will be used to inform efforts to avoid bias and inequality in the selection process. Care should be taken to track them appropriately to avoid harm (e.g., by incorrectly assuming a demographic attribute). The ACL Equity Director will be responsible for maintaining these records.

Notes on the development of this proposal

Notes on the development of ACL_Conference_Awards_Policy describe the backgrounds and further points to consider in the future development of the conference award policy.

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