ACL 2022 and NAACL 2022 conferences are moving to ACL Rolling Review!
Given the ACL Exec support to move to the ACL Rolling Review (ARR), the ACL 2022 and NAACL 2022 conferences committees decided to *exclusively* use ARR for paper submissions.
The goal of this message is to alert you of this drastic change in our community. ARR aims at a better reviewing process and a reduced reviewing load overall. For this initiative to succeed, our community needs (1) reviewers to agree to review for ARR, and (2) authors of ACL 2022 or NAACL 2022 submissions to plan accordingly!
More information about ARR: https://aclrollingreview.org/
What does it mean for you as an author?
The submission of your paper to ACL 2022 or to NAACL 2022 will have to be done through ARR, which uses OpenReview (not START anymore). As usual, there will be a fixed deadline by which your paper needs to be submitted to obtain reviews for a given conference. However, if you submit early, you would be able to benefit from multiple reviewing cycles and improve your paper to take into account the reviewers’ comments, and to resubmit it to get a new set of reviews. ACL 2022 and NAACL 2022 have worked closely together and have developed a coordinated plan for submissions through ARR that will allow maximum flexibility to authors. See the section ACL 2022 and NAACL 2022 coordinated submission plan through ARR at the end of this message for more details about our plan (including how acceptance rate will be calculated).
You can read more about ARR at https://aclrollingreview.org/authors
What does it mean for you as a reviewer?
Accept the ARR invitation :-) You will *not* be asked to review for the main ACL 2022 and NAACL 2022 conferences on top of reviewing for ARR. (Workshops at this point have the option of going with ARR or not.) If, at first glance, reviewing for ARR year-round seems to be a big commitment, note that you can modify your availability and you can pause reviewing when needed. However, as you can imagine, the community will need reviewers when conference deadlines are approaching! Please be available, as you would have been for reviewing for ACL/NAACL.
Note that both ACL 2022 and NAACL 2022 will only have Senior Area Chairs (SACs). If you are an ARR reviewer, you might still be recruited as a SAC. You will have the option to pause reviewing in the months when your SAC workload will be high. In addition, both conferences will implement a process to avoid conflicts of interest (COIs) between ARR reviewers, ARR Action Editors, and SACs for ACL/NAACL 2022 (e.g., an ARR reviewer or an Action Editor for a paper will not be a SAC for the same paper at ACL/NAACL 2022).
Read more at https://aclrollingreview.org/reviewers and please consider filling the “Reviewer Interest Survey” at the bottom of the page. ARR, as it is a centralized reviewing system, will lead to less reviewing duplication. It will also help with the issue of reviewing gaming that grew recently. Right now as a reviewer, it requires a little bit of work to enroll in the system, but that will pay off in the long run.
Rest assured that both the ACL 2022 and the NAACL 2022 teams and the ARR team are working closely together to ensure a transition that is as smooth as possible. However, we cannot do it without you! With the enormous increase of submissions to *ACL conferences, it became clear that changes to the reviewing practices in our community were needed. We believe ARR to be a good solution. Let’s all work together to make it succeed! Thank you.
Details on the ACL 2022 and NAACL 2022 coordinated plan of submissions through ARR
ACL 2022 and NAACL 2022 have coordinated their submission timelines, which are given below:
ACL 2022 important dates (for authors)
- Submission deadline to ARR: November 15, 2021 (authors who want their papers to be considered for ACL 2022 need to submit them to ARR latest by November 15, 2021)
- Commitment deadline for ACL 2022: January 7, 2022 (deadline for authors to submit their reviewed papers, reviews, and meta-reviews to ACL 2022)
- Notification of acceptance/rejection: February 20, 2022
- Authors of accepted papers decide to withdraw from ACL 2022 (including from the Findings of ACL 2022): February 23, 2022
NAACL 2022 important dates (for authors)
- Submission deadline to ARR: January 15, 2022 (authors who want their papers to be considered for NAACL 2022 need to submit them to ARR latest by January 15, 2022)
- Commitment deadline for NAACL 2022: March 2, 2022 (deadline for authors to submit their reviewed papers, reviews, and meta-reviews to NAACL 2022)
- Notification of acceptance/rejection: April 7, 2022
- Authors of accepted papers decide to withdraw from NAACL 2022: April 11, 2022
When papers are submitted to ARR, the authors will need to select a preferred venue (e.g., ACL 2022, NAACL 2022). This will allow each conference to calculate acceptance rates (see the section on acceptance rates below).
Commitment period
At a certain date, authors would need to commit their paper for consideration at a particular venue (e.g., ACL 2022 or NAACL 2022). A commitment to a venue is possible only if the paper has received reviews and meta-reviews in ARR. If the paper has multiple versions (revisions), only a version that has reviews and meta-reviews is allowed to be committed to the venue (see Scenario 1). A paper can only be committed to *one* venue at a time.
Note: The authors can decide to revise their paper and to submit it to ARR for another round of reviews, while a version of their paper is committed to a venue (see Scenario 2). In case of acceptance at the venue, the authors would have a few days to reconsider their commitment to publish at that venue. If they confirm it, all subsequent versions of their paper would be removed from ARR. In case of rejection, another commitment of that version (or of a subsequent version) of the paper is possible for another venue (e.g., a paper rejected at ACL 2022 on February 20, 2022 can select to commit to NAACL 2022 on March 2, 2022).
The commitment deadline for ACL will be January 7, 2022 and the commitment period will be January 7, 2022 - February 20, 2022. By this deadline, the authors need to submit a version of their paper that has reviews and meta-reviews in ARR and an optional comment to the ACL 2022 Senior Area Chairs if they choose to do so. The authors will receive the acceptance/rejection decision by February 20, 2022. In case of acceptance, the authors will have until February 23, 2022 to reconsider their commitment to publish at ACL 2022 or in the Findings of ACL 2022. If the authors decide to withdraw from ACL 2022 or from the Findings of ACL 2022, they need to let the Program Co-Chairs know by February 23, 2022. Withdrawn papers from ACL 2022 or from the Findings of ACL 2022 as well as rejected papers from ACL 2022 can be committed to NAACL 2022 (either the same version of the paper or an improved version, see Scenario 2) by the NAACL 2022 commitment deadline.
The commitment deadline for NAACL 2022 will be March 2, 2022 and the commitment period will be March 2, 2022 - April 7, 2022. By this deadline, the authors need to submit a version of their paper that has reviews and meta-reviews in ARR. The authors will receive the acceptance/rejection decision by April 7, 2022. In case of acceptance, the authors will have until April 11, 2022 to decide to stay with NAACL 2022 or not.
Scenario 1: A paper is submitted to ARR by October 15, 2021 with ACL 2022 selected as a preferred venue. The paper will receive a first round of reviews by November 20, 2021. A revised version of the paper can then be submitted by December 15, 2021 (still with ACL 2022 selected as a preferred venue), but the second round of reviews will only be available on January 20, 2022. On January 7, 2022 (which is the commitment deadline for ACL 2022), the authors can submit only the first version of their paper with the corresponding reviews and meta-review since the second round of reviews and meta-review will not be available at that time. The authors will have the option of providing a short message to the SAC (which is not a point-by-point rebuttal) for the first set of reviews and meta-review.
Scenario 2: A paper is submitted to ARR by November 15, 2021 with ACL 2022 selected as a preferred venue. The paper will receive reviews and meta-reviews by December 20, 2022 and the authors can decide to commit that version of the paper, together with its reviews and the meta-review, to ACL 2022 by January 7, 2022. In the meantime, the authors can revise their paper and submit a revision to ARR by January 15, 2022, and obtain a second round of reviews and a meta-review by February 20, 2022. If the first version of the paper is rejected from ACL 2022, the authors can commit the second version of their paper, together with its reviews and meta-reviews to NAACL 2022 by March 2, 2022. If the first version of the paper is accepted to ACL 2022, and the authors decide to stay with ACL 2022, the second version of the paper, together with its reviews and meta-review, will be removed from ARR (yet, the authors can use them to prepare the camera-ready version of their paper for ACL 2022). If the first version of the paper is accepted at ACL 2022 (or at the Findings of ACL 2022), and the authors decide *not* to stay with ACL 2022 (by indicating this by February 23, 2022), they can then commit the second version of their paper, together with its reviews and meta-review, to NAACL 2022 by March 2, 2022.
Acceptance Rates
The quality of a conference is perceived often based on the acceptance rate of the papers submitted there, and thus it is important to have an acceptance rate that adequately reflects the difficulty of publishing a paper at the conference. Given the adoption of ARR, it is also important to allow consistency across various conferences. Thus, ACL 2022 and NAACL 2022 plan to have two ways of reporting acceptance rates:
1) (Number of accepted papers at conference X) / (Number of papers in ARR that selected conference X as their preferred venue together with the papers committed to conference X by the commitment deadline). To allow this, papers *must* select a preferred venue at submission time. Moreover, when a paper is committed to a venue, that venue should match the preferred venue. The authors will not be allowed to change the preferred venue during the commitment time for a conference.
2) (Number of accepted papers at conference X) / (Number of committed papers to conference X). This will likely lead to a higher “acceptance rate”, but will add another perspective.
The ACL 2022 CFP and the ACL 2022 Chairs blogs will provide additional details about this process and new information regarding the Special Theme for ACL 2022, as well as about the option for authors to submit a comment to the Senior Area Chairs in addition to their reviews and meta-review (they will be out soon, so keep an eye for that).
ACL 2022 and NAACL 2022 organizing teams