Submission Dates and Process for EACL/NAACL and ACL 2024

The use of an ARR-only submission process has been agreed by Program Chairs (PCs), and General Chairs of the upcoming conferences in 2024 (EACL, NAACL and ACL, referred to in this document as *CL conferences), with feedback from the ACL Rolling Review (ARR) Initiative, the ARR board, and the ACL Exec. There will be no direct submission option. This decision was announced during the ACL 2023 business meeting. The purpose of this communication is to update those that were not present, and to provide more details about the coordinated plan.

In this document, submission deadline refers to the paper submission to the ARR reviewing portal in Open Review. Commitment deadline refers to the deadline for authors to submit their fully ARR-reviewed submission to the conference portal for consideration at that conference. Decisions available refer to the deadline by which conference PCs will send notifications to paper authors.

The dates and cycles relevant for this coordinated submission process are as follows (Table 1 below shows key dates by conference and month):

• 15 Oct 2023: October ARR Cycle - EACL submission deadline
• 15 Dec 2023: ARR reviews & meta-reviews available to authors of October cycle
• 15 Dec 2023: December ARR Cycle - NAACL submission deadlin
• 20 Dec 2023: EACL commitment deadline
• 15 Jan 2024: EACL decisions available
• 15 Feb 2024: ARR reviews & meta-reviews available to authors of December cycl
• 15 Feb 2024: February ARR Cycle - ACL submission deadline
• 20 Feb 2024: NAACL commitment deadline
• 15 Mar 2024: NAACL decisions available
• 15 Apr 2024: ARR reviews & meta-reviews available to authors of February cycle
• 20 Apr 2024: ACL commitment deadline
• 15 May 2024: ACL decisions available

Each cycle will include its corresponding author response period before the meta-review stage. Exact time will be announced in the conference CFPs. Relevant aspects of the plan above are discussed below.

Anonymity period

Unless the ACL enacts a change in policy, each conference will follow the current ACL wide anonymity embargo policy where authors cannot release a deanonymized preprint during the review cycle or between commitment and decisions, plus one month before submission and commitment. More information here: ARR Call For Papers and ARR Author instructions.

Acceptance rates

To calculate each conference’s acceptance rate, we will record, at the time of submission to ARR, authors’ intention to commit to one of the three conferences. This doesn’t imply a hard commitment. Authors may choose to commit to a different venue after receiving their reviews.

Program Committee

Each set of PCs will recruit their own team of Senior Area Chairs, these SACs will be the same group of people in ARR and the conference for the corresponding submission cycle. So for example, for the upcoming October cycle, EACL PCs will select their team of SACs. They will serve as SACs in ARR for that cycle, and then also support PCs during the final assessment of papers committed to EACL. This is the team that will help make final accept/reject decisions after commitment of papers. PCs will encourage, and facilitate, discussions among reviewers/ACs and SACs after the commitment of papers, to further improve the final decision process. However, reviewers, and area chairs will be recruited by all teams, although this may happen in stages. So please be prepared to receive an invite to join the reviewing process soon!

Resubmissions to ARR and Commitments to Conferences

Once a paper has been fully reviewed, authors have the following (mutually exclusive) options as next steps for their manuscript:
Commit their paper and reviews to be considered for publication by a future conference venue accepting ARR reviewed versions. Authors will have the ability to include a response to their meta-review during commitment. If the paper is not accepted for publication by the authors’ chosen venue, it remains in ARR as before, available either for commitment to another venue or revision and resubmission. Revise their paper and resubmit to ARR for another round of reviewing. Authors can request a change of reviewers and/or meta-reviewer. We will do our best to keep the same reviewers unless otherwise requested by authors, but it
depends on reviewer availability. New reviewers will not see the old reviews until after they submit their review. Take their paper to a different venue that does not take ARR-reviewed papers.


Figure 1 below shows a diagram of the process for an ARR reviewed paper:

Figure 1. Workflow diagram of the author choices once a submission has been fully reviewed by ARR.

More detailed information and FAQ about the process can be found here: https://aclrollingreview.org/authors

There will be more information coming out soon, but reach out to any of the PCs teams or to ARR in case you have questions.


Email contacts:

• ARR EiCs: editors [at] aclrollingreview.org
• EACL PCs: eacl2024pcs [at] googlegroups.com
• NAACL PCs: naacl2024-programchairs [at] googlegroups.com
• ACL PCs: acl2024-programchairs [at] googlegroups.com