acl-submission

ACL Submission

Run this audit before uploading to an ACL Rolling Review (ARR) cycle on OpenReview.

ACL papers are not submitted to the conference directly: they enter an ARR cycle,

collect reviews and a meta-review, and are later committed to ACL. Reopen the

current ARR CFP at aclrollingreview.org/cfp and the target conference's call

before trusting any number below.

Two-step reality check

• Confirm which ARR cycles feed your target ACL edition. ACL 2026 accepted work

from the October 2025 and January 2026 cycles; committing requires a complete

review package, so the last eligible cycle is earlier than the conference date

suggests.

• The ARR deadline is the hard one. Commitment is a separate, later form with its

own deadline (March 14, 2026 for ACL 2026) — see acl-workflow for the calendar.

• All ARR deadlines run 11:59 pm UTC-12 (anywhere on Earth).

Format gate

• Long papers: up to 8 content pages. Short papers: up to 4. Both get unlimited

pages for references, plus unlimited space after the conclusion for the

required Limitations section and an optional ethics statement.

• A missing Limitations section or overlength content is an explicit desk-reject

condition under the ARR CFP — this is the most common self-inflicted rejection.

• Use the official ACL LaTeX/Word style files unmodified; margin, font, or

spacing tampering is treated as a length violation.

• Appendices go after references in the same PDF; reviewers are not obliged to

read them, so the 8 or 4 content pages must carry the whole argument.

Anonymity gate

• The submission itself must be fully anonymized: no names, affiliations,

acknowledgements, or self-revealing "we previously showed" citations.

• Since January 2024 there is no anonymity period: you may post a

non-anonymous preprint at any time. But you must declare preprint status at

submission, and choosing "no non-anonymous preprint" earns award eligibility

and priority for borderline decisions — then posting one anyway before

meta-review release is a desk-reject offense.

• Supplementary archives, repo links, and dataset pages must be anonymized too;

links to tracked hosting (personal Dropbox/Drive) are disallowed.

Declarations that gate the submission form

| Form item | What ARR checks | Failure mode |

|---|---|---|

| Responsible NLP checklist | Completed, consistent with the PDF | Misleading answers → desk reject |

| Resubmission link | Prior ARR submission ID + change summary | Unacknowledged resubmission → desk reject |

| Preprint declaration | Matches what is actually on arXiv | Broken "no preprint" pledge → desk reject |

| Dual submission | Not under review anywhere archival | Violation → reject at ARR or venue |

| AI assistance disclosure | Checklist item E answered honestly | Undisclosed generative-AI use → policy breach |

Resubmission discipline

ARR is built for revise-and-resubmit across cycles. If this paper was reviewed

in an earlier cycle:

1. Link the previous submission ID in the form — omitting it is desk-rejectable.
2. Attach a summary of changes plus a point-by-point response to every weakness

named in the old reviews.

1. If the previous meta-review scored 1, a resubmission within six months

without wholesale revision can be desk rejected; cosmetic edits waste a cycle.

1. Decide whether to request the same reviewers — continuity helps when the

revision genuinely answers them.

Final-72-hours sequence for an NLP paper

1. Rebuild the PDF from the untouched style files and re-run the page count on

content pages only.

1. Re-read Limitations: it must be substantive (scope, languages, data,

compute), not a ritual paragraph.

1. Fill the Responsible NLP checklist against the actual PDF — every "yes"

needs a section number.

1. Sweep the supplement archive for author names in paths, notebook metadata,

git history, and license headers.

1. Verify title/abstract on OpenReview match the PDF, and the preprint

declaration matches arXiv reality.

1. Submit hours early; ARR deadlines are AoE but OpenReview outages are not an

accepted excuse.

Cycle-choice quick checks

• Is the target conference actually accepting commitments from this cycle?

Each edition names its eligible cycles; a mismatch strands the reviews.

• Does the team have bandwidth during this cycle's author-response window,

roughly five weeks after the deadline?

• Would waiting one cycle allow the missing experiment that reviews will

otherwise demand? A weak first cycle costs more than it saves, because the

package follows the paper.

• Is any co-author's other submission in the same cycle a conflict for

reviewer assignment? Register conflicts and profiles before deadline week.

Frequently mishandled cases

• Short paper padded to eight pages: reviewers rate contribution against

format; a four-page idea submitted long scores as thin, not as generous.

• Appendix used as overflow body: content pages must carry the argument;

a method section that says "see Appendix B" for its core mechanism fails

the self-containedness expectation.

• arXiv v2 posted mid-cycle after declaring no preprint: this converts a

declaration into a desk-reject liability — update plans, not the preprint.

• Dataset "available on request": allowed, but checklist answers must

then explain reproduction honestly rather than implying release.

• Same work at a non-archival workshop: usually permitted, but most

\*ACL workshop proceedings ARE archival — verify the workshop's archival

status in writing before assuming.

Output format

[ARR readiness] Ready / Needs fixes / Not ready
[Cycle + venue plan] <ARR cycle -> intended commitment venue>
[Format gate] <length/Limitations/style-file findings>
[Anonymity + declarations] <checklist/preprint/resubmission/dual-submission findings>
[Desk-reject risks] <ranked list>
[Fix order] <what to change before the cycle deadline>