ecai-submission

ECAI Submission

Run this audit before uploading to the ECAI submission site. **First settle which regime the target

edition is in**, because it changes the template, the publisher, and the page budget:

• A standalone ECAI (e.g. ECAI 2023/2024) publishes in IOS Press FAIA (Frontiers in

Artificial Intelligence and Applications), uses the ecai.cls template, and allows

7 pages of body + 1 page of references.

• ECAI 2026 is the joint IJCAI-ECAI 2026 (Bremen, 15-21 Aug 2026). It follows IJCAI:

the ijcai.sty template, 7 pages body + 2 pages references plus an optional ethics

statement, and IJCAI's own open-access proceedings — not FAIA this cycle.

Every number below was read from the IJCAI-ECAI 2026 and ECAI 2024 calls on 2026-07-09 via search

renderings (see resources/official-source-map.md); treat them as a one-cycle snapshot and reopen

the live call first.

The two-deadline flow

ECAI separates an abstract/registration deadline from the paper deadline, and both are AoE:

• Abstract locks in title, abstract text, authors, and topics about a week early

(IJCAI-ECAI 2026: 12 January 2026; ECAI 2024: registration 19 April 2024). Miss it and

the system will not accept the PDF later.

• Paper uploads the anonymized PDF (IJCAI-ECAI 2026: 19 January 2026; ECAI 2024:

25 April 2024).

Register with the real title and abstract (plain text, ~100-300 words), not a placeholder — the

abstract drives reviewer bidding and area-chair assignment, and a registered abstract that diverges

from the final paper quietly worsens your match.

Format and page budget

• Template: ijcai.sty for IJCAI-ECAI 2026; ecai.cls for a standalone ECAI. This is not

the ACM acmart path, not IEEE IEEEtran, and not LNCS — do not carry a sibling-venue

habit over.

• Page budget (verify per cycle): 7 pages of body for all text and figures. References

are the only overflow — 1 page (standalone ECAI) or 2 pages (IJCAI-ECAI 2026). There is

no unlimited appendix inside the paper; anything a reviewer must read to judge the paper lives in

the 7-page body.

• Ethics statement (2026): optional, may sit in the body or the reference pages; recommended

for sensitive data or tasks.

• Margins, font, and spacing are fixed by the template; editorial compression, not template

tampering, is how you recover space.

Double-blind sweep

ECAI review is double-blind. Because AI papers lean on code, datasets, and named systems, the

leak surface is wide:

# Mechanical pass on the submission PDF and any anonymized supplement
pdfinfo paper.pdf | grep -Ei 'author|creator|producer'
pdftotext paper.pdf - | grep -nEi 'github\.com/[a-z0-9-]+|gitlab|zenodo\.org/record|acknowledg|grant|funded by' | head
unzip -l supplement.zip | grep -Ei '\.git/|\.DS_Store|/home/|/Users/' | head
grep -rni 'university\|@[a-z0-9.]*\.edu\|our (system|group|lab)' supplement/ --include='*.md' | head

The AI-specific leaks: a method named after your group, a dataset or benchmark you are known for,

an acknowledgements/funding line left in, a repository owner in a supplement, and self-citations

phrased as "in our prior work [X]" instead of neutrally. Anonymize the supplement archive before

upload.

Per-author cap and topics

• Submission cap: IJCAI-ECAI 2026 limits each author to no more than 8 submissions to the

main track (verify per cycle). Count every paper on which a person is an author across your group.

• Topics/keywords: select the areas that match your evidence so the paper routes to the right

area chair and reviewer pool — the single largest lever you control before reviews.

• Track choice: a deployed application paper may belong in PAIS (standalone editions) or

an applied special track rather than the main track — decide before the abstract deadline

(ecai-topic-selection).

Desk-risk triage

| Finding at audit time | Severity | Real fix |

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

| Body over 7 pages | Desk-reject-grade | Cut or move to the supplement; reference pages do not absorb body text |

| Wrong template (acmart/IEEEtran/LNCS) or altered margins | Named desk-reject ground | Recompile in ijcai.sty/ecai.cls, recover space editorially |

| Identity leak in PDF, supplement, or method name | Anonymity violation | Re-anonymize and re-host; scrub PDF metadata |

| Abstract not registered by the earlier date | No submission slot exists | Nothing fixes this post-AoE — calendar it now |

| Author over the per-author submission cap | Submissions may be dropped | Prioritize and withdraw the weakest before the cutoff |

| Same work under review elsewhere | Dual-submission violation | Withdraw one venue; check the current concurrent-submission wording |

Final-week order of operations

1. Freeze the 7-page body early; references can churn, the argument cannot.
2. Register title/abstract/authors/topics before the abstract cutoff.
3. Build the anonymized supplement (proofs, extra tables, code) and reference it from the body.
4. Run the mechanical double-blind checks on the final PDF and the final archive.
5. Confirm the template regime (ijcai.sty vs ecai.cls) and the exact page budget for THIS

edition — do not assume 7+1 in a joint year.

1. Re-download the uploaded PDF and read it cold to confirm it is the file you meant.

Reverify each cycle

• Whether the edition is standalone (FAIA/ecai.cls, 7+1, PAIS) or joint with IJCAI

(IJCAI proceedings/ijcai.sty, 7+2) — this flips template, publisher, and budget.

• All dates and AoE cutoffs; the per-author submission cap; the ethics-statement and

generative-AI policy wording.

• Supplementary-material rules and whether an appendix is allowed.

Output format

[ECAI submission status] ready / blocked / needs work
[Regime] standalone ECAI (FAIA/ecai.cls) / joint IJCAI-ECAI (IJCAI/ijcai.sty)
[Abstract step] title/abstract/authors/topics locked by the earlier deadline? yes/no
[Format] pages used (body/refs), template compliance
[Anonymity] clean / leaks: <where>
[Caps & tracks] within per-author cap? correct track (main/PAIS)?
[Fix queue] <ordered, with owners and dates before the AoE cutoff>