icra-review-process

ICRA Review Process

ICRA review is run not by ad-hoc program committees but by a standing RAS

Conference Editorial Board (CEB) structure operating inside PaperPlaza. The

mechanics differ enough from both journals and ML conferences that authors

mis-model them — most consequentially around the rebuttal that never comes.

The pipeline

Sep 15   PaperPlaza deadline
   │
   ▼     Editor (area lead) assigns paper to an Associate Editor (AE)
   │     by keyword match from your chosen PaperPlaza topics
   ▼
Oct-Dec  AE recruits 2-3 reviewers; reviews written on the standard
   │     RAS form (contribution, technical soundness, clarity,
   │     experimental validation, video comments)
   ▼
Dec-Jan  AE writes a summary report reconciling the reviews and
   │     recommends; Editors + program committee calibrate across areas
   ▼
Jan 31   accept or reject — no conditional accepts, no shepherding,
   │     and in the classic ICRA flow NO author rebuttal phase
   ▼
Mar      camera-ready with voluntary reviewer-driven revisions

Two structural notes. First, keyword choice at submission is not paperwork — it

routes the manuscript to an Editor's area and thereby to the reviewer pool most

or least sympathetic to it. Second, reviewer identity practice: reviewers are

anonymous to authors, and from the 2026 cycle authors are anonymous to reviewers

too (double-anonymous; before 2025 inclusive, single-blind). Policies are set

per cycle — confirm on the current year-site.

No rebuttal: consequences, not complaints

The classic ICRA pipeline gives authors no reply channel between submission and

decision (individual cycles have experimented; verify the current one). Plan

for it:

• The paper must anticipate objections in advance — the limitations

paragraph and pre-answered comparisons (icra-writing-style) do the job a

rebuttal does elsewhere.

• Misunderstandings are terminal. If a reviewer misreads the method, no one

corrects them before the AE summarizes. Ambiguity is therefore a first-order

risk, worth spending page budget to eliminate.

• The video is your asynchronous rebuttal. It answers "is this real / is it

cherry-picked / how fast" before those objections are typed

(icra-supplementary).

• Reviews arrive with the decision, and for accepted papers they function as

camera-ready guidance (icra-author-response covers using them well).

What the review form rewards

| Form dimension | What strong looks like at ICRA |

|---|---|

| Technical soundness | assumptions stated; math checkable; no hidden human-in-the-loop |

| Experimental validation | evidence rung matches claims; trials, dispersion, failure analysis |

| Novelty/contribution | mechanism-level delta over named prior systems |

| Clarity | figure chain self-sufficient; task-first narrative |

| Multimedia | uncut executions, labeled speeds, failure shown |

Borderline papers typically die on validation ("promising but insufficient

experimental support") rather than novelty — allocate effort accordingly.

Where author leverage actually exists

With no rebuttal, influence concentrates before upload:

1. Keyword selection — the only routing input you control; choose for the

reviewer pool you want, within honesty.

1. The video — the one channel that reaches reviewers with evidence after

the PDF freezes their reading order but before they form judgments.

1. Ambiguity elimination — every sentence a reviewer could misparse is a

decision risk with no correction mechanism.

1. The limitations paragraph — converts predicted objections from "flaw

found" to "flaw acknowledged," a materially different review sentence.

Calibrating expectations

• ICRA is large (thousands of submissions; Vienna 2026 drew 8,000+ attendees);

historical acceptance rates have floated in the 40-45% band, far gentler than

ML flagship venues but with high variance across areas. Treat any specific

rate as unverified until the year's numbers are published.

• Acceptance is to the program as a whole; presentation format (interactive/

poster session structure) is a program decision, not a quality tier ranking

in the proceedings record.

• Decisions are binary. "Reject with encouraging reviews" is the common fate of

good-but-thin papers; the correct read is "fund one more experiment rung and

resubmit" (IROS in March, RA-L any time).

Contrast with RA-L review

Authors choosing between routes (see icra-topic-selection) should model the

review differences, not just the deadlines:

• RA-L is journal review: an AE plus reviewers, a first decision targeted

within ~3 months, and crucially a revise-and-resubmit outcome that lets

authors answer reviewers with a response letter — the interaction ICRA lacks.

• RA-L decisions bind publication in the journal; conference presentation is a

separate transfer step afterward.

• The reviewer pools overlap heavily; a paper rejected at ICRA and sent to

RA-L unchanged may meet the same reviewer with the same objection — revise

first.

Reading a decision packet

1. Sort comments into: factual error (yours), misunderstanding (their reading,

your ambiguity), scope demand (wants a different paper), and taste.

1. Reject case: fix the first two categories before any resubmission clock; a

misunderstanding at ICRA predicts the same misunderstanding at IROS.

1. Accept case: triage which comments to honor in camera-ready given the

8-page-total final limit (icra-camera-ready).

1. Update your model: which claims drew fire predicts how to scope the next

submission's evidence ladder.

Output format

[Stage] pre-submission / under review / decision received
[Pipeline model] AE area = <keyword>, predicted reviewer pool concern: <one line>
[No-rebuttal mitigation] top 3 objections pre-answered in draft: <list>
[Decision triage] factual / misunderstanding / scope / taste = <counts>
[Next move] camera-ready plan | resubmission target + what changes