naacl-workflow

NAACL Workflow

Project management for NAACL differs from every annual venue in one blunt

way: the conference might not exist next year. The chapter historically

skips editions when the ACL main meeting is hosted in the Americas — no

NAACL 2023, no NAACL 2026 — so a NAACL plan is really a plan for entering

the *ACL Rolling Review machine at a moment that leaves a NAACL commitment

open, with named fallbacks for when the calendar shifts under you.

The calendar reality (as of 2026-07-08)

• Most recent editions: NAACL 2024 (Mexico City, June 16-21, 2024) and

NAACL 2025 (Albuquerque, April 29 - May 4, 2025).

• Next edition: NAACL 2027 — site registered, but dates, venue, feeding

cycles, and commitment deadline all 待核实 at planning time.

• Reference shape from 2025: ARR upload mid-October, reviews mid-December,

commitment around the turn of the year, final versions early February,

conference late April. A spring NAACL implies an autumn ARR deadline —

plan provisionally on that shape, verify the moment the CFP lands.

Provisional backward plan for a spring NAACL (verify every date):
  T-0   conference (spring)
  T-11w final versions due
  T-16w commitment deadline           <- reviews must exist by here
  T-26w ARR cycle submission          <- the real deadline
  T-30w evidence freeze: data, annotation, main runs complete
  T-38w annotation campaign starts (if collecting new data)
  T-46w pilot studies + guideline drafting

Milestones with owners

| Milestone | Owner | Exit criterion |

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

| Venue decision review | Whole team | NAACL still the target? (rerun quarterly — see decision tree) |

| Data/annotation freeze | Data lead | Agreement scores computed; splits published internally |

| Main-results freeze | Experiments lead | Ledger complete; variance reported |

| Paper freeze | Writing lead | Content pages self-contained; Limitations drafted |

| Compliance pass | One named person | Checklist, anonymity, template, citations verified |

| ARR upload | Corresponding author | Confirmation email archived |

| Response window | All authors on call | Every review answered per triage |

| Commitment decision | Senior author | Decision logged with rationale |

Annotation campaigns deserve the earliest slot they can get. Recruiting

annotators for Guaraní or Haitian Creole is not a two-week task, and

community partnerships — common for Americas-language projects — move at

partnership speed, not deadline speed.

The commit-versus-wait decision tree

Reviews arrive; now the genuinely NAACL-specific decision:

1. Strong package, NAACL window open → commit to NAACL.
2. Strong package, no NAACL window soon → commit to the nearest

fitting sibling (EMNLP, EACL, AACL, or ACL) rather than letting reviews

age a year; NAACL loyalty is not worth a stale paper.

1. Fixable weaknesses → revise and resubmit to a later ARR cycle with a

change summary, timed so the new reviews land before the NAACL

commitment deadline.

1. Field moving fast under the paper → prefer earlier venues over

waiting; a skipped-year gap is long enough for your baselines to become

historical artifacts.

Log the decision and the date; teams that skip the log relitigate the same

choice monthly.

Monitoring routine between editions

Between the decision to target NAACL and the edition's CFP, run a light

monthly watch instead of a panicked scramble later:

• ARR dates page: has any cycle acquired a NAACL assignment?
• Chapter site and the edition placeholder ({year}.naacl.org): dates,

venue, or organizing-committee announcements.

• The chapter's announcement channels and the ACL Member Portal, where

cycle-to-conference mappings are often posted first.

• On any hit: update the backward plan the same week, and rerun the

decision tree with the real dates.

Assign the watch to one named person; a "we all sort of watch" arrangement

reliably discovers CFPs three weeks late, which on a ten-week cycle is

fatal.

Standing risks on a NAACL path

• Announcement risk: feeding cycles for a new edition can be announced

with little slack; subscribe to the chapter's channels and recheck the

ARR dates page monthly once an edition is expected.

• Pool-depth risk: post-gap commitment pools are deep; a borderline

package should strengthen or reroute, not hope.

• Single-point compliance risk: desk rejects (template, Limitations,

checklist) burn the whole cycle — ten weeks lost, not ten days.

• Deadline convention risk: all ARR clocks run AoE (UTC-12); a team

spread across the Americas' time zones still gets exactly one cutoff.

Output format

[Target edition] <NAACL year, or "unannounced — provisional plan">
[Cycle chosen] <ARR month/year + verification date>
[Backward plan] <milestone -> date -> owner>
[Decision-tree state] commit / wait / revise / reroute (+ rationale)
[Top calendar risk] <one line>