/acl-submission

name: acl-submission
description: Use when auditing an ACL submission before an ACL Rolling Review cycle deadline, covering long/short paper page budgets, the mandatory Limitations section, Responsible NLP checklist, anonymized PDFs and supplements, preprint declarations, dual-submission rules, resubmission linking, and ARR desk-reject triggers on OpenReview.

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. 3. If the previous meta-review scored 1, a resubmission within six months without wholesale revision can be desk rejected; cosmetic edits waste a cycle. 4. 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. 2. Re-read Limitations: it must be substantive (scope, languages, data, compute), not a ritual paragraph. 3. Fill the Responsible NLP checklist against the actual PDF — every "yes" needs a section number. 4. Sweep the supplement archive for author names in paths, notebook metadata, git history, and license headers. 5. Verify title/abstract on OpenReview match the PDF, and the preprint declaration matches arXiv reality. 6. 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

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