Long Paper Accepts/Rejects

After all the research track decisions are made we will provide detailed analyses of the submissions, reviews and decisions. For now, (so as not to unduly bias the short paper reviewing process) we will provide only overview numbers for long paper submissions.

The Raw Numbers

Of the 665 long paper submissions, 60 were withdrawn by the authors (in some cases before the submission deadline, in some after seeing the reviews); 16 were rejected without review (see our blog post); 383 were rejected following review; and 207 were accepted.

We are very grateful to the long paper reviewers. And we hope to see everyone at the conference!

If Your Paper Was Rejected…

Having a paper rejected hurts. It happens to all of us. Decision making for a competitive conference (as NAACL HLT is) is always hard, as there are many good submissions. We also know that peer review is a noisy process. Here are some things you should know:

• There were three (or more) reviewers, two (or more) area chairs and the program chairs involved in the decision making process. In addition to the reviews that you (the authors) see and the author responses that many of you wrote, reviewers may make confidential comments, and reviewers and area chairs may discuss a submission.  In cases where there was disagreement or discussion, one area chair wrote a meta review to summarize the key strengths and areas for improvement of your submission, gathered from the reviews and from the other parts of the review process.
• Through the reviews and meta reviews, you have now received important feedback from subject matter experts to whom you probably would not normally have access. You can use the comments that they have provided to improve your paper for resubmission.
• Most authors (even the famous ones) have fewer than half their papers accepted on initial submission. Yet, most papers get published eventually. In our experience, the final paper is often far stronger and ultimately more impactful than the first submission, even if the first submission was good work.

We are grateful that you submitted your work to NAACL HLT; we hope the feedback you received is constructive and useful to you; and we wish you all the best in your future research.

If Your Paper Was Accepted…

Through the reviews and meta reviews, you have now received important feedback from subject matter experts to whom you probably would not normally have access. You should use the comments that they have provided to improve your paper prior to final submission. If you communicated something in your author response (new results, additional explanation) you should definitely include that. You have one extra page of content for your final submission; use it well.

You should take a look at the final submission page soon. You will need to provide a copyright release; you may have to work with your employer to complete this.

We are asking authors to upload their paper source code (LaTeX or Word). You also have the opportunity to upload supplementary materials (data, code) and to provide metadata about your work.

We are grateful that you submitted your work to NAACL HLT; we hope the feedback you received is constructive and useful to you; and we look forward to receiving your final submission by April 16th, 2018.

Oral vs Poster

Our CFP says, “The decisions as to which papers will be presented orally and which as poster presentations will be based on the nature rather than the quality of the work.” Decisions about presentation mode were made on the following bases:

• The generality of the work – is it “deep” (of great interest to some people) or “broad” (of interest to many people)
• The nature of the paper – Whether the description of the work seemed like a “picture” or a “story”
• The portfolio of accepted papers – we tried to ensure diversity in topics in oral and poster sessions (i.e. not three adjacent on the same data or from the same group)
• The time and space constraints in the program – our program has to accommodate keynote speakers, a business meeting, papers accepted to the research track, demos, and TACL oral and poster presentations

You may see our next post for a brief view of how the program will be structured.

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