ACL 2022 Chair Blog Post - Rolling Review

The ACL 2022 and the NAACL 2022 teams have decided to help implement the vision of using

the ACL Rolling Review for major *ACL conference submissions and have worked out a

coordinated submission plan to allow for maximum flexibility for the authors. A joint statement

from the ARR the ACL 2022 and the NAACL 2022 teams has been shared with the research

community, as well as with the ACL and the NAACL exec boards. You can find the joint

statement here.

In this blog post, we would like to detail several points that are specific to ACL 2022.

ACL 2022 important dates (for authors)

● Submission deadline to ARR: November 15, 2021 (authors who want their papers to be

considered for ACL 2022 need to submit them to ARR the latest by November 15, 2021,

but they are encouraged to do so by the earlier ARR deadlines of September 15 and

October 15)

● Commitment deadline for ACL 2022: January 7, 2022 (deadline for authors to submit

their reviewed papers, together with the ARR reviews and meta-reviews to ACL 2022.

For ACL 2022, the authors could also submit an optional “Comment to the Senior Area

Chairs”)

● Notification of acceptance/rejection: February 20, 2022 

● Authors of accepted papers decide to withdraw from ACL (or from the Findings of

ACL): February 23, 2022 

For reference, we include here also the important dates for NAACL 2022 (we will refer to them

in our scenarios):

● Submission deadline to ARR: January 15, 2022 (papers that want to be considered for

NAACL 2022 need to be submitted to ARR latest by January 15, 2022)

● Commitment deadline for NAACL 2022: March 2, 2022 (deadline for authors to submit

their reviewed papers, reviews, meta-reviews to NAACL 2022)

● Notification of acceptance/rejection: April 7, 2022

● Authors of accepted papers decide to withdraw from NAACL 2022: April 11, 2022

1. ARR Submission Process and ARR Submission Deadline for ACL 2022

When authors submit a paper to ARR, they need to select a preferred venue. This will allow each

conference to calculate acceptance rates (see more details on acceptance rates in Section 3). 

Please select ACL 2022 if at the time of submitting to ARR you intend to have your paper

considered for ACL 2022. Authors can submit as early as they would like to ARR to benefit

from multiple rounds of reviews up to November 15, 2021, which is the latest submission

deadline to ARR for a paper to be considered for ACL 2022. This means that the authors can

submit to ARR on September 15, October 15, and November 15, and select ACL 2022 as their

preferred venue. The paper will be assigned an ARR Action Editor, who will make sure that

appropriate reviewers are selected for their paper. Besides general topics of ARR, ACL 2022 will

have a Special Theme on “Language Diversity: from Low-resource to Endangered Languages”

(see CFP and the Special Theme document for details). ACL 2022 will work with ARR to select

Action Editors and reviewers for the special theme and will provide a special review form for

these papers.

The papers will be reviewed within the ARR timeline (usually, on the 20th of the month

following their submission, the authors will receive reviews and meta-reviews). The authors can

decide to address the comments and to submit a revised version of their paper to ARR and/or to

commit the current version of their paper with the associated ARR reviews and meta-reviews to

ACL 2022. The deadline for committing a version of a paper with the associated ARR reviews

and meta-review to ACL is January 7, 2022 (See Section 2 for commitment deadline, process

and period for ACL 2022, and several scenarios with several ARR submission dates).

2. Commitment Deadline, Process, and Period for ACL 2022

On or before January 7, 2022, the authors need to commit a given version of their paper for

consideration to ACL 2022. The authors would be able to commit their paper to ACL 2022 only

if the paper has received reviews and meta-reviews in ARR by the commitment deadline. That is

why the ACL 2022 team has set the submission deadline to ARR for ACL 2022 to November 15,

2021 to make sure that by January 7, 2022 all submitted papers have reviews and meta-reviews

(we have allowed for some unforeseen delays and several holidays at the end of December and in early January). If the paper has multiple versions (revisions), only the version that has reviews

and meta-reviews is allowed to be committed to ACL 2022 (see Scenario 2). A given version of

the paper can only be committed to *one* venue at a time.  Note: the authors can decide to revise

their paper and to submit to ARR for another round of reviews, while a version of their paper is

committed to ACL 2022 (see Scenario 3). When committing to ACL 2022, the authors will

select a track (including the special theme track) and send a version of the paper with the

associated reviews, meta-review, and an optional comment to the Senior Area Chairs.

ACL 2022 will have several areas including the special theme track, and each area will have

several Senior Area Chairs. We have decided to appoint more SACs per area than has been

customary until now in order to make sure each paper is properly considered by at least one

SAC. We will also ensure that a reviewer or an Action Editor in ARR for a paper cannot be a

SAC for that paper. The comment addressed to the Senior Area Chairs is intended mainly to

raise concerns about objective misunderstandings by reviewers and/or by the Action Editor with

regard to technical parts of the paper that the authors consider will help the Senior Area Chairs in their decision process. More details about the format for the comments to the Senior Area Chair will be provided at a later date. ACL 2022 SACs will provide a short, written justification for

their decision for each paper that will be considered by the Program Co-Chairs for their final

decision. We have decided to allow such an optional comment to the Senior Area Chairs

particularly for papers that will be submitted to the latest deadline and would not have time to

benefit from multiple rounds of reviewing. We encourage the authors to submit early (e.g., by

September 15, 2022) to benefit from multiple rounds of reviews, which we believe will reduce

the need to send a comment to the Senior Area Chairs (Scenario 1).

The authors will receive the acceptance/rejection decision by February 20, 2022. Thus, the

commitment period of a paper to ACL 2022 is January 7, 2022 – February 20, 2022. In case of

acceptance, authors will have until February 23, 2022 to reconsider their commitment to publish

in ACL 2022 or in the Findings of ACL 2022. If the authors decide to withdraw from ACL 2022

or from the Findings of ACL 2022, they need to let the Program Co-Chairs know by February

23, 2022. Withdrawn papers from ACL 2022 or from the Findings of the ACL as well as

rejected papers from ACL 2022 can be committed to NAACL 2022 (either the same version of

the paper or an improved version, see Scenario 2) by the NAACL 2022 commitment deadline

(March 2, 2022).

Scenario 1: A paper is submitted to ARR by September 15, 2021 with ACL 2022 selected as a

preferred venue. The paper will receive a first round of reviews by October 20, 2021. The

authors can then decide to address the comments and to submit a revised version of the paper by November 15, 2021. The second round of reviews and meta-review will be available by

December 20, 2022. On January 7, 2022 (which is the commitment deadline for ACL 2022),the

authors can submit their second version of the paper with the corresponding reviews and meta-

reviews, since the second round of reviews and meta-reviews will be available at that time. The

authors can also submit an optional comment to the SACs (however, we imagine that in this case

the need for such a comment would be minimal).

Scenario 2: A paper is submitted to ARR by October 15, 2021 with ACL 2022 selected as a

preferred venue. The paper will receive a first round of reviews by November 20, 2021. A

revised version of the paper is then submitted by December 15, 2021. The second round of

reviews will be available on January 20, 2022. On January 7, 2022 (which is the commitment

deadline for ACL 2022), the authors can submit only the first version of the paper with the

corresponding reviews and meta-reviews since the second round of reviews and meta-reviews

would not be available at that time. The authors will have the option of submitting a comment to

the SACs to raise issues with the first round of reviews and/or meta-review. The second version

of the paper will still be reviewed by ARR. In case the first version of the paper is rejected by

ACL 2022, the authors can commit the second version of the paper with the associated reviews

and meta-reviews to NAACL 2022 by the NAACL 2022 commitment deadline (March 2,

2022). If the first version of the paper is accepted at ACL 2022, and the authors decide to stay

with ACL 2022, the second version of the paper, together with the reviews and the meta-reviews,

will be removed from ARR (the authors can use them to prepare the camera ready version of

their papers for ACL 2022). If the first version of the paper is accepted at ACL 2022 (or in the

Findings of ACL 2022), and the authors decide not to stay with ACL 2022 (which they need to

do by February 23, 2022), they can then commit the second version of their paper, together with

the reviews and the meta-reviews, to NAACL 2022 on March 2, 2022. 

Scenario 3: A paper is submitted to ARR by November 15, 2021 with ACL 2022 selected as a

preferred venue. The authors receive reviews and meta-reviews by December 20, 2022 and

decide to commit that version of their paper, together with the reviews and the meta-reviews, to

ACL 2022 by January 7, 2022. In the meantime, the authors can revise their paper and can

submit a revision to ARR by January 15, 2022, and can obtain a second round of reviews and

meta-reviews by February 20, 2022. If the first version of their paper is rejected from ACL 2022,

the authors can commit the second version of their paper, together with the reviews and the

meta-reviews to NAACL 2022 by March 2, 2022. If the first version of their paper is accepted at

ACL 2022 or at the Findings of ACL 2022, and the authors decide to stay with them, the second

version of their paper, together with the reviews and the meta-reviews, will be removed from

ARR (the authors can use them to prepare the camera-ready version of their paper for ACL

2022). If the first version of the paper is accepted at ACL 2022 (or in the Findings of ACL

2022), and the authors decide not to stay with ACL 2022 (and indicate this by February 23,

2022), they can then commit the second version of their paper, together with the reviews and the

meta-reviews, to NAACL 2022 by March 2, 2022. 

3. Computing Acceptance Rates:

The quality of a conference is perceived often based on the acceptance rate of the papers

submitted there, and thus it is important to have an acceptance rate that adequately represents the difficulty of publishing a paper in the conference. Given the adoption of ARR, it is also

important to allow for consistency across various conferences. Thus, ACL 2022 and NAACL

2022 will have two ways to report acceptance rates:

1) (Number of accepted papers at ACL 2022) / (Number of papers in ARR that had

the preferred venue selected as ACL 2022 together with the papers committed to ACL

2022 by the commitment deadline).  To allow this, papers *should* select ACL 2022 as a

preferred venue at submission time. Moreover, when a paper is committed to ACL 2022,

the preferred venue field should be ACL 2022. The authors will not be allowed to change

the preferred venue during the commitment period (January 7, 2022 – February 20, 2022

for ACL 2022). 

2) (Number of accepted papers at ACL 2022) / (Number of committed papers to ACL

2022). This will likely lead to a higher “acceptance rate” number, as authors with low

review scores might decide not to commit to ACL 2022 and might prefer to submit a

revised version to ARR and to commit to a later conference (e.g., to NAACL 2022).

However, these numbers will provide an additional view on acceptance rate.

ACL 2022 team

General Chair: Bernardo Magnini

Program Co-Chairs: Smaranda Muresan, Preslav Nakov, Aline Villavicencio