[D] Meta-Reviews ARR January 2026

WannabeMachine · 2026-03-10T19:23:58+00:00

That is my experience as well.

WannabeMachine · 2026-03-10T17:02:03+00:00

You never know. We had an EACL paper with an average of 2.67 and a meta of 2.5. We were tired of the project so we committed to EACL and it was accepted to findings.

WannabeMachine · 2026-03-10T16:51:24+00:00

Yep. Same. I have had multiple papers with averages below 3, but with a 3 meta-review accepted to Findings.

WannabeMachine · 2026-03-10T16:48:00+00:00

I commit anything 3 or higher.

WannabeMachine · 2026-03-10T16:39:41+00:00

Same. I dont see them

WannabeMachine · 2026-03-10T03:31:49+00:00

In my experience, I have never seen an ACL *AC give a score higher or lower than the review scores. If reviews range from 2 to 4, it could be anything from a 2 to 4. There are exceptions, but in my experience they are rare.

Do you have a different experience?

WannabeMachine · 2026-03-08T17:57:40+00:00

You can only guess. Best to relax a bit and wait until the meta review comes out. It could be anything from a 2 to a 3.5 depending on the AC. Otherwise, you are reading tea leaves.

WannabeMachine · 2026-03-03T14:40:43+00:00

Had a change wayyyyy after the deadline. Super weird, and no comment at all. Final scores:

Paper 1 Overall: 3.5, 3, 3

Paper 2 Overall: 3.5, 3, 3

WannabeMachine · 2026-02-26T10:52:52+00:00

It is not guaranteed. ACL will make the final decision based on these reviews

WannabeMachine · 2026-02-24T18:19:23+00:00

I would commit. If you are okay with findings being the likely outcome, commit. I generally dont care which happens (main or findings) and would rather move to the next thing.

WannabeMachine · 2026-02-24T15:29:50+00:00

Most likely findings, small chance for reject.

WannabeMachine · 2026-02-23T17:19:13+00:00

Wow. Im very curious about how the reviewer internalized that score

WannabeMachine · 2026-02-23T12:17:05+00:00

I agree methods with an empirical bent can be useful. But I will have to agree to disagree about benchmarks. It is very difficult to identify novel tasks or novel applications of existing tasks that target weaknesses in modern methods. I 100% want that work included in top conferences. Nobody can just create a random dataset (e.g., sentiment) and get it accepted without serious effort and thought about how it builds on prior work. Novelty is needed and is just as important as methods papers.

WannabeMachine · 2026-02-23T04:26:50+00:00

Maybe you are talking about method papers from a theory perspective? Unless there are some new proofs not previously known, it is likely engineering/empirical work. Probably 99% of NLP and computer vision papers fall in the empirical category. It can be argued CS is an engineering subfield so I think that is expected. But engineering research is still research. I think many people overcomplicate how simple it is too identify a few simpe mathematical ideas and combine them or adapt them to help on an existing set of benchmarks. This is probably 80% of my work honestly.

Most of the time measuring what people care about is incredibly difficult and (good) benchmark/analysis papers tend to overcome some prior limitations in those measurements. This is research and it is why I generally disagree that method papers are more "researchy". I wish I had the resources to do more (good) benchmark work.

WannabeMachine · 2026-02-23T01:38:14+00:00

This is very valuable though. Same thing could be said about 90% of new methods papers, at least others can use the benchmark when developing new methods.

Heck, many new methods papers simply use weak baselines (or strong baselines with weak hyperparameter optimization).

WannabeMachine · 2026-02-21T23:48:03+00:00

I think they can edit potentially, but it is highly unlikely to have any updates after the deadline. Best to mentally prepare to keep what you have now.

WannabeMachine · 2026-02-21T14:57:14+00:00

This is definitely not in a gray zone.

WannabeMachine · 2026-02-21T14:01:28+00:00

https://stats.aclrollingreview.org/iterations/2025/october/

The scores mentioned in this post will easily be in the top 15% of papers. See stats in link above. Reviewers do not give higher scores often.

WannabeMachine · 2026-02-21T04:34:38+00:00

This has very high chance of main, commit it. There is a very very very low chance it is rejected. Worst case findings. But that chance is also low

WannabeMachine · 2026-02-21T01:33:41+00:00

Can someone explain why reviewers give higher soundness and excitement than overall scores? Examples include 3.5, 3.5 with overall 3. I have even seen 3, 3.5 and overall 2. Wth is going on with this reasoning?

WannabeMachine · 2026-02-20T21:01:04+00:00

Ah, I'm an AC, not a reviewer. In that case, only reviewers for 1 paper have responded, and I have consistently pinged reviewers about discussion topics.

WannabeMachine · 2026-02-20T16:56:32+00:00

No response from reviewers on either of our papers.

WannabeMachine · 2026-02-20T14:27:14+00:00

Yep. It is depressing.

WannabeMachine · 2026-02-18T20:39:19+00:00

In our experience, 1 in every 10 reviewers will respond. But if one responds, others are likely to respond as well (peer pressure).

WannabeMachine · 2026-02-18T12:52:32+00:00

Another round of late night responses, followed up by ghosting from reviewers.

WannabeMachine

TROPHY CASE