CALL FOR PAPERS

Important Dates

  • Submission site opening: December 30, 2021
  • Abstract submission deadline: January 7, 2022
  • Author information deadline: January 10, 2022 January 12, 2022
  • Full paper submission deadline: January 14, 2022
  • Summary reject notification: February 18, 2022
  • Author response period: March 16-18, 2022
  • Paper discussion phase: March 19-29, 2022
  • Paper notification: April 20, 2022
  • Camera ready: April 30, 2022 May 2, 2022
Updated:
Abstract deadline is January 7, 23.59 Anywhere on Earth (AoE), UTC-12
Author response deadline is March 18, 23:69 Anywhere on Earth (AoE), UTC-12
Other deadlines are 23:59 Central European Time (CET), UTC +1, Paris, Brussels, Vienna.
 

Submissions are invited for the 31st International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence and the 23rd European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-ECAI 2022), which is planned to be held in Vienna, Austria, from July  23rd to July 29th, 2022. Starting from 1969, IJCAI has remained the premier conference bringing together the international AI community to communicate the advances and achievements of artificial intelligence research.

Submissions to IJCAI-ECAI 22 should report on significant, original, and previously unpublished results on any aspect of artificial intelligence. Papers on novel AI research problems, on AI techniques for novel application domains, and papers that cross discipline boundaries within AI are especially encouraged. A selection of the best papers submitted to IJCAI-ECAI 2022 will be invited for a fast track in Artificial Intelligence and/or the Journal of AI Research.

Key novelties this year:

  • Two phase reviewing process. Only papers that receive two sufficiently positive reviews during the first phase will proceed to the second full reviewing phase.
  • The program committee consists of PC members (reviewers), Senior PC members (meta-reviewers) and Area Chairs (ACs), who overview the reviewing and meta-reviewing process.
  • The author response (for papers in the second phase only) will be accessible to PCs, SPCs, and ACs.
  • There are two special tracks (“AI for Good”, and “AI, the Arts and Creativity”) with separate calls for papers.
  • The authors of papers submitted to IJCAI-ECAI 2022 are expected to contribute a limited number of reviews, if asked to.

Please observe the requirements with regard to author information, anonymity, resubmissions, reproducibility checklist (UPDATED: and ethics policy), and submission limits.

Selection Process

Selection criteria:  Selection criteria include the novelty and originality of ideas, correctness, clarity, significance of results, potential impact and quality of the presentation.

Summary rejects: The reviewing process proceeds in two phases. In Phase 1, every paper will be reviewed by two reviewers and if a paper receives two reviews that are not sufficiently positive in Phase 1, it will be rejected without any opportunity to submit an author response.  By submitting a paper, authors acknowledge that they are aware of the possibility of receiving a summary rejection notification.

Full paper review: Papers passing the summary reject step will go through the full reviewing process. Each paper will be reviewed by a group of  PC-members (PCs), and a Senior PC member (SPC) will coordinate the PC review process and write a meta-review with a recommendation, cross-checked by an Area Chair (AC).

Author response: The full paper review process will include the opportunity for authors to respond to the reviews by pointing out factual errors in the reviews and answering specific questions by the reviewers. Author responses should be concise, and are not intended to create a dialogue between reviewers and authors. Author responses will be visible to AC, SPC, and PCs.

Triple blind reviewing: From the perspective of the Senior Program Committee members (SPC) and Program Committee members (PC),  the reviewing process will be triple blind, i.e., SPC/PCs cannot see the identities of authors and other SPC/PCs, and vice versa. Author identities are also invisible to Area Chairs (ACs) and vice versa.

Participation in the conference.  At least one author of each accepted paper is required to participate in the conference and present the work. We are looking forward to the community meeting in person. At the same time, we are also closely observing the global public health situation.

UPDATED: Ethics Policy: In response to the growing concerns both within and outside the AI community regarding the ethical challenges involved in AI research, we are trialing a light-weight ethics review policy for IJCAI-ECAI 2022. Our expectation is that this trial will help determine the extent and form of these ethical concerns, as well as help authors reflect on their own work. We welcome your input on this trial, either by email or at a special meeting at the conference where we will report back to the community on the lessons learnt so far.
 
Reviewers will be asked to flag glaring violations of ethical principles. Such flagged submissions will be reviewed by the Ethics Chair. In rare situations, the Program Chair advised by the Ethics Chair, reserves the right to reject submission on ethical grounds. However, we expect that the primary response to ethical concerns will be to require authors to revise their submission to include discussion that identifies these ethical concerns and suggestions how they might be mitigated.
 
Authors can include in the main body of their paper, or on the reference page, an ethics statement that addresses both ethical issues regarding the research being reported, and the broader ethical impact of the work. Note that such an ethics statement is not required, but we recommend that papers working with sensitive data or on sensitive tasks include such discussion. The IJCAI-ECAI review form will include a section asking reviewers and ACs to flag any serious ethical concerns.
 
IJCAI and ECAI may in the future choose to adopt a formal code of ethics. In the meantime, research reported at this conference should contribute to the benefit of society, avoid harm, be honest and trustworthy, fair and non-discriminatory, and respect privacy and intellectual property. The ACM (https://www.acm.org/code-of-ethics) and AAAI (https://www.aaai.org/Conferences/code-of-ethics-and-conduct.php) codes of ethics provide examples of the sort of principles which we are hoping to promote.
If you have any questions or input, please contact the Ethics Chair, Toby Walsh (tw@cse.unsw.edu.au). You can also consult the FAQs.
 
Conflict of interest policy: All individuals involved in the IJCAI-ECAI 2022 review process must adhere to the IJCAI conflict of interest policy. Details can be found at https://www.ijcai.org/IJCAI_Conflict_of_Interest_Policy.pdf. All authors of papers submitted to IJCAI-ECAI 2022 agree to be bound by the conditions outlined in this call for papers (w.r.t. multiple submissions, authorship, resubmission policy, submission limit, etc.). Authors and reviewers acknowledge that IJCAI may take action upon individuals in breach with the conflict of interest and call for papers policy including – but not limited to – rejecting their submissions without further review and banning individuals from submitting their work to a limited number of IJCAI conferences in the future.

Withdrawing submitted papers: all papers that are withdrawn from the conference after February 15, 2022, Central European Time (CET), UTC+1, will also be formally rejected from IJCAI-ECAI 2022.

Confidentiality policy: All submissions will be treated in strict confidence until the publication date.

Submission Process

Formatting guidelines: LaTeX styles, and Word template: https://www.ijcai.org/authors_kit

Submission site: https://cmt3.research.microsoft.com/IJCAI2022

Mandatory abstract submission: The paper title, author names, contact details, and a brief abstract must be submitted electronically through the IJCAI-ECAI 22 paper submission site (link above) by the abstract submission deadline. It will be possible to make minor edits to the title and abstract until the full paper submission deadline. Submissions with “placeholder” abstracts will be removed without consideration.

Author Information: Full papers must be submitted through the same site by the paper submission deadline. The list of author names provided at Author Information Deadline is final. Authors may not be added to, or removed from, papers following submission. (The author ordering may still be changed during the camera-ready period.)

All authors are required to log in and fill out a user information form in CMT by the Author Information deadline. The author information is important to control the COIs in the review process. If any co-author does not register and enters the necessary information, a submission may be rejected without review.

Finally, for each submitted paper to IJCAI-ECAI 2022 the set of authors commits themselves to review up to three submissions, if asked to. This does not apply to papers submitted by members of the program committee and when extenuating circumstances apply.

Submission limit: IJCAI-ECAI 22 is enforcing a strict submission limit. Each individual author is limited to no more than 8 submissions to the main track of IJCAI-ECAI 22.

Keywords: When submitting abstracts, authors will be required to choose up to three content area keywords. General categories should be used only if specific categories do not apply or do not accurately reflect the main contributions. The full list of keywords will be available on the submission site.

Copyright:  IJCAI-ECAI 22 is a conference held under the IJCAI rules. The papers published there will be solely IJCAI publications with IJCAI as copyright holder.

Submission Requirements

Paper format: Papers submitted to  IJCAI-ECAI 22 must be formatted according to the IJCAI-ECAI 22 guidelines (link above). Submissions must be self-contained. Authors are required to submit their electronic papers in PDF format. Submissions that violate the  IJCAI-ECAI 22 style (e.g., by decreasing margins or font sizes) may be rejected without review.

Paper length: Papers must be no longer than 7 pages in total: 6 pages for the body of the paper (including all figures/tables), plus up to 1 additional page with references that do not fit within the six body pages. (For accepted papers, up to two additional pages may be purchased at an additional cost per page; note that, at the time of submission, papers are required to adhere to the 6+1 format above.) Overlength papers will be rejected without review.

Supplementary file: Authors may submit up to 50MB of supplementary material, such as appendices, proofs, derivations, data, or source code; all supplementary material must be in PDF or ZIP format. Supplementary material should be material, created by the authors, that directly supports the submission content. Like submissions, supplementary material must be anonymized. To submit supplementary material, first upload your submission. You will then be able to upload supplementary material from the author console. There are two entries for supplementary files: one is “TechnicalAppendix”, and the other one is “ResubmissionFile”. The latter one can be ignored if you are not resubmitting paper rejected at any peer-reviewed conference within the past 6 months. Looking at supplementary material is at the discretion of the reviewers.

Anonymity: From the perspective of the authors, reviewing for  IJCAI-ECAI 22 is double blind. As an author, you are responsible for anonymizing your submission. In particular, you should not include author names or affiliations in your submission, and you should avoid providing any other identifying information (even in the supplementary material). Please ensure also that the PDF meta-data does not reveal the authors’ identities. Acknowledgments of funding or assistance should also be omitted. When referring to one’s own work, use the third person, rather than the first person. For example, say “Previously, Dechter and De Raedt [8] have shown that…”, rather than “In our previous work [8], we have shown that…”. All identifying information can be added back to the final camera-ready version of accepted papers. Supplementary materials and code should also be anonymized (including, for instance, hardcoded paths or URLs that may give away login identifiers or institutions). Submissions that violate anonymity will be rejected without further review.

Preprints: The existence of non-anonymous preprints (on arXiv, social media, websites, etc.) will not result in rejection. Note that the submission to CMT must always be anonymized regardless of whether a preprint has been released. Reviewers will be instructed not to actively look for such preprints, but encountering them will not constitute a conflict of interest.

Reproducibility: Authors must follow the reproducibility guidelines (available here) and checklist at the time of paper submission. In case of questions related to reproducibility, please contact the Reproducibility Co-chairs (Johannes Fürnkranz and Pierre Marquis via reproducibility@ijcai-22.org)

UPDATED: Ethics Statement: Authors may include a statement of the potential broader impact of their work, including its ethical aspects and future societal consequences. This part can be put in either the main body of the paper or on the reference page. It is optional but is highly recommended for papers working with sensitive data or on sensitive tasks.

Resubmissions: Authors of papers that have been rejected at any peer-reviewed conference within the past 6 months must declare the resubmission by including a cover letter with their submission. The cover letter should summarize the main reasons for rejection and should describe the changes the authors have made to address the reviewers’ comments. The cover letter should be put in a separate file, along with the previous reviews and previous anonymized rejected submission. Such resubmissions must contain, in a single PDF file (different from the IJCAI-ECAI 22 paper file):

  • the cover letter, starting with the title of the rejected paper, the tracking number (if any), and the name of the conference to which this paper was submitted,
  • the full reviews from the rejected conference,
  • the anonymized version of the rejected paper.

This resubmission information will be visible to reviewers only during the discussion phase after they submit their initial review.

To submit a resubmission file PDF, first upload your submission. You will then be able to upload a resubmission file from the author console as a supplementary file. There are two entries for supplementary files: one is “TechnicalAppendix”, which is the normal supplementary file for the main paper; and the other one is “ResubmissionFile”, to which you should upload the resubmission file. Note that the maximal size of the resubmission PDF is 10M.

Dual submissions: IJCAI-ECAI 22 will not accept any paper that, at the time of submission, is under review for, has already been published in, or has already been accepted for publication in a journal or another venue with formally published proceedings. (As a guideline, authors should regard publications with a DOI, ISBN, or ISSN as formal publications. Questions about submission eligibility should be referred to the program chair before the submission deadline.) Authors are also required not to submit their papers to venues with formally published proceedings during the  IJCAI-ECAI 22 review period. These restrictions do not apply to workshops and similar specialized presentations with a limited audience and without published proceedings.