This is the timetable for EMNLP-CoNLL'07.
For comparison, I have also shown the timetables for EMNLP'06 and EMNLP'04.
EMNLP-CoNLL'07 EMNLP'06 EMNLP'04
(ACL submission) Tu 1/23 2/28 2/25
(ACL acceptance) Fr 3/23 4/28 4/26
Submission Mo 3/26 4/18 4/28
Reviewer bidding Tu-Th 3/27-29 4/19-21
Reviews assigned Sa 3/31 4/25
Reviews due We 4/18 5/10 (became 5/14)
Discussion Th-Sa 4/19-21
Within-area rankings Mo 4/23
(NAACL main conf) Mo-We 4/23-25
Acceptance Th 4/26 5/16 (became 5/18) 5/26
(ACL camera-ready) Fr 5/4 5/26 6/1
Shared task camera due We 5/9
Camera-ready due Mo 5/14 6/2 6/15
Full proceedings due Sa 5/19
(ACL conference) 6/24-27 7/17-21 7/22-24
Conference 6/28-30 7/22-23 7/25-26
Here are the tolerances:
- Authors have 3 days (Sa-Mo) to incorporate ACL reviewer comments
and turn a narrowly rejected ACL paper into an EMNLP paper. This
should be longer, but I don't think it is easy to change.
- Program chairs must assign papers to tracks overnight. We can get
some headstart by assigning each paper as soon as it arrives. If
needed, we can either slip by a day here, or make bad assignments
and correct them later.
- Reviewers have 3 days to bid (Tu-Th). During this time, the area
chairs might also request that a few papers be reassigned to new
tracks, or be reviewed by reviewers from multiple tracks.
- Area chairs have 2 days (Fr-Sa) to run START's assignment algorithm
onthe bids and adjust the results. This can take several hours for
a conscientious area chair. But if some area chairs are late,
it cuts into the review time for their reviewers only.
- Reviewers have 18 days to do the reviews, including 2.5 weekends. I
would like to strongly encourage area chairs to keep the load per
reviewer down to 3-4 papers. Note that both Passover and Easter
fall within the reviewing period.
- Reviewers and area chairs have 3 days to discuss (Th-Sa); then area
chairs have 2 additional days (Su-Mo) to arrive at their own
rankings. This leaves a little room for slippage if reviews are
late. I kept the discussion period from overlapping with NAACL-HLT.
- Program chairs have 3 more days (Tu-Th) to merge these rankings and
make final decisions, including poster vs. paper decisions. This is
generous in order to deal with papers whose reviewers are late.
Further discussion with area chairs may be needed here, but that is
easier to arrange during NAACL -- area chairs who happen to be
at NAACL can talk to me there in person.
- Authors then have 2.5 weeks to revise. This is enough, I hope, to
run new experiments if the reviewers request it.
- EMNLP-CoNLL publication chair has 5 days to compile the proceedings
(lengthened from 4 days at Jian's suggestion). This is a hard
deadline! It will be important to do most of the work in advance --
writing front matter, setting the program, handling shared task
papers. And we can check for font problems as soon as the
camera-ready copy arrives.
NOTE TO FUTURE CHAIRS: If you're running ACL, you can have a much more
relaxed schedule. EMNLP traditionally runs on an amazingly tight
timetable. Despite being held with ACL'07, our submission deadline is
2 months later than ACL's. In fact, it is even a few days after ACL's
*notification* deadline; this tradition allows people who submitted
prematurely to ACL, and got rejected, to submit more complete versions
of the work to EMNLP.
NOTE TO FUTURE CHAIRS: This timetable should also have listed early
deadlines for inviting area chairs, inviting reviewers, and especially
inviting busy keynote speakers. As a rule of thumb, invite people
fully 3 months before they will need to do any work, and make sure you
actually have those positions filled 2 months beforehand. (You need
that month because you may have to ask a few people in sequence, some
of whom won't reply promptly.)
NOTE TO FUTURE CHAIRS: Please consider adding an author response period.