Venue submission format

Contract

When a task names a specific academic venue (a conference, journal, grant agency, or poster format), emit that venue's EXACT machine-checkable setup — LaTeX class/style token, anonymization state, page limit, citation/bibliography style — never a generic article default. The mapping from venue to format is arbitrary and venue-controlled; guessing a plausible-looking default is wrong.

Rules

R1 — LaTeX class / style package (use these exact tokens)

| Venue | documentclass | style package | |---|---|---| | NeurIPS 2024 | \documentclass{article} | \usepackage{neurips_2024} | | ICML 2024 | \documentclass{article} | \usepackage{icml2024} | | ICLR 2024 | \documentclass{article} | \usepackage{iclr2024_conference} | | CVPR | \documentclass[10pt,twocolumn,letterpaper]{article} | \usepackage[review]{cvpr} | | ACL / EMNLP / NAACL | \documentclass[11pt]{article} | \usepackage[review]{acl} | | IEEE conference | \documentclass[conference]{IEEEtran} | (class only) | | ACM (camera-ready) | \documentclass[sigconf]{acmart} | + \setcopyright{...} | | Springer LNCS | \documentclass{llncs} | (class only) | | Elsevier journal | \documentclass{elsarticle} | (class only) | | PLOS | \documentclass[10pt,letterpaper]{article} | (PLOS template) |

The ML conferences (NeurIPS/ICML/ICLR) share the plain article base class and differ ONLY in the style package — the package name is the load-bearing token.

R2 — Anonymization (submission/review version)

• NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CVPR, and the ACL family (ACL/EMNLP/NAACL) are DOUBLE-BLIND.

The review version must contain NO author names, NO affiliations, NO email addresses, NO acknowledgments, and NO funding statement.

• De-anonymize ONLY for the accepted / camera-ready version, via the venue's toggle:

NeurIPS [final], ICML [accepted], ICLR \iclrfinalcopy, CVPR / ACL drop [review].

• Refer to your own prior work in the third person ("Smith et al. (2020) showed…"),

never "in our previous work x]" — first-person self-reference de-anonymizes.

• IEEE, ACM, Springer LNCS, Elsevier, and PLOS are NAMED (not anonymized): author

names and affiliations appear in the submission.

R3 — Page limits (main text; references usually excluded)

• NeurIPS 2024: 9. ICML 2024: 8. ICLR 2024: 9. CVPR: 8.
• ACL / EMNLP: 8 (long paper), 4 (short paper).
• References do NOT count toward these limits.
• NeurIPS also requires the NeurIPS Paper Checklist, which does NOT count toward the

9 main-text pages.

R4 — Citation / bibliography style

| Venue | Citation style | bibliographystyle | |---|---|---| | NeurIPS / ICML / ICLR | numeric via natbib (\citep{}, \citet{}) | — | | ACL family | natbib (\citep, \citet) | — | | IEEE | numeric in square brackets | \bibliographystyle{IEEEtran} | | ACM | ACM Reference Format | \bibliographystyle{ACM-Reference-Format} | | Springer LNCS | numeric | \bibliographystyle{splncs04} | | Elsevier | numeric | \bibliographystyle{elsarticle-num} | | PLOS | numbered Vancouver (numeric, NOT author-year) | — |

R5 — Grants (agency format, NOT a LaTeX class)

• NSF: Project Description ≤ 15 pages; margins ≥ 1 inch on all sides; type size ≥ 10 pt;

approved fonts include Times New Roman, Computer Modern, Arial, Palatino Linotype.

• NIH R01: Research Strategy ≤ 12 pages (R21 ≤ 6); Specific Aims = 1 page; font ≥ 11 pt

(Arial, Helvetica, Georgia, Palatino Linotype); margins ≥ 0.5 inch.

R6 — Posters

• A0 = 841 × 1189 mm. Use beamerposter or tikzposter; scale fonts large for

distance reading.

Worked examples

R1 — class/style token

• Task: "Open the LaTeX file for our NeurIPS 2024 submission."
• BEFORE (base default): \documentclass[11pt]{article}\usepackage{neurips} — invents a

plausible package name and a font option.

• AFTER (conforming): \documentclass{article} then \usepackage{neurips_2024} — exact

package name, no font option.

R2 — anonymization

• Task: "Write the title/author block for the PDF we upload to NeurIPS 2024 review."
• BEFORE: \author{Jane Doe\\MIT\\jane@mit.edu} plus an acknowledgments line — the model's

default is to fill in author metadata.

• AFTER: anonymous block — \author{Anonymous Author(s)} (or omitted), no affiliation, no

email, no acknowledgments, no funding statement.

R3 — page limit

• Task: "What's the main-text page limit for ICML 2024?"
• BEFORE: "around 10 pages including references" — wrong number, wrong reference handling.
• AFTER: "8 pages of main text; references do not count toward the limit."

R4 — citation style

• Task: "How do we cite references in our IEEE conference paper?"
• BEFORE: "use author-year citations, e.g. (Smith, 2020)" — generic academic default.
• AFTER: numeric square-bracket citations, e.g. [1], with \bibliographystyle{IEEEtran}.

R5 — grant format

• Task: "How long can the NSF Project Description be and what are the margins?"
• BEFORE: "usually 10–20 pages, standard 1-inch-ish margins" — vague, no enforceable number.
• AFTER: "≤ 15 pages; margins ≥ 1 inch on all sides; type size ≥ 10 pt."

R6 — poster

• Task: "We need a standard large-format conference poster — package and A0 size?"
• BEFORE: "use the poster package; A0 is about 33×46 inches" — wrong package, imperial guess.
• AFTER: beamerposter (or tikzposter); A0 = 841 × 1189 mm.

Edge cases & exceptions

• Review vs camera-ready is the same class, different flag. The double-blind venues do

not change their class file between versions — they flip an option. Camera-ready NeurIPS is \usepackage[final]{neurips_2024}; the review version omits [final]. Never delete the package to "de-anonymize."

• CVPR / ACL anonymize by package option, not by a separate class. \usepackage[review]{cvpr}

IS the anonymized state; dropping [review] (or using [final]) is the camera-ready state.

• References are outside the page count for the conference limits — do not pad your answer

by counting them.

• NeurIPS checklist is mandatory but free of the page budget — it is required for the

submission yet excluded from the 9-page main-text limit.

• Grants are not a LaTeX class. NSF/NIH constraints are agency rules on the compiled PDF

(page count, margins, font, font size), not a \documentclass. Do not answer a grant question with a LaTeX class.

• Short vs long ACL papers differ only in page budget (4 vs 8) — same class, same package.
• PLOS, IEEE, ACM, LNCS, Elsevier are named venues — do NOT strip author identity for them;

anonymization applies only to the double-blind set in R2.

Do / Don't

• Never load \usepackage{neurips}; always load \usepackage{neurips_2024} (exact year tag).
• Never include author names/affiliations/acknowledgments in a double-blind review PDF; always

anonymize them and de-anonymize only in the camera-ready via the venue's toggle.

• Never write self-citations as "in our previous work"; always use third person.
• Never answer a citation question with author-year for IEEE/ACM/PLOS; always use the numeric

scheme the venue mandates.

• Never count references inside a conference page limit; always state references are excluded.
• Never give grant page/margin/font rules as a LaTeX class; always give the agency's numbers.
• Never guess A0 in inches; always give 841 × 1189 mm.

Common mistakes

• Inventing a package name (neurips, icml, iclr_conf) instead of the exact tokens

(neurips_2024, icml2024, iclr2024_conference).

• Adding a [11pt] / [12pt] font option to the ML-conference \documentclass{article} — the

style package controls the font; the base class takes no font option.

• Filling in author/affiliation/email metadata on a double-blind review submission.
• Defaulting to author-year (Author, Year) citations everywhere, when IEEE/ACM/LNCS/Elsevier/PLOS

require a numeric scheme.

• Confusing the review and camera-ready toggles (deleting the package, or shipping [final] to

the review system).

• Treating an NSF/NIH grant as a LaTeX-class question instead of an agency page/margin/font spec.
• Reporting poster sizes in inches or naming a poster package that doesn't exist.

Quick checklist

1. Did I emit the EXACT class + style-package tokens for this venue (not a generic article)?
2. Is the submission anonymized iff the venue is double-blind, with the right de-anon toggle noted?
3. Is the page limit the venue's exact number, with references excluded?
4. Is the citation/bibliography style the venue's mandated scheme (numeric vs author-year)?
5. For grants, did I give agency page/margin/font numbers — not a LaTeX class?
6. For posters, A0 = 841 × 1189 mm with beamerposter/tikzposter?