✅ Paper Submission Checklist

Use this checklist before every paper submission. A missed item at submission time can mean rejection, disqualification, or an embarrassing post-acceptance correction.

Phase 1: Research Completeness (2–4 weeks before deadline)

Experiments

  • All baseline comparisons are fair and complete (same data, same evaluation protocol)
  • Ablation studies isolate the contribution of each major component
  • Results are reported over multiple seeds with mean ± std
  • Statistical significance is assessed where appropriate
  • Test set was used only once to report final results
  • No data leakage between train/val/test splits

Reproducibility

  • All random seeds are fixed and reported
  • Hardware and software environment is documented
  • Full hyperparameter configuration is available (in paper or supplementary)
  • Code is ready for release (or will be before camera-ready)
  • Model checkpoints are saved for the results being reported

Phase 2: Writing Completeness (1–2 weeks before deadline)

Content

  • Abstract clearly states the problem, approach, and key results (with numbers)
  • Introduction has an explicit contributions list (3–5 bullet points)
  • Related work addresses all directly competing methods
  • Methodology section is sufficiently detailed for an independent implementation
  • Experiments section explains the experimental setup completely
  • Every claim is backed by evidence (citation, equation, or empirical result)
  • Limitations are acknowledged (required by most venues)
  • Ethics/Broader Impacts statement is complete (required by NeurIPS, ICML, etc.)

Figures and Tables

  • All figures have captions that are self-contained (understandable without reading the text)
  • All tables have captions
  • Axes are labeled with units
  • All figures use colorblind-safe palettes
  • Error bars or confidence intervals are visible where applicable
  • Figures are in vector format (PDF) or ≥300 DPI raster

Equations

  • All variables in equations are defined
  • Equation numbering is consistent
  • Mathematical notation is consistent throughout
  • Equations compile without errors

Phase 3: Formatting and Compliance (3–7 days before deadline)

Venue Compliance

  • Correct venue template is being used (download fresh from venue website)
  • Paper is within the page limit (not counting references and appendix, unless specified otherwise)
  • Supplementary material is within the page/file-size limit
  • Paper is anonymized if the venue uses double-blind review:
    • Author names and affiliations removed
    • “In our previous work [X]” → “In prior work [X]”
    • GitHub links removed or anonymized (use Anonymous GitHub)
    • Acknowledgments section removed
    • No identifying metadata in PDF properties

Technical

  • PDF compiles without errors or warnings
  • PDF is below the file size limit (typically 10–50 MB)
  • All fonts are embedded (check with pdffonts paper.pdf)
  • All hyperlinks work (test every URL)
  • References are complete — no [?] or ?? placeholders
  • BibTeX entries are complete and formatted correctly
  • No “TODO” or “FIXME” comments remaining in the paper

Final Read-through

  • Read the paper aloud once — catches awkward phrasing and missing words
  • Have at least one person outside your immediate lab read the paper
  • Check the abstract matches the paper’s actual contributions
  • Check the conclusion matches the paper’s actual results

Phase 4: Submission Day

Submission System

  • Account is created on the submission system (CMT, HotCRP, OpenReview, etc.)
  • Paper is registered (often a separate step from submission with an abstract deadline)
  • Authors are listed in the correct order with correct affiliations
  • Keywords/topics are selected appropriately
  • Conflicts of interest are declared correctly
  • Supplementary materials uploaded in the correct format

Final Checks

  • Submit at least 2 hours before the deadline — systems crash under load at deadlines
  • Download the submitted PDF and verify it matches what you intended
  • Confirm submission receipt email
  • Note the paper ID / submission number for reference

Phase 5: Post-Submission

  • Upload preprint to arXiv (if embargo period allows)
  • Update Google Scholar profile
  • Share on Twitter/X with paper link and brief description
  • Archive submission code with DVC/Git tag: git tag submission-venue-year

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