# Ml Conference Paper Architect > ML conference paper formatting for NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, and AAAI — official style-file usage, anonymization and camera-ready toggles, page-limit accounting, natbib citations, standard paper skeleton, reproducibility checklists, appendix and supplementary rules, desk-reject checks. Use when writing, formatting, or submitting a machine-learning conference paper. - Skill: `ralvarezdev/ml-conference-paper-architect` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 4 files) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add ralvarezdev/ml-conference-paper-architect` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/ralvarezdev/ml-conference-paper-architect/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Finance & Business - Author: ralvarezdev (https://skillmd.com/u/ralvarezdev) - Updated: 2026-09-17 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/ralvarezdev/ml-conference-paper-architect --- # ML Conference Paper Architect Formatting and structural conventions for **NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, and AAAI** submissions. Sits on top of [latex-architect](../../languages/latex-architect/SKILL.md), which owns general LaTeX practice — build, preamble order, floats, math, semantic markup. This skill owns only what is venue-specific. Venue template sources and the classic-look preamble live in [assets/VENUE_TEMPLATES.md](assets/VENUE_TEMPLATES.md); worked skeletons in [RECIPES.md](RECIPES.md); pinned template years in [STACK.md](STACK.md). ## 1. The one rule that overrides everything **Read the current year's Call for Papers and author kit before applying anything below.** Every number in this skill — page limits, deadline structure, checklist requirements — is revised annually, sometimes substantially. This skill encodes the *shape* of the requirements and the failure modes; the CFP encodes the current values. Where the two disagree, the CFP wins, and the fix belongs in [STACK.md](STACK.md). Corollary: **never hand-copy a preamble from a previous paper.** Download the official style file for the target year. Reusing last year's `.sty` is the single most common cause of a paper that looks right locally and gets flagged by the venue's format checker. ## 2. Before drafting: confirm 1. **Venue and year** — determines the `.sty`, the page limit, and the checklist. 2. **Track** — main conference, datasets & benchmarks, workshop, or findings-style track. Limits and review criteria differ; workshop tracks are usually 4 pages and often *not* anonymous. 3. **Stage** — submission (anonymous), camera-ready (de-anonymized, +1 page at most venues), or preprint (arXiv). 4. **Whether code and data will be released** — this changes what the checklist and reproducibility statements can honestly claim, and it is not a question to answer at the deadline. ## 3. Venue matrix Verify each row against the current CFP — see [§1](#1-the-one-rule-that-overrides-everything). | | NeurIPS | ICML | ICLR | AAAI | |---|---|---|---|---| | Style file | `neurips_.sty` | `icml.sty` | `iclr_conference.sty` | `aaai.sty` | | Review | Double-blind | Double-blind | Double-blind (OpenReview, public) | Double-blind | | Main-text limit | 9 pages | 8 pages | 9 pages | 7 pages | | References | Unlimited, excluded | Excluded | Excluded | Counted separately (~2 pages) | | Camera-ready | +1 page | +1 page | +1 page | Fixed; copyright block required | | Final-mode toggle | `\usepackage[final]{neurips_}` | `\usepackage[accepted]{icml}` | `\iclrfinalcopy` | `\pdfinfo` block + copyright | | Preprint mode | `[preprint]` option | — | — | — | | Mandatory checklist | Yes, in-paper | Impact statement | Reproducibility statement | Reproducibility checklist | **AAAI is the outlier.** Its style file bans packages the others tolerate (`geometry`, `fullpage`, `authblk`, and historically `hyperref`), mandates Type 1 fonts and an embedded `\pdfinfo` block, and runs an automated format checker that rejects on violation. Read AAAI's author kit in full; do not assume NeurIPS habits transfer. ## 4. Anonymization Double-blind failures are desk rejects, not review-score penalties. The submission-mode style file handles author blocks automatically — everything else is on you: - **No author names, affiliations, emails, or acknowledgements** in submission mode. Acknowledgements go in a section you add at camera-ready. - **Cite your own prior work in the third person.** "Prior work [12] showed…", never "In our earlier work [12] we showed…" — the latter deanonymizes even with the citation intact. - **Anonymize links.** No GitHub URLs with your username, no personal-domain project pages. Use an anonymized repo host, and check the repo itself for names in the README, LICENSE, and commit history. - **Strip PDF metadata.** The compiled PDF carries author fields from your editor or OS. Verify with `pdfinfo main.pdf` before uploading. - **Check figure provenance** — plots exported from a notebook can embed a file path containing your name or institution. - **Know your venue's arXiv policy.** ICLR/OpenReview submissions are public; NeurIPS and ICML have specific rules on preprinting during the review window. This is a policy question, not a formatting one — read the CFP. ## 5. Page-limit accounting The limit applies to **main text**; what counts as main text is venue-defined. References are typically excluded and the appendix always is, but figures, tables, and the checklist usually are not. The failure mode is uniform across venues: papers that hit the limit by shrinking. **Every one of these is a rejection risk and some are explicit violations:** - Reducing font size, `\baselinestretch`, or margins from the style file's values. - Negative `\vspace` around floats, sections, or equations to claw back lines. - `\small`/`\footnotesize` on body text (captions and tables are fine, and are usually already set by the `.sty`). - Shrinking the reference list font or squeezing `\bibsep`. Format checkers detect all of these mechanically. **Cut content instead** — move derivations, extended results, and ablation details to the appendix, which is unlimited. If the paper does not fit, the paper is too long, not the template. ## 6. Structure The ML conference paper has a de-facto fixed skeleton. Deviating costs reviewer goodwill for no gain: 1. **Abstract** — problem, gap, what you did, headline result with a number. Under ~200 words. 2. **Introduction** — ending in an explicit contributions list. Reviewers look for this; make it a bulleted list of claims the paper actually substantiates. 3. **Related work** — position against the closest prior work. Either §2 or after the method, depending on whether the reader needs context to understand the approach. 4. **Method** — notation defined once, then the approach. A figure of the architecture or pipeline earns its space. 5. **Experiments** — setup (datasets, baselines, metrics, hyperparameters, compute, seeds), then results, then **ablations**. Missing ablations is the most common reviewer complaint. 6. **Limitations** — mandatory at NeurIPS, expected everywhere. Write it honestly; reviewers penalize an obviously sanitized limitations section harder than a real weakness. 7. **Conclusion** — short. No new claims. 8. **Broader impact / ethics** — per venue requirements. 9. **References**, then **Appendix**. Writing rules that matter more here than in general LaTeX: - **Every claim in the abstract and intro must map to a specific experiment.** Reviewers check this correspondence directly. - **Takeaway-led captions.** "Figure 3: \model outperforms all baselines beyond 10k steps" beats "Figure 3: Results". Reviewers read figures and captions before the body. - **Report variance.** Single-seed numbers with no error bars invite methodological objections regardless of the result. ## 7. Citations Venue templates ship `natbib` with a venue `.bst`. **Keep it** — do not convert to biblatex, which is the standing carve-out in [latex-architect §8](../../languages/latex-architect/SKILL.md#8-bibliography). - `\citep{x}` parenthetical, `\citet{x}` when the author is a sentence element. Mixing these up is visible and looks careless. - **Cite the published version, not the arXiv preprint**, when one exists. Bulk-exported `.bib` files default to the preprint. - **Brace-protect capitals**: `{B}ayesian`, `{ImageNet}`, `{GPT}`. Venue `.bst` files lowercase titles and will mangle these. - Fix the export's author lists — `and others` truncation and inconsistent name forms are the usual damage. ## 8. Reproducibility Every one of these venues now requires some form of reproducibility artifact, and the answers are checked against the paper body: - **Answer the checklist honestly.** "No" with a stated reason is accepted; "Yes" contradicted by the paper is worse than either. - **Report the full experimental setup**: hyperparameters, search ranges and selection method, hardware, wall-clock or GPU-hours, number of seeds, and the exact dataset splits. - **Compute cost is a required disclosure at several venues** and increasingly a review criterion. Estimate it rather than omitting it. - **Anonymized code at submission, permanent link at camera-ready.** A promise to release code later is weaker evidence than a working anonymous repo. ## 9. Appendix and supplementary - Appendix goes **after references**, introduced by `\appendix`, with sections numbered `A`, `B`, … and referenced from the main text via `\cref`. - Whether the appendix ships in the same PDF or a separate supplementary file is venue-specific. Check before restructuring. - **The main text must stand alone.** Reviewers are not obligated to read the appendix, so no load-bearing claim may depend on it. - Appendix content is unlimited but not free — a 40-page appendix signals a paper that was not edited. ## 10. Pre-submission checks Run all of these before uploading; the list in [RECIPES §4](RECIPES.md#4-pre-submission-checklist) is the executable version. - [ ] Official style file for the **correct year**, unmodified, in submission (not final) mode. - [ ] Page count within limit, with no spacing or font hacks. - [ ] No author names, affiliations, acknowledgements, or identifying links; PDF metadata stripped. - [ ] All figures legible at print size and in grayscale; no raster text. - [ ] Every citation resolves; no `?` marks in the compiled PDF. - [ ] Checklist / impact statement / limitations section present and consistent with the body. - [ ] Fonts embedded (`pdffonts main.pdf` shows no non-embedded entries) — AAAI enforces this mechanically. - [ ] Compiles from a clean checkout with `latexmk` and no manual steps. ## 11. Out of scope - **General LaTeX practice** (build, preamble, floats, math, cross-references) → [latex-architect](../../languages/latex-architect/SKILL.md) - **Journal and institutional formats** → [uru-scientific-paper-architect](../../personal/uru-scientific-paper-architect/SKILL.md), [uru-thesis-architect](../../personal/uru-thesis-architect/SKILL.md) - **Talk and poster design** → [demo-presentation-architect](../../personal/demo-presentation-architect/SKILL.md) - **Research content** — this skill formats and structures a paper; it does not generate claims, results, or citations. Never fabricate a number, a baseline, or a reference.