# Icra Review Process > Use when explaining or strategizing around ICRA's review pipeline — the RAS Conference Editorial Board of Editors and Associate Editors, reviewer recruitment through PaperPlaza, the absence of an author rebuttal in the classic ICRA flow, the January accept/reject decision, and how this differs from RA-L's revise-capable journal review. - Skill: `thedixitjain/icra-review-process` (Agent Skill) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds add thedixitjain/icra-review-process` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/thedixitjain/icra-review-process/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: DevOps & Infra - Author: thedixitjain (https://skillmd.com/u/thedixitjain) - Updated: 2026-09-08 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/thedixitjain/icra-review-process --- # ICRA Review Process ICRA review is run not by ad-hoc program committees but by a standing RAS **Conference Editorial Board (CEB)** structure operating inside PaperPlaza. The mechanics differ enough from both journals and ML conferences that authors mis-model them — most consequentially around the rebuttal that never comes. ## The pipeline ```text Sep 15 PaperPlaza deadline │ ▼ Editor (area lead) assigns paper to an Associate Editor (AE) │ by keyword match from your chosen PaperPlaza topics ▼ Oct-Dec AE recruits 2-3 reviewers; reviews written on the standard │ RAS form (contribution, technical soundness, clarity, │ experimental validation, video comments) ▼ Dec-Jan AE writes a summary report reconciling the reviews and │ recommends; Editors + program committee calibrate across areas ▼ Jan 31 accept or reject — no conditional accepts, no shepherding, │ and in the classic ICRA flow NO author rebuttal phase ▼ Mar camera-ready with voluntary reviewer-driven revisions ``` Two structural notes. First, keyword choice at submission is not paperwork — it routes the manuscript to an Editor's area and thereby to the reviewer pool most or least sympathetic to it. Second, reviewer identity practice: reviewers are anonymous to authors, and from the 2026 cycle authors are anonymous to reviewers too (double-anonymous; before 2025 inclusive, single-blind). Policies are set per cycle — confirm on the current year-site. ## No rebuttal: consequences, not complaints The classic ICRA pipeline gives authors no reply channel between submission and decision (individual cycles have experimented; verify the current one). Plan for it: - **The paper must anticipate objections in advance** — the limitations paragraph and pre-answered comparisons (`icra-writing-style`) do the job a rebuttal does elsewhere. - **Misunderstandings are terminal.** If a reviewer misreads the method, no one corrects them before the AE summarizes. Ambiguity is therefore a first-order risk, worth spending page budget to eliminate. - **The video is your asynchronous rebuttal.** It answers "is this real / is it cherry-picked / how fast" before those objections are typed (`icra-supplementary`). - Reviews arrive *with* the decision, and for accepted papers they function as camera-ready guidance (`icra-author-response` covers using them well). ## What the review form rewards | Form dimension | What strong looks like at ICRA | |---|---| | Technical soundness | assumptions stated; math checkable; no hidden human-in-the-loop | | Experimental validation | evidence rung matches claims; trials, dispersion, failure analysis | | Novelty/contribution | mechanism-level delta over named prior systems | | Clarity | figure chain self-sufficient; task-first narrative | | Multimedia | uncut executions, labeled speeds, failure shown | Borderline papers typically die on validation ("promising but insufficient experimental support") rather than novelty — allocate effort accordingly. ## Where author leverage actually exists With no rebuttal, influence concentrates before upload: 1. **Keyword selection** — the only routing input you control; choose for the reviewer pool you want, within honesty. 2. **The video** — the one channel that reaches reviewers with evidence after the PDF freezes their reading order but before they form judgments. 3. **Ambiguity elimination** — every sentence a reviewer could misparse is a decision risk with no correction mechanism. 4. **The limitations paragraph** — converts predicted objections from "flaw found" to "flaw acknowledged," a materially different review sentence. ## Calibrating expectations - ICRA is large (thousands of submissions; Vienna 2026 drew 8,000+ attendees); historical acceptance rates have floated in the 40-45% band, far gentler than ML flagship venues but with high variance across areas. Treat any specific rate as unverified until the year's numbers are published. - Acceptance is to the program as a whole; presentation format (interactive/ poster session structure) is a program decision, not a quality tier ranking in the proceedings record. - Decisions are binary. "Reject with encouraging reviews" is the common fate of good-but-thin papers; the correct read is "fund one more experiment rung and resubmit" (IROS in March, RA-L any time). ## Contrast with RA-L review Authors choosing between routes (see `icra-topic-selection`) should model the review differences, not just the deadlines: - RA-L is journal review: an AE plus reviewers, a first decision targeted within ~3 months, and crucially a **revise-and-resubmit** outcome that lets authors answer reviewers with a response letter — the interaction ICRA lacks. - RA-L decisions bind publication in the journal; conference presentation is a separate transfer step afterward. - The reviewer pools overlap heavily; a paper rejected at ICRA and sent to RA-L unchanged may meet the same reviewer with the same objection — revise first. ## Reading a decision packet 1. Sort comments into: factual error (yours), misunderstanding (their reading, your ambiguity), scope demand (wants a different paper), and taste. 2. Reject case: fix the first two categories before any resubmission clock; a misunderstanding at ICRA predicts the same misunderstanding at IROS. 3. Accept case: triage which comments to honor in camera-ready given the 8-page-total final limit (`icra-camera-ready`). 4. Update your model: which claims drew fire predicts how to scope the next submission's evidence ladder. ## Output format ```text [Stage] pre-submission / under review / decision received [Pipeline model] AE area = , predicted reviewer pool concern: [No-rebuttal mitigation] top 3 objections pre-answered in draft: [Decision triage] factual / misunderstanding / scope / taste = [Next move] camera-ready plan | resubmission target + what changes ``` --- **Source:** [`brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills`](https://github.com/brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills) → `ICRA-Skills/skills/icra-review-process/SKILL.md`