Call for Papers – IJCAI-PRICAI2020

IJCAI-PRICAI 2020 Call for Papers

The 29th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence and the 17th Pacific Rim International Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-PRICAI 2020) will be held in Yokohama, Japan, from July 11th to July 17th, 2020. For more than a half-century, IJCAI has remained the premier conference bringing together the international AI community to communicate the advances and achievements of artificial intelligence research. PRICAI was initiated in 1990 to create an artificial intelligence conference that would promote collaborative AI research in the Pacific Rim nations. This is the first time that IJCAI and PRICAI have been held jointly. With the current exploding interest in AI and its applications, the joint IJCAI-PRICAI conference will provide an exciting forum to present and hear about cutting-edge research in AI.

We invite the submission of technical papers for the main technical track of the conference. Submissions should be significant, original, and previously unpublished results on all aspects of artificial intelligence. We especially encourage papers on AI techniques for novel application domains.

Important Dates (main track):

Submission site opening: January 7, 2020
Abstract submission deadline: January 15, 2020 (11:59PM UTC-12)
Paper submission deadline: January 21, 2020 (11:59PM UTC-12)
Summary reject notification: February 21, 2020
Author response period: March 21-25, 2020
Paper notification: April 19, 2020

Submission site: https://cmt3.research.microsoft.com/IJCAI2020

Formatting guidelines, LaTeX styles, and Word template: https://www.ijcai.org/authors_kit

Submission Process

The paper title, author names, contact details, and a brief abstract must be submitted electronically through the IJCAI-PRICAI 2020 paper submission site (link above) by the abstract submission deadline. Full papers must be submitted through the same site by the paper submission deadline. At least one author of each accepted paper is required to attend the conference to present the work.

Note that CMT does not automatically send confirmation email to authors when they submit a paper.

Keywords

When submitting abstracts, authors will be required to choose up to three content area keywords. General categories should be used only if specific categories do not apply or do not accurately reflect the main contributions. The full list of keywords will be available on the submission site.

Paper Length and Format

Papers submitted to the main track must be formatted according to IJCAI-PRICAI 2020 guidelines (link above) and must be no longer than seven pages in total: six pages for the body of the paper (including all figures), plus up to one additional page with references that do not fit within the six body pages. (For accepted papers, up to two additional pages may be purchased at an additional cost per page, but note that at the time of submissions, papers are required to adhere to the 6+1 format above.) Authors are required to submit their electronic papers in PDF format. Over-length papers will be rejected without review. Submissions must be self-contained. IJCAI-PRICAI 2020 will not accept any supplementary materials other than those specified in the paragraph “Resubmissions of Substantially Improved Recent Submissions,” below.

Policy on Multiple Submissions

IJCAI-PRICAI 2020 will not accept any paper that, at the time of submission, is under review for, has already been published in, or has already been accepted for publication in, a journal or another venue with formally published proceedings. (As a guideline, authors should regard publications with a DOI, ISBN, or ISSN as formal publications. Questions about submission eligibility should be referred to the program chair in advance of the submission deadline.) Authors are also required not to submit their papers to venues with formal publication during the IJCAI-PRICAI 2020 review period. These restrictions do not apply to workshops and similar specialized presentations with a limited audience and without published proceedings. Submission is also permitted for papers that are available as a technical report (or similar, e.g., in arXiv). In this case, we suggest the authors not cite the report, so as to preserve anonymity. Multiple submission is grounds for immediate rejection of the submitted paper.

Confidentiality Policy

All submissions will be treated in strict confidence until the publication date.

Conflict of Interest Policy

All individuals involved in the IJCAI-PRICAI 2020 review process must adhere to the IJCAI conflict of interest policy. Details can be found at http://ijcai.org/.

Review Process

Reviewing for IJCAI-PRICAI 2020 is double blind (reviewers do not know the author’s identity or vice versa). The first page, on which the paper body begins, should include the title and abstract, but not names or affiliations of the authors. Acknowledgments of funding or assistance should also be omitted. Submissions should not contain pointers to supplemental material on the web. When referring to one’s own work, use the third person, rather than the first person. For example, say “Previously, Bessiere and desJardins [7] have shown that…”, rather than “In our previous work [7] we have shown that…”. All identifying information can be added back to the final camera-ready version of accepted papers.

Selection criteria include originality of ideas, correctness, clarity, significance of results, and quality of presentation. Each submission will first be evaluated by Senior Program Committee members (SPCs). If the SPCs in charge of the submission believe that the paper has no chance of being accepted, they will inform the Area Chair (AC). If the AC concurs with this assessment, then the paper will be rejected without entering the standard reviewing process (summary reject). Papers passing this step will go through a full reviewing process by multiple reviewers. This process will include the opportunity for authors to point out errors in the reviews (response). Author responses will be limited to clear factual errors in the reviews, and are not intended to create a dialogue between reviewers and authors. By submitting a paper, authors acknowledge that they are aware of the possibility of receiving a summary rejection notification within one month after submission without any written review. Authors also accept that all decisions of the program committee (i.e., summary reject, standard reject, or accept) will be final and cannot be appealed.

Submission Restrictions

IJCAI-PRICAI 2020 is enforcing a strict submission limit. Each individual author is limited to no more than 6 submissions to IJCAI-PRICAI 2020. The list of authors provided at submission time is final. Authors may not be added to, or removed from, papers following submission. (Author ordering may still be changed.) Finally, for each submitted paper to IJCAI-PRICAI 2020 the set of authors commit themselves to review up to three submissions to IJCAI-PRICAI 2020, if asked to. (For example, authors X and Y who submit two papers together could be asked to review up to six papers.) This rule does not apply to papers for which at least one of the authors is already a PC member, an SPC member, or an AC of IJCAI-PRICAI 2020.

Resubmissions of Substantially Improved Recent Submissions

Authors of papers that have been rejected from AAAI 2020, ECAI 2020, AAMAS 2020, or ICAPS 2020 are permitted to resubmit substantially improved versions to IJCAI-PRICAI 2020. In this case, authors must declare the resubmission by including a cover letter with their submission. The cover letter should summarize the main reasons for rejection and should describe the changes the authors have made to address the reviewers’ comments. The cover letter should be inserted at the beginning of the submitted PDF, along with the previous reviews and previous anonymized rejected submission, before the 6+1 pages of the paper. Such resubmissions must contain, in a single PDF file:

– the cover letter, headed by the title of the rejected paper, the tracking number (if any), and the name of the conference to which this paper was submitted,
– the full reviews from the rejected conference,
– the anonymized version of the rejected paper, and
– the new submission.

A paper rejected from these conferences and omitting to declare resubmission will be directly rejected without further review.

Note that IJCAI-PRICAI 2020 is a joint conference held under the IJCAI rules. The papers published there will be solely IJCAI publications with IJCAI as copyright holder. This applies to all main conference contributions regardless of the track.

Frequently Asked Questions

Please check Frequently Asked Questions page.

As in previous years, the very best papers will be proposed for ‘fast-track’ reviewing for publication either in Artificial Intelligence or in JAIR. New this year, the same ‘fast-track’ process will be proposed for publication in JAAMAS to very good papers on Agents.

IJCAI Accepted Papers or Papers under Full Review on Arxiv/other Online Sources

1. Authors of fully reviewed and accepted IJCAI papers are NOT allowed to upload the final (camera ready) version of their paper onto Arxiv, their personal webpages, institutional repositories or any other online sources BEFORE official publication of IJCAI Proceedings on IJCAI.org!

2. Authors of original papers under reviewing are NOT allowed to upload the original contribution under reviewing BEFORE written author notification! If such a paper was REJECTED, authors are allowed to upload it immediately. If such a paper was ACCEPTED, see 1

Christian Bessiere
Program Chair of IJCAI-PRICAI 2020