What’s Next on the Position Paper Track

We are excited to be running a Position Paper Track for the first time in NeurIPS history. This track gives our community an important forum for raising and discussing essential topics in machine learning within and around our community of experts.

This also means that the Position Paper Track operates a little differently from the Technical Research Track, and we wanted to take a moment to elaborate on some of the differences that we are testing with the Position Paper Track this year! 

The biggest difference between the position papers and the other tracks is that we will not be having a traditional rebuttal period this year. Instead, we will have a private opportunity for authors to flag concerns with the integrity of any reviews received, but we are asking that discussion of the substance of papers take place in other community-facing forums. We are currently working to create these spaces. This is in an effort to encourage public discussion around the topics tackled in the papers. 

Rebuttals are usually used to clarify some point of misunderstanding the authors feel may exist in a particular review. Generally, this is around the details of the experiment being conducted. As in position papers, we are not evaluating experiments, but trying to create an open discussion around the points being posed. Rather than using private review dialogues, we wanted to encourage any back and forth to take place in public either for instance in OpenReview or in other fora of the authors’ choosing.  

We are dedicated to a fair and equitable review process. Authors will have the opportunity to voice any concerns they have about the quality of the reviews they received through a survey that will become open to them through Open Review after reviews are sent out to authors. 

This is part of a larger effort to stimulate conversation in the community through the position paper track. Stay tuned for more on our other efforts. We look forward to continuing to innovate on how papers will be presented to promote broader community dialogue. 

As a reminder, this is the timeline for the Position Paper Track:. 

  • Assign ACs papers July 2nd
  • Assign papers to Reviewers July 3rd
  • Reviewer & AC cohort conversation: August 8th–August 28th, 2025
  • Surveys become available to authors: Week of August 10th 
  • Deadline for meta reviews: August 28th, 2025
  • Author notification: Sept 18, 2025

We want to thank everyone for participating in the first ever Position Paper Track at NeurIPS!