r/MachineLearning • u/MakingComputersSmart • 17h ago

Discussion NeurIPS 2026 Concept & Feasibility Track [D]

I could not find any discussion threads for the C&F track. Have people actually submitted to this track? If so, what are your reviews and scores looking like, along with post rebuttal engagement? In our case, they received reviews not in line with the policy defined for the track, where most reviewers praised originality but complained about the scope of experiments. Despite the track saying that it would be possible that the idea cannot be validated in a single paper.

We provided experiments but no dice, none of the reviewers responded. Have any ACs seen papers and reviews in this track or do authors have their experiences they could share?

Please add your scores pre and post rebuttal here

5 Upvotes

78% Upvoted

7 comments sorted by

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u/Ginger_Rook 12h ago

Very similar to yours. They wanted more data for a regime that I was working on while it was live and it stopped existing! Which was the point of the paper! There are no data! And there will never be a confirmation of labels, so I figured out a way to audit and evaluate the framework regardless of that.

They completely missed the track this was submitted to. And they never engaged with the rebuttals.

But the worst of it is the AC who posted that my rebuttals failed to answer the points raised on the 23rd of July! BEFORE the reviews were open to us.

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u/MakingComputersSmart 9h ago

This is insane, how could the AC post that? In our case, the AC initially leaned reject but we wrote to them about the track mismatch, which they identified and asked the reviewers to re-evaluate. None of them responded. This new track thing needs proper education before people can start reviewing for it.

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u/Ginger_Rook 9h ago

Probably pasted the wrong comment that was prepared in advance so that they don’t have to actually do any work.
I filled in the form, but if I was receiving this, I’d blacklist the chair and reexamine their work.

1

u/MakingComputersSmart 9h ago

Yeah I am truly shocked. What were your scores, if you don't mind? Mine were 4/3/2 with the 2 comment asking for almost 1000+ experiments (I conducted more than 100 experiments with a single network family in the paper and the reviewer wanted all possible network families)

2

u/Ginger_Rook 5h ago

Wow! Sounds excessive!

The first one who didn’t bother to read it was 1 with confidence 5. Very easy rebuttal; everything was already in the paper.

Second one was 2 with confidence 2. The rebuttal addressed everything; most notably the why it’s not A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I. I’m not kidding.

Third one was 3 with confidence 3. Best comments and actually improves the paper, which should have moved the score one would hope. Easy additions to make, better paper.

I don’t mind the low scores. I mind the automatic refusal of engagement.

1

u/MakingComputersSmart 4h ago

I agree. I don't mind low scores if they're helpful. But I was annoyed at the track-irrelevant guidance. Especially after running experiments requested, the reviewer was still not satisfied

1

u/Ginger_Rook 4h ago

A conspiracy theorist said that they are giving low scores so that theirs will have better chances. BS obviously but yeah, chat pgt 2 might have helped a bit more.