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ML Conference Appendices Growing Too Long?

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🤖Read original on Reddit r/MachineLearning
#conferences#page-limits#appendicesicmlneurips

💡Debate on ML paper appendices reshaping conference standards—key for submitters.

⚡ 30-Second TL;DR

What Changed

Appendices in top ML conferences like ICML and NeurIPS are expanding significantly

Why It Matters

This trend may overburden reviewers and push comprehensive work to journals, altering ML publication norms.

What To Do Next

Comment on the r/MachineLearning thread to share your appendix experiences.

Who should care:Researchers & Academics

Key Points

  • Appendices in top ML conferences like ICML and NeurIPS are expanding significantly
  • Reviewers push for extensive experiments that don't fit main 8-10 page limits
  • Debate on whether appendices should remain non-essential supplementary material

🧠 Deep Insight

AI-generated analysis for this event — not the original article.

🔑 Enhanced Key Takeaways

  • The 'appendix bloat' phenomenon is exacerbated by the 'reproducibility crisis' in AI, where reviewers increasingly mandate comprehensive ablation studies and hyperparameter sensitivity analyses that were previously considered optional.
  • Major conferences like NeurIPS have experimented with 'unlimited' appendix policies to encourage transparency, but this has inadvertently incentivized authors to move core proofs and critical architecture details out of the main paper to bypass strict page limits.
  • The academic community is actively debating a shift toward 'living papers' or modular submission formats, where the main paper serves as a summary and the appendix acts as a version-controlled, searchable repository of technical artifacts.

🔮 Future ImplicationsAI analysis grounded in cited sources

NeurIPS and ICML will mandate a strict 'core content' policy for appendices by 2027.
The current trend of burying critical proofs in appendices undermines the peer-review process, forcing organizers to enforce stricter separation between supplementary data and essential methodology.
AI conferences will transition to a multi-tier submission format.
To manage reviewer workload and paper length, conferences are likely to adopt a tiered system where 'short' papers are reviewed for novelty and 'long' papers are relegated to journal-style review cycles.

Timeline

2019-12
NeurIPS introduces a mandatory 'Reproducibility Checklist' to standardize supplementary material.
2021-05
ICML updates submission guidelines to allow unlimited appendix length, sparking initial concerns about 'appendix dumping'.
2023-06
OpenReview platform updates allow for better tracking of supplementary files, highlighting the growing volume of non-main-text content.
2025-09
NeurIPS organizers issue formal guidance requesting that critical proofs remain in the main body to assist reviewer comprehension.
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Original source: Reddit r/MachineLearning

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