[agents] 1st CFP: IJCAI2020 in Yokohama

[Satoshi Kurihara]

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and previously unpublished results on all aspects of artificial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.

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, ICCV 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.

Christian Bessiere
Program Chair of IJCAI-PRICAI 2020
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