ACL, EMNLP and NAACL submission checklist

ACL, EMNLP and NAACL rules

• ☐Main text fits in 8 pages for review (9 for the camera-ready version)

  Measured on the compiled PDF up to the references. Over-length submissions can be desk-rejected.

• ☐The official ACL, EMNLP and NAACL style file is used, in submission (review) mode

  Submission mode keeps the author names hidden; the camera-ready option shows them.

• ☐Limitations is included

  ACL venues require a Limitations section (it does not count toward the page limit).

Anonymity (double-blind review)

• ☐No first-person references to your own prior work

  Write “Smith et al. (2024) showed…”, not “in our previous work”.

• ☐Code and model links are anonymized

  A github.com or huggingface.co link to your account reveals who you are; use an anonymous mirror.

• ☐No acknowledgments or \thanks footnotes

  Funding and affiliation notes identify the authors; add them back for the camera-ready version.

• ☐The PDF has no author metadata or email addresses

  hyperref’s pdfauthor and stray emails survive in the compiled file.

References

• ☐Every \cite key has a bibliography entry

  Missing keys print as [?] in the PDF.

• ☐Each arXiv ID and DOI points to the paper you meant

  Copied BibTeX often carries the ID of a different paper.

• ☐Every cited paper exists, with the right title and authors

  Each entry is looked up on arXiv, DBLP, Crossref and OpenAlex; AI-suggested references are the usual culprit.

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Missing items and LaTeX slips

• ☐Every \ref points to an existing \label

  Broken cross-references print as ?? in the PDF.

• ☐No leftover TODO, FIXME or highlighted text

  Reviewers notice; so do area chairs.

• ☐Every figure and table has a caption, a label and a mention in the text

  Unreferenced floats read as unfinished work.

• ☐No unescaped % after a number

  In LaTeX, 41% starts a comment and silently deletes the rest of the line.

• ☐No repeated words, a/an slips or mixed spellings

  Cheap to fix, and they shape a reviewer’s first impression.