ICLR 2025 Townhall: What You Need to Know About This Year's Review Drama (and Dreams)

[root]

@Joserffrey Thanks for sharing more information to the community here. Have you or anyone you know tried to reach out directly to the general chair of ICLR 2025? Yisong Yue (http://www.yisongyue.com/)

[Joserffrey]

@RiskLimp

Now ICLR 2025 has concluded, and it appears that the organizers have wrapped up their efforts and are no longer responding to inquiries. This is really terrible, especially under the current reviewing circumstances. More importantly, they claimed this on the official website. A recognition would encourage more high-quality reviews in the future.

[Joserffrey]

@root

Thanks. We have contacted almost all program chairs via Twitter comments, direct messages, and @ them directly on posts, with as well as the general chair Yisong Yue you mentioned. However, we have not received any response so far. But we have not sent them emails yet. We only sent an email to the senior program chair, Carl Vondrick, for this issue, still no any response.

[Joanne]

Update Regarding ICLR 2025 Reviewer Acknowledgment Issue
We have noted concerns raised by @Joserffrey and confirmed by @root regarding the apparent oversight by the ICLR 2025 organizing committee in acknowledging reviewers as promised. We have officially contacted the organizers seeking clarification.
We’ll update this post once we receive an official reply. If you have further information or feedback, please comment below.

[Joserffrey]

@Joanne

First, thank you very much for your attention and support!

As mentioned above, ICLR 2025 officially promised to give special thanks to acknowledged reviewers at the opening ceremony and waive their registration fees on the website. Given that this promise has been ignored and now the conference is ended, neither of these two claims has been fulfilled.

In light of this situation, we have the following suggestion to convey to the organizers:
(i) We suggest the organizing committee respond this first and announce their nominated list of acknowledged reviewers both on the official website and social media accounts. This addresses the first point: since the in-person conference has already concluded, publicly recognizing the reviewers on social media accounts could potentially the best way to make amends.
(ii) Consider refunding the registration fees paid by the acknowledged reviewers case-by-case.

Thanks again for your great help. I have one more question: I just found this website recently and discovered it through someone sharing the ICLR 2025 townhall. I'm not sure which organization maintains this platform. Are you the administrators? This is a great find, and thank you for your contributions! I look forward to sharing and exchanging ideas with everyone here.

[root]

Thank you, @Joanne, for reaching out to the ICLR committee, much appreciated!

@Joserffrey, this non-profit community platform was recently created to support open discussion around peer review practices in the computer science research community — from broad systemic issues to debates on specific papers. @Joanne is currently helping coordinate and manage content on this platform.

We, along with many others in the CSPaper community, are more than happy to support important concerns like the one you’ve raised. Let’s continue using this space to foster transparency and constructive dialogue in research.

[Joserffrey]

Thanks @root for your reply! It's great that we can discuss both general issues in peer review and specific papers. Excited to be a member of the CSpaper community.

Let's wait and see what will happen with the ICLR committee. It's really surprising that this happened for such a top-tier conference. Actually, I noticed something strange two weeks before the conference. At that time, the “Reviewers” section under the “Organization” tab on the website was still empty, just like in previous years, waiting to be updated. However, during a subsequent update, this tab was completely removed, and all information about the ACs and reviewers was put to the “Program Committee” part. I can't help but suspect that they intentionally ignored the issue regarding the nomination of outstanding reviewers as well as the waiving of their registration fee...

[Joanne]

@root Thanks for the introduction.
Thank you @Joserffrey for sharing these additional observations—I didn't notice that change on the website myself, but what you describe does raise some valid concerns. It’s surprising and disappointing to see this happening at a conference of ICLR’s caliber.
Given the crucial role reviewers play, transparency around recognition is really important. If the committee doesn't properly address these issues, it sets a concerning precedent. I hope the organizers realize the importance of openly resolving this soon.
Thanks again for your keen observations and for highlighting these details. Let's continue to keep an eye on any further developments.

[Joserffrey]

Totally agree! I'm truly disappointed with how ICLR treated the reviewers this time. Hope they've already got the nominations sorted and just haven't announced them before the conference. If they have done nothing and are still ignoring it, that will be really messed up.

Thank you @Joanne once again for your help. Yes, Let's see what happens next.

[Joserffrey]

An update: We also sent emails to several Program Chairs yesterday, but after 24h have not received any replies yet.

[root]

@Joserffrey Thanks for the update! Let's see how does this evolves. I'd say “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, and ignoring people is a coward’s move.”

[Joserffrey]

@root Now even CVPR 2025 has released their outstanding reviewers and Lead Area Chairs list (https://cvpr.thecvf.com/Conferences/2025/ProgramCommittee). However, the ICLR 2025 committee still has not provided any reply about this. So disappointing.

[Joanne]

This kind of silence is frustrating. We might need to reach out to the committee through channels other than email.