Submission guidelines

Submission process

Submissions to the Extended Abstract track consist of a 2-page PDF plus associated metadata submitted via the OpenReview platform. Only a single Extended Abstract may be submitted per Presenter.

Each submission requires at least one author to register as a Reciprocal Reviewer. This designated Reciprocal Reviewer must possess appropriate expertise in the field. The manuscript will not be considered for a Contributed Talk if the Reciprocal Reviewer fails to fulfill their reviewing responsibilities with due diligence.

Reviewers will be asked during review how certain they are of their judgment, and their level of expertise in the particular subfield of this paper.

Abstracts undergo light peer review. The review procedure will be comparable to earlier CCNs, but the number of reviewers per paper will be reduced from previous years. We expect that all submissions that are within scope and meet scientific standards will be accepted for posters, if submissions are within capacity. (We have 800 poster slots.) The reviews of Extended Abstracts will be used to select Contributed Talks.

Accepted Extended Abstracts are presented as posters, may be selected for a Contributed Talk, do not receive a DOI assignment, and have reviews that are not made public. Rejected Extended Abstracts will not be made publicly visible.

This track largely maintains CCN's established approach to scientific communication.

Formatting requirements

The text, tables and figures of a CCN Extended Abstract submission can be no longer than 2 pages, excluding references.

Abstract

The abstract should not exceed 300 words. CCN has an interdisciplinary audience. Hence a good abstract should (a) give context about what the problem is and why it matters (b) give the contents and explain what was done and what was found (c) give a clear conclusion including what we learned and how it changes the way we think about the universe.

Templates

You must use one of the official CCN 2025 templates listed below. Use of any other template is not permitted and submissions in violation of this requirement will be desk-rejected. Please use the anonymized template for your initial submission.

LaTeX template: CCN 2025 2-Page Abstract Template

Google Docs / Microsoft Word templates:

• Anonymized template

• De-anonymized template

Double-blind review

CCN's reviewing process is double-blind, and it is the authors' responsibility to anonymize their submissions. Do not include any identifying information, such as author names, affiliations, or acknowledgments, in the abstract, main text, figures, or metadata. When citing your own work, ensure anonymity to maintain double-blind review standards (e.g., write "In previous work by Author et al. [1]…" instead of "In our previous work [1]..."). If citing a non-anonymous preprint (e.g., from arXiv, social media, or other websites), use anonymized phrasing (e.g., "Author et al. [1] concurrently demonstrate…"). Reviewers are instructed not to actively seek out such preprints, but their discovery does not constitute a conflict of interest. Alternatively, authors may choose not to cite their own non-anonymous preprints, such as those on arXiv. However, prior publications on related topics must be appropriately anonymized when cited.

We encourage including links to code and artifacts in the spirit of open science, but please ensure that the linked material is anonymized; e.g. create a dedicated account to host your material rather than the account of one of the authors. Reviewers are not required to review linked material.

Reciprocal reviewer policy

One author from each submission will be added to the pool of eligible reviewers (so that there are at least as many eligible reviewers as submissions). Any reviewer will review at most 4-5 papers.

Authors in this category that fail to finish reviews by the author response stage will not be considered for a Contributed Talk.

Authors are exempt from the reviewing requirement if they are serving as an AC, an SAC, or an CCN 2025 Organizing Committee member.

Use of large language models

The use of LLMs is allowed as a general-purpose assist tool. Authors and reviewers take full responsibility for the content written under their name, including any content generated by LLMs and any content that could be construed as plagiarism or scientific misconduct (e.g., fabrication of facts). LLMs are not eligible for authorship.

Dual submission policy

Submissions that are identical (or substantially similar) to versions that have been previously published, accepted for publication, are not allowed and violate our dual submission policy. Further, for the eight-page Proceedings track, this also applies to works that have been submitted in parallel to this or other conferences or journals. Such parallel submission will however be considered for the two-page Extended Abstracts track.

However, papers that cite previous related work by the authors and papers that have appeared on non-peer reviewed websites (like arXiv) or that have been presented at workshops (i.e., venues that do not have publication proceedings) do not violate the policy.

Frequently asked questions

I can no longer attend CCN 2025. Can my co-author present my poster?

Please reach out to the Technical Programme Committee (tpc@ccneuro.org) to request to change the "Presenter" to your co-author on your submission. Presenters are identified via submission metadata on OpenReview.

Please note that Presenters need to be unique across both tracks at CCN 2025 (i.e., an individual can be listed as Presenter on no more than one Proceedings paper or Extended Abstract). Each Presenter must pay for a registration at CCN 2025.

We acknowledge that things come up: In the event that the Presenter can't attend CCN 2025 in person, we won't withdraw the work and a co-author can put up the poster. However, the Presenter must stay registered.

I can no longer attend CCN 2025. Can my co-author present my talk?

Talks selections are determined based on submissions and their Presenters jointly. As such, we won't be able to transfer a talk to a different Presenter, unlike with a poster (see the above question).

What is the timezone for the deadlines?

"Anywhere on Earth" or AoE (UTC-12). This is the last timezone on Earth, so the deadline is the end of the specified date no matter where you are in the world. For most timezones, the deadline will be several hours after your local midnight.

How should I format the anonymized author block?

Please use the anonymized title-author block included in the templates. Do not duplicate this block (e.g., according to the number of anonymized authors of the manuscript). In particular, each anonymized submission to either CCN track should have a similar-length title-author block (modulo a single- or double-line title).

Can we have shared first or last authorship?

Yes. You still must choose a fixed ordering of authors in the submission form.

Can I include keywords?

These are not necessary. We match reviewers and categorize submissions according to your full-text abstract.

Can I include acknowledgments?

In the post-decision, "camera-ready" version, yes. Please omit this from the anonymized submission to be reviewed. If acknowledgments are inadvertently included in the anonymized submission, we may have to desk-reject it for failure to meet the double-blind reviewing requirements of CCN 2025.

Can I link to my code?

Yes, we encourage code submissions as evidence of reproducibility. However, note that a code repository takes extra effort to anonymize, and we will desk-reject submissions that accidentally de-anonymize their authors via a linked code repository with identifying information.

We recommend Anonymous GitHub as a service that helps to anonymize a GitHub-hosted code repository, but we allow links to any hosting service as long as they maintain anonymity. We suggest including a link to the anonymous repository in a footnote in the PDF.

Please remember to avoid naming the repository or the exact package name if it is already publicly available. You can add the name and repository URL back in during the post-decision / camera-ready phase.

How should I format equations?

We don't prescribe a particular format. The APA standard is OK, for example.

Can I preprint the manuscript that I plan to submit to CCN?

Papers to both tracks must be submitted fully anonymized. Authors may disseminate their work publicly under their names (e.g., on a preprint server), but are asked to refrain from publicizing (e.g., on social media) work under review at CCN until CCN decisions are released for all tracks (all-decisions) to prevent accidental de-anonymization during the review process.

I and my co-authors can no longer attend CCN 2025. How can I withdraw my poster?

Please use the "Withdrawal" function on the OpenReview page for your submission.

Do I and all my co-authors need an OpenReview account to submit an Extended Abstract?

OpenReview accounts are required for: the individual making the submission, the Reciprocal Reviewer(s) identified on the submission, and the Presenter identified on the submission. Other co-authors do not need an OpenReview account; you can simply input their name and email.

To sign up for an OpenReview account, follow the instructions at Signing up for OpenReview. If your profile is not immediately activated (because OpenReview does not recognize the institution corresponding to your email domain), please follow OpenReview's instructions at Expediting Profile Activation.

Can I include supplementary material?

No; the Extended Abstracts track will not allow supplementary material of any kind.

Do references count towards the 2-page limit?

No.

Can I submit my manuscript to another venue or submit a previously

published manuscript?

The Extended Abstracts track does not allow the submission of manuscripts that have been published elsewhere. The Extended Abstracts track does however allow manuscripts that are under review elsewhere ("concurrent" or "dual" submissions), unlike the Proceedings track. Accepted Extended Abstracts will not receive a DOI assignment this year.

Should I submit my Proceedings submission to the Extended Abstracts track?

There is no need to submit a Extended Abstract version of your Proceedings submission to the Extended Abstracts track. Authors of Proceedings submissions that are not accepted will be invited to convert their Proceedings submission to an Extended Abstract submission. Instructions for this will be provided at a later stage.

Can I make multiple Extended Abstract submissions?

CCN 2025 maintains the historical policy that a given presenter can present only a single contribution at CCN. As such, you can make only one submission as the "Presenter" (the presenting author as identified on OpenReview) to the Extended Abstracts track. We will desk-reject submissions in violation of this requirement between ea-desk-rejection-period. You can participate in any number of submissions for which you are an author but not the Presenter.

Can I make an Extended Abstract submission if I have already made a

Proceedings submission?

Yes.

Since CCN 2025 has two tracks with separate timelines, we allow Presenters to submit a contribution to each track. If both contributions are accepted for presentation at CCN 2025 (*), the Presenter will be asked to select one of their contributions for presentation and withdraw the other. This selection must be made between presenter-selection-period, after decisions are announced for all tracks.

(*) This can occur if a Presenter has both a Proceedings paper and an Extended Abstract accepted, or a Presenter's Proceedings paper is invited to the Extended Abstract track after they have submitted a contribution directly to the Extended Abstracts track. In these cases, the Presenter can choose which contribution to present, or identify an alternative Presenter for one of the works.

However, we do not allow multiple submissions from a single Presenter to the Extended Abstracts track.

Will my extended abstract be copyrighted?

By submitting your abstract to CCN 2025, you agree to have the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Deed License applied to your work. Under this license, you as the author agree that anyone can copy, distribute, or reuse your article in whole or part for any purpose, for free, as long as the author and original source are properly cited. This facilitates freedom of re-use and ensures that content can be mined without restriction.

CCN places no restrictions on future reuse or publication of content contained within a CCN paper.

I was told that my submission has formatting issues and won't be

reviewed. Can I revise them and still enter review for a Contributed Talk?

Unfortunately we have already started the technical process of starting the review process so won't be able to wait for revisions. Please wait until the camera-ready phase in late May to submit your corrected manuscript for publication. Further instructions for how to do this will follow.

Contact Info

If you encounter a situation that you are unable to resolve on your own, please contact the Technical Program Committee (TPC) at tpc@ccneuro.org.

If the issue is related to OpenReview technical issues, email the OpenReview support team directly at info@openreview.net.