Author Response Guidelines

Thank you for submitting your work to the CCN Proceedings track. In this document, we outline the Proceedings review and decision processes that are relevant to authors of submissions.

Timeline

Dates and deadlines specific to the CCN Proceedings track are:

Reviews Released: reviews-released\ Author Responses Due: author-response-due, 11:59 PM Anywhere on Earth\ Author-Reviewer Discussion: discussion-period\ Proceedings Decisions Released ():* proceedings-decisions

() Proceedings decisions are related to but not exactly the same as presentation format (poster) decisions at CCN 2025: accepted Proceedings papers will receive a poster; Proceedings submissions that are not accepted will go through another decision stage for the Extended Abstract track; all accepted Extended Abstracts will* receive a poster. For more details, see the CfP.

Release of reviews

Reviewers were instructed to submit reviews by reviews-due, AoE. This was followed by a 2-day period in which missing reviews were completed by emergency reviewers so that each Proceedings submission received at least 3 quality reviews. Reviews were released to authors on reviews-released.

Review content

Reviewers were asked to evaluate submissions according to their interest, soundness, and clarity, and to provide comments on their evaluations. The categorical evaluations had the following options:

Interest\ To what extent is this work relevant to CCN?\ Broad (interdisciplinary appeal across the communities at CCN)\ Disciplinary (significant within AI, cognitive science, or neuroscience)\ Specialized (primarily relevant to experts in a specific subfield)

Soundness\ Does the evidence support the claims? Are the right methods used?\ Strong (exhaustive evidence to supports claims; convergent evidence from multiple methodologies)\ Adequate (appropriate methodology; evidence consistent with claims)\ Needs improvement (lacks critical evidence; has methodological flaws that undermine conclusions)

Clarity\ Are the evidence and contributions clearly communicated? Are things detailed to facilitate reproducibility?\ Exceptional (understandable to a broad audience, reproducible, pedagogical)\ Adequate (understandable to an expert audience)\ Needs improvement (difficult to understand even for experts in the subfield)

You can see more in the CCN Proceedings reviewer guidelines.

Author response to reviews

Once reviews are released, you are invited to write an author response (AKA a “Rebuttal”) to each individual review. To do this, you can write a response under each official review by clicking the button “Rebuttal” (Figure 1) in the lower right corner of each review. The deadline for submitting these author responses is author-response-due. You must write an author response before this date to participate in any follow-up discussion during the author-reviewer discussion period that immediately follows.

Each of these text responses has a 2500 character limit. Please ensure your responses are productive and respectful of the reviewer’s opinions and time, and focus your response on critical concerns raised by the reviewers. You are not required to respond to every point in a review, and should focus on those that are critical for a reviewer’s evaluation (see “Review content” above).

All reviewers for each submission will be able to see these responses, so it is fine to point a reviewer to a response written for a different review. For example, if two reviewers ask the same question, you can answer it in the response to one reviewer, and then ask the other reviewer to find the answer there.

Author response revision of submission PDF

In addition to the response, authors are allowed, but not required, to submit a revised PDF based on reviewer comments. To do this, you can edit the submission PDF by clicking the button “Edit” then selecting “Author Response Revision” (Figure 2). Note, however, that you should not add new results, unless directly requested by a reviewer (e.g., minor additional statistical analyses). Revisions can be uploaded as soon as reviews are released. The deadline for revising the submission PDF is the same as the author responses, author-response-due.

The 8-page limit still applies to the main text at this stage. Significant violations (of more than a paragraph) of the 8-page main text limit in a revised PDF after author-response-due will result in a desk rejection. If a reviewer requested methodological details for reproducibility that are difficult to fit into the main text, you may add these details to the supplement, and add a pointer in the main text. It can be helpful for reviewers to understand your revisions if you color added and/or revised text in blue or another non-black color (though you should also make sure that reviewers know how to interpret this style by explaining this in your text response).

Author-reviewer discussion period

Reviewers are encouraged to respond to author responses immediately after author-response-due, AoE to facilitate timely interaction between authors and reviewers. An additional week, starting discussion-period, is exclusively reserved for author-reviewer discussion based on the author response. In this period, authors can make one more concise response to reviewer comments, but no longer update the paper PDF. The author-reviewer discussion closes on discussion-period.

This post-review discussion period is meant as a wrap-up to any discussion between the authors and the reviewers, and to give reviewers the option to update their reviews and assessments based on author responses. Authors and reviewers should abide by CCN’s Code of Conduct while engaging in the discussion process. Unprofessional or unethical behavior should be flagged to the AC via a private comment.

Meta-review and decision periods (internal)

Based on the reviews and the author rebuttals, ACs and SACs will write meta-reviews and recommend Proceedings paper rejection or acceptance, which will receive final review from the TPC and the PC. Decisions and meta-reviews will be released on proceedings-decisions.

Furthermore, a small subset of accepted papers will be invited to present a Contributed Talk, which will be announced in June. Please consult the CCN website for the latest Dates & Deadlines.

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. There is no need to submit a Extended Abstract version of your Proceedings submission to the Extended Abstracts track.

Anonymized reviews and discussion will be made public on OpenReview for accepted papers only.

Presenter policy

CCN 2025 maintains the historical policy that a given “Presenter” (the presenting author as identified on OpenReview) can present only a single contribution at CCN. 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. However, we do not allow multiple submissions from a single Presenter to the Extended Abstracts track.

Figure 1. Add Rebuttal

To start writing a text response to a review, use the “Rebuttal” button in the lower right corner of the corresponding review. When you click this, a box similar to the one above will appear, in which you will be able to provide your author response text.

Figure 2. Edit Submission

To revise the submission PDF during the author response period, use the “Edit” button at the top of the OpenReview forum page. The option “Author Response Revision” should be available via this list.

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.