Skills Soft Skills Preparing Camera-Ready Academic Submissions

Preparing Camera-Ready Academic Submissions

v20260724
aaai-camera-ready
A comprehensive guide for preparing accepted research papers for final submission to major conferences (e.g., AAAI Press). This process covers strict template adherence, deanonymization of author details, managing copyright transfer, optimizing page counts (including purchasing extra technical pages), and ensuring all source files (LaTeX/Word, figures, bibliography) are correctly formatted for professional publication.
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Overview

AAAI Camera Ready

Use this after AAAI acceptance. Reopen the current camera-ready email, publication/attendance page, author kit, copyright instructions, and proceedings source-file requirements.

Camera-ready checklist

  • Apply the current AAAI proceedings template and page rules. AAAI-26 accepted main-track papers used 7 proceedings pages plus pages solely for references and acknowledgments, with an option to purchase up to two additional technical-content pages.
  • Prepare source files as required: LaTeX or Word source, figures, bibliography, style files, and a high-resolution PDF.
  • Add author names, affiliations, acknowledgments, funding, and ethical disclosures where required.
  • Keep all references from the submitted paper unless superseded, and explain major citation updates conservatively.
  • Resolve reviewer-facing clarity issues without changing the scientific identity of the paper.
  • Complete copyright transfer and any AAAI Digital Library metadata.
  • Ensure at least one author registers and presents the paper, unless current exceptional-circumstance procedures apply.

AAAI Press production gotchas

AAAI Press compiles the proceedings from your source, so a PDF that looks fine locally can still be kicked back. The two-column AAAI style is strict about a few things that trip up authors arriving from single-column or NeurIPS-style submissions:

  • Do not alter margins, font sizes, or column gap; AAAI explicitly forbids style hacks to gain space. If you need room, purchase technical pages instead of shrinking the template.
  • Disable \pdfoutput overrides and embed all fonts; non-embedded fonts are a common rejection.
  • Move references and acknowledgments into the pages that do not count against the technical limit, per the current rule, rather than padding the main body.
  • Restore author block, funding, and ethics statements that were stripped for double-blind review.

Deanonymization sweep

Acceptance reverses the anonymity discipline: now identity must be present and correct, while stale blind-mode placeholders must go. Walk the paper, supplement, and code for "Anonymous", redacted citations to your own prior work, and \\if-blind toggles still set to blind.

Worked vignette

A knowledge-representation paper lands at 7.5 technical pages after restoring the author block and an ethics statement. Decision: it cannot shrink the template, so the author buys one extra technical page (within the current cap), keeps references on the non-counting pages, and re-runs the deanonymization sweep before uploading source to AAAI Press.

Release plan

  • Replace anonymous code/data links with durable public repositories or archives.
  • Publish a project page only if it is stable, accurate, and does not overclaim beyond the paper.
  • Preserve a copy of the submitted PDF, reviews, rebuttal, accepted PDF, source package, and artifact release for future journal extensions.

Output format

[Camera-ready state] Ready / Needs fixes / Blocked
[Proceedings files] <PDF/source/bib/figures/supplement>
[Page status] within limit / extra pages needed / over limit
[Publication obligations] copyright / registration / presentation / metadata
[Final fixes] <ordered list before upload>
Info
Category Soft Skills
Name aaai-camera-ready
Version v20260724
Size 3.53KB
Updated At 2026-07-28
Language