| name | conference-research |
| description | Academic venue paper discovery — activate when you need to find papers accepted at specific conferences or journals (ACL, EMNLP, NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, MLSys, etc.), analyze venue acceptance preferences, or look up CFP requirements. |
| allowed-tools | ["web_search","web_fetch","read_file"] |
[SKILL: CONFERENCE RESEARCH PROTOCOL]
When researching papers from specific academic venues, standard arxiv_search with venue names WILL FAIL — conference names never appear in arXiv paper titles. Use the source-specific strategies below instead.
Source Priority (try in order)
1. NLP Venues: ACL / EMNLP / NAACL / EACL / COLING
ACL Anthology is the authoritative proceedings database for all ACL-family venues.
web_search: site:aclanthology.org "{topic}" {year}
web_search: site:aclanthology.org "{year}.{venue-code}-main"
Venue codes: acl-long, acl-short, emnlp-main, naacl-main, eacl-main
Examples:
- EMNLP 2024 long-document papers →
site:aclanthology.org "long document" 2024.emnlp-main
- ACL 2023 RAG papers →
site:aclanthology.org "retrieval augmented" 2023.acl-long
2. ML Venues: NeurIPS / ICLR / ICML
All three now use OpenReview. Do NOT use site:proceedings.mlr.press — it is not well-indexed by web search.
Do NOT quote the topic phrase; use bare keywords:
web_search: site:openreview.net {topic keywords} NeurIPS 2024
web_search: site:openreview.net {topic keywords} ICLR 2024
web_search: site:openreview.net {topic keywords} ICML 2024
Examples:
- NeurIPS 2024 long context papers →
site:openreview.net long context NeurIPS 2024
- ICLR 2025 RAG papers →
site:openreview.net retrieval augmented generation ICLR 2025
3. Systems Venues: MLSys / OSDI / SOSP / EuroSys
Use DBLP:
web_search: site:dblp.org {venue-abbrev} {year} {topic keywords}
If DBLP returns no results, fall back to a plain web search:
web_search: {venue} {year} {topic keywords} accepted papers
4. Cross-Venue Search via Semantic Scholar
web_search: site:semanticscholar.org "{topic}" venue:"{Conference Full Name}"
5. CFP and Acceptance Criteria
To find Call for Papers, review criteria, or scope descriptions:
web_search: "{Conference} {year} call for papers"
web_search: "{Conference} {year} submission guidelines"
web_search: "{Conference} {year} review criteria"
web_search: "{Conference} {year} acceptance rate topics"
Critical Anti-Patterns (NEVER do these)
- ❌
arxiv_search with ti:"ACL" or ti:"EMNLP" — conference names are not in arXiv paper titles
- ❌ Using
arxiv_search alone to find venue-specific accepted papers
- ❌ Asserting conference preferences based on openalex metadata alone without cross-checking content
- ❌ Treating ACL Findings / Workshop as equivalent to Main Conference acceptance
Analysis Workflow (after collecting papers)
- Note each paper's track (Main / Findings / Workshop) — do not conflate them
- Group papers by methodological approach, not just topic keyword
- Extract style signals from abstracts and method sections (theoretical vs empirical, task breadth vs depth)
- Require ≥ 3 papers as evidence before stating a venue preference pattern
- Cross-validate CFP scope text against the collected paper sample
