camera-ready-paper

name

camera-ready-paper

description

Use when preparing a paper's camera-ready or arXiv release — de-anonymizing an accepted submission, packaging an arXiv tarball, checking dual-submission safety against a concurrent venue (e.g. a paper accepted at a workshop that's also under review at NeurIPS/ICML), or flagging reviewer-requested post-review additions. Encodes a byte-identity discipline (the public version changes ONLY author/venue metadata, never content), a numbers-from-scripts integrity gate, and the arXiv mechanics that actually bite.

Camera-Ready / arXiv Release

A process for turning an accepted (often anonymized) paper into a public, de-anonymized camera-ready or arXiv post without silently changing the reviewed content, while staying safe with any concurrent submission at another venue.

This is a flexible skill: adapt the steps to the paper, but do NOT skip the safety check (§2), the byte-identity gate (§3), or the integrity gate (§5). Those are where mistakes become desk-rejections, retractions, or "we accidentally posted a different paper than the one that was reviewed."

0. Intake — gather before doing anything

Establish, in writing:

• Venue + archival status. Is the accepting venue archival (official proceedings, e.g. PMLR/ACL Anthology) or non-archival (workshop "reports", no proceedings)? This single fact drives the dual-submission analysis. If unstated, ask the organizers — don't infer from a tweet.
• Concurrent submissions. Is the same/related work under review elsewhere right now (another conference's main track)? Which venue, and what are its dates (decision date matters)?
• What was actually submitted. Which branch/commit/PDF is the accepted artifact? Repos accumulate divergent branches; the "obvious" branch is often not the one submitted. Verify (§3, step 1).
• Deadlines & template. Camera-ready deadline, page limit, the venue's LaTeX style.
• Where numbers/citations come from. Does the repo follow numbers-from-scripts / bib-from-IDs? Find the build scripts and tests.

1. Decide the target version with the author

If branches diverged, the authoritative content is what was reviewed/accepted, not the latest dev state. Surface every content difference between the candidate branches in both directions and let the author confirm which is authoritative. A distinctive, recent citation or a specific table is a fast oracle: "does your submitted PDF contain X?" pins down which branch was submitted. Get an explicit decision on any text that exists on one branch but not the accepted one (default: keep the accepted version exactly; re-adds are flagged content changes).

2. Dual-submission safety check (if anything is concurrently under review)

Fetch the concurrent venue's current policy (its handbook/CFP, not memory) and answer, with quotes:

• Is a non-archival workshop a "dual submission" / "prior work"? Most ML venues exempt non-archival workshops explicitly. Archival prior work is treated as prior work and can sink both papers if too incremental.
• Are non-anonymous arXiv preprints allowed during review? Usually yes ("the existence of non-anonymous preprints will not result in rejection"). Note any anonymity blackout window (NeurIPS historically has none; some CV venues do).
• Desk-reject triggers (style/page violations, de-anonymization of the submission, dual-submission non-compliance, missing checklist).

Then enforce these guardrails on every public artifact:

• No concurrent-venue strings anywhere in the public PDF or source — including LaTeX comments and PDF metadata. Grep for the venue name, "under review", and any anonymous-mirror IDs. A buried % main_neurips.tex comment is a leak.
• The submitted (anonymous) PDF stays anonymized — only the public copy is de-anonymized; they are separate artifacts.
• No archival resubmission of the same/longer work until the concurrent venue's decision date or withdrawal.
• Don't aggressively advertise the under-review paper; present/share it as the accepted venue's paper.

Produce an explicit go / no-go before proceeding.

3. Byte-identity gate — prove the merge/checkout preserved the accepted content

Goal: the public version's compiled paper is byte-identical to the accepted version, so the only later diffs are the de-anonymization edits (§4).

1. Snapshot the reference. sha256 the accepted PDF; record the accepted branch/commit.
2. Bring content onto the target branch (e.g. merge), then pin every compiled-paper input to the accepted version's exact bytes (git checkout <accepted> -- <paths>) for anything that diverged. Compiled inputs = the wrapper .tex, all \input'd sections, the style/.bbl/.bib, generated macro/table files, and figures.
3. Gate (must pass):
   • git diff --diff-filter=MD <accepted> -- <compiled inputs> is empty (no accepted file modified or missing).
   • A reproducible rebuild produces a PDF whose sha256 equals the accepted PDF. (If the repo pins SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH, this works; if bytes differ despite identical inputs, fall back to identical pdftotext output + identical inputs, and flag the toolchain difference rather than proceeding silently.)
4. Commit this as its own step so the byte-identical state is a checkpoint.

4. De-anonymize — change ONLY metadata, never content

Edit only the wrapper's author block, repo/URL, venue notice, and acknowledgements. Do not touch section/refs/macro files. Then prove it: git diff <byte-identity-commit> -- <wrapper> shows only those hunks, and a rendered diff vs the accepted PDF is limited to the author block, footer notice, URL, and the new acknowledgements heading (plus removal of reviewer line numbers, which is normal).

LaTeX-template gotchas:

• ICML/PMLR styles: without [accepted] the template forces "Anonymous Authors" regardless of \icmlauthor; [accepted] shows authors but adds the PMLR "Appearing in Proceedings… Copyright" banner — which is a false claim for a non-archival workshop. Look for a [preprint] option: it shows real authors with a neutral footer and no copyright banner. Override the preprint notice text if it injects \today (a pinned SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH will stamp a wrong date).
• Acknowledgements: if the author wants to write them, create an empty \section*{Acknowledgements} stub with a clear % TODO and point them to the exact file path — don't invent content.
• De-anon completeness scan: grep the built PDF + sources for leftover Anonymous, anon emails, and anonymous-mirror URLs. This verifies your own edit, not a venue requirement.

5. Integrity gate — citations + numbers-from-scripts

• Run the citation linter and the paper's macro/number tests.
• When byte-identity matters, do NOT let regeneration scripts overwrite the pinned files. Snapshot paper_macros.tex / refs.bib, run the tests, and if a regeneration drifts, restore the accepted version (byte-identity wins) and report the drift. (A clean run where regeneration reproduces identical bytes is the strong signal that the accepted numbers come from the committed data.)
• The rebuild tool should fail loudly on any undefined ref/cite.

6. arXiv packaging — use a tool, don't hand-roll a flattener

• Use arxiv-collector (uvx --from arxiv-collector arxiv-collector --no-strip-comments <main.tex>, run from the main .tex's directory). It drives latexmk's dependency tracking to gather exactly the used files and bundles the .bbl so arXiv needn't run BibTeX. Check latexmk isn't the broken 4.63b (--get-latexmk if so).
• Parent-directory assets are the catch. If the repo keeps figures/tables in directories above the paper folder, the main .tex uses ../figures, ../results, etc., and arxiv-collector stores them with ../ member paths that don't extract and aren't arXiv-valid (arXiv wants the main file at the top level, no parent-escaping paths). Fix with a minimal deterministic normalization — strip the leading ../ so assets sit under the bundle root, and sed the same ../ out of the bundled .tex. This is a path-normalization on the tool's output, not a from-scratch flattener.
• Verify the bundle like arXiv: unpack to a clean dir and compile with pdflatex ×3 (no bibtex), using the bundled .bbl. Assert: same page count as the de-anon PDF, 0 undefined refs/cites, 0 missing files, real authors render, and a sensitive-string scan (concurrent venue / anon mirror) comes back empty. Remove your test-compile artifacts (keep the .bbl) before tarring.
• arXiv form settings to hand the author: primary + cross-list categories; license (default the conservative arXiv non-exclusive — irrevocable per version — unless a funder mandates CC BY); a Comments field naming the accepted venue (no concurrent-venue string); endorsement note (established arXiv authors need none; first-timers since Jan 2026 need a personal endorser — institutional email alone no longer auto-endorses).

7. Reviewer-requested additions → a later arXiv version, clearly flagged

Adding reviewer-requested experiments to a camera-ready is standard in ML — but they weren't themselves peer-reviewed, so flag them:

• Post the accepted content as v1 (frozen, citable, byte-identical). Add the new work as v2 with a changelog in the arXiv Comments field and a footnote at each addition: "Added after review in response to reviewer feedback; not itself peer-reviewed."
• New numbers still go through the numbers-from-scripts pipeline (a changelog is prose — its numbers must be macro-sourced too).
• If the concurrent venue is still under review, v2 must stay concurrent-venue-string-free and must not become a separate archival submission.

Guardrails (always)

• Git identity on shared machines: confirm user.name AND user.email match the right person before every commit.
• Local commits only; never push without asking.
• Ask before squeezing content to fit a hard page limit — don't thrash on margins/font tweaks.
• Fail loud, never silently skip — a regeneration drift, a missing figure, or a leaked venue string should stop the line, not get continued past.

See references/policy-quick-reference.md for concrete NeurIPS-2026 / arXiv / ICML facts and source URLs gathered for this skill (verify against current pages — policies change yearly).