[⚠️ Heads‑Up] NeurIPS 2025 Responsible‑Reviewing Rules Go Live—Two Hard Measures, That Decide Whether You’ll See Your Reviews and Whether Your Paper Gets Accepted
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Tired of late or half‑baked reviews?
NeurIPS 2025 is done relying on goodwill—authors and reviewers are now locked together by design. To protect review quality and timeliness, the Program Chairs just unveiled the Responsible Reviewing Initiative with two concrete, enforceable rules.
️ The Two New RulesMechanism When It Triggers What Happens to You 1 Reviews Withholding Mechanism (review‑for‑review reciprocity) You are both an author and a reviewer but miss your review deadline All authors on your paper lose access to their reviews until you finish your assignments (latest ≈ 2 days before rebuttal closes). Severe delays can cost up to 5 days of rebuttal time 2 Desk Rejection Sanction (low‑quality review → own paper rejected) You submit a placeholder or low‑effort review—even if on time AC/SAC flag it → PC & D&B Chairs verify → your own submission can be desk‑rejected during meta‑review, skipping rebuttal entirely 
What this means for authors- Poor or late reviewing now hits your own paper first.
- Choose recommended reviewers wisely; if they slack, you’re collateral damage.
- Fairer, faster feedback - NeurIPS expects a higher baseline of review quality across the board.
Remind your co‑authors: before submitting to NeurIPS 2025, be ready to be a responsible reviewer!
Source: “Responsible Reviewing Initiative for NeurIPS 2025”.
The two measures—Reviews Withholding Mechanism and Desk Rejection Sanction—are explicitly stated in the official announcement. -
As reviewers, I hope we can all do our best this year. As an author, I've noticed that there are some PhD students serving as Area Chairs, and I don't think they are qualified. Thus, we should all be mentally prepared for the worst at NeurIPS 2025.
