icra-review-process

ICRA Review Process

ICRA review is run not by ad-hoc program committees but by a standing RAS Conference Editorial Board (CEB) structure operating inside PaperPlaza. The mechanics differ enough from both journals and ML conferences that authors mis-model them — most consequentially around the rebuttal that never comes.

The pipeline

Sep 15   PaperPlaza deadline
   │
   ▼     Editor (area lead) assigns paper to an Associate Editor (AE)
   │     by keyword match from your chosen PaperPlaza topics
   ▼
Oct-Dec  AE recruits 2-3 reviewers; reviews written on the standard
   │     RAS form (contribution, technical soundness, clarity,
   │     experimental validation, video comments)
   ▼
Dec-Jan  AE writes a summary report reconciling the reviews and
   │     recommends; Editors + program committee calibrate across areas
   ▼
Jan 31   accept or reject — no conditional accepts, no shepherding,
   │     and in the classic ICRA flow NO author rebuttal phase
   ▼
Mar      camera-ready with voluntary reviewer-driven revisions

Two structural notes. First, keyword choice at submission is not paperwork — it routes the manuscript to an Editor's area and thereby to the reviewer pool most or least sympathetic to it. Second, reviewer identity practice: reviewers are anonymous to authors, and from the 2026 cycle authors are anonymous to reviewers too (double-anonymous; before 2025 inclusive, single-blind). Policies are set per cycle — confirm on the current year-site.

No rebuttal: consequences, not complaints

The classic ICRA pipeline gives authors no reply channel between submission and decision (individual cycles have experimented; verify the current one). Plan for it:

• The paper must anticipate objections in advance — the limitations paragraph and pre-answered comparisons (icra-writing-style) do the job a rebuttal does elsewhere.
• Misunderstandings are terminal. If a reviewer misreads the method, no one corrects them before the AE summarizes. Ambiguity is therefore a first-order risk, worth spending page budget to eliminate.
• The video is your asynchronous rebuttal. It answers "is this real / is it cherry-picked / how fast" before those objections are typed (icra-supplementary).
• Reviews arrive with the decision, and for accepted papers they function as camera-ready guidance (icra-author-response covers using them well).

What the review form rewards

Borderline papers typically die on validation ("promising but insufficient experimental support") rather than novelty — allocate effort accordingly.

Where author leverage actually exists

With no rebuttal, influence concentrates before upload:

1. Keyword selection — the only routing input you control; choose for the reviewer pool you want, within honesty.
2. The video — the one channel that reaches reviewers with evidence after the PDF freezes their reading order but before they form judgments.
3. Ambiguity elimination — every sentence a reviewer could misparse is a decision risk with no correction mechanism.
4. The limitations paragraph — converts predicted objections from "flaw found" to "flaw acknowledged," a materially different review sentence.

Calibrating expectations

• ICRA is large (thousands of submissions; Vienna 2026 drew 8,000+ attendees); historical acceptance rates have floated in the 40-45% band, far gentler than ML flagship venues but with high variance across areas. Treat any specific rate as unverified until the year's numbers are published.
• Acceptance is to the program as a whole; presentation format (interactive/ poster session structure) is a program decision, not a quality tier ranking in the proceedings record.
• Decisions are binary. "Reject with encouraging reviews" is the common fate of good-but-thin papers; the correct read is "fund one more experiment rung and resubmit" (IROS in March, RA-L any time).

Contrast with RA-L review

Authors choosing between routes (see icra-topic-selection) should model the review differences, not just the deadlines:

• RA-L is journal review: an AE plus reviewers, a first decision targeted within ~3 months, and crucially a revise-and-resubmit outcome that lets authors answer reviewers with a response letter — the interaction ICRA lacks.
• RA-L decisions bind publication in the journal; conference presentation is a separate transfer step afterward.
• The reviewer pools overlap heavily; a paper rejected at ICRA and sent to RA-L unchanged may meet the same reviewer with the same objection — revise first.

Reading a decision packet

1. Sort comments into: factual error (yours), misunderstanding (their reading, your ambiguity), scope demand (wants a different paper), and taste.
2. Reject case: fix the first two categories before any resubmission clock; a misunderstanding at ICRA predicts the same misunderstanding at IROS.
3. Accept case: triage which comments to honor in camera-ready given the 8-page-total final limit (icra-camera-ready).
4. Update your model: which claims drew fire predicts how to scope the next submission's evidence ladder.

Output format

[Stage] pre-submission / under review / decision received
[Pipeline model] AE area = <keyword>, predicted reviewer pool concern: <one line>
[No-rebuttal mitigation] top 3 objections pre-answered in draft: <list>
[Decision triage] factual / misunderstanding / scope / taste = <counts>
[Next move] camera-ready plan | resubmission target + what changes