NeurIPS and CVPR Tighten Author Policies
Top AI conferences like NeurIPS, CVPR, and ECCV are enforcing stricter authorship policies, risking desk-rejections for papers with inactive co-authors. The warning highlights the importance of all listed authors being actively involved and responsive during the submission and review process.
The stricter authorship policies at top AI conferences are a response to a growing concern in the research community about "ghost" or "gift" authorship, where individuals are listed as co-authors without making significant intellectual contributions. This practice dilutes the meaning of authorship and can be used to inflate publication records, a key metric for hiring in both academia and top industry labs. The new rules aim to ensure that every listed author has a verifiable and substantial role in the research. At NeurIPS 2025, the penalties for non-compliance have been made explicit and severe. If a reviewer fails to provide a timely and high-quality review, their own submitted papers with co-authors can be desk-rejected. This policy directly links the responsibility of authorship to the peer review process, creating a system of mutual accountability among all contributors to a paper. The move is designed to combat the issue of senior researchers or collaborators being added to papers for prestige or reciprocity without engaging in the critical work of peer review. For conferences like CVPR, the author list is now considered final after the submission deadline, and any changes are disallowed. Furthermore, all co-authors are required to have a complete and up-to-date profile on OpenReview, the platform used to manage submissions and reviewing. This seemingly administrative requirement is a mechanism to ensure that all authors are identifiable, contactable, and can be called upon to participate in the review process, preventing the inclusion of token co-authors who are not actively involved in the research community. These policies reflect a broader push for research integrity and reproducibility. By ensuring that all authors are actively engaged, conferences aim to improve the quality of submissions and the robustness of the peer review system. The underlying principle is that authorship entails not just credit for the work, but also responsibility for its content and its contribution to the scientific discourse. This aligns with the standards set by organizations like the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), which emphasize that authorship should be based on significant intellectual contribution.
