Scope

The Proceedings of ILIAD publishes theoretical research on AI alignment, especially conceptual and mathematically abstract work that is devoted to long-term hard problems. We focus especially on research that would be considered outside the scope of other ML and CS conferences, and that may not be supported by industry labs.

Research on AI governance, deployment, evaluations, and societal impact are generally out of scope for Proceedings, although we will consider interdisciplinary work.  We strongly encourage authors to contact the editors with any questions.

Submissions

In association with this year’s conference ODYSSEY, submissions to the second issue of Proceedings of ILIAD are now open here. The deadline for submissions is end of day June 25, 2025 (Anywhere on Earth). We will consider late submissions on a case-by-case basis.

If you would like to submit a manuscript, make sure to apply to the conference because only accepted attendees may publish in the Proceedings. All submissions are automatically considered for giving a featured talk at ODYSSEY.

Provisional acceptance decisions (contingent on revisions) will be made on or around August 20th. Provisionally accepted manuscripts will be posted to website before the conference starts. Manuscript revisions will be finalized in September or October for publication.

Requirements

Submitted manuscripts must be licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0, which allows the text to be reused and adapted by anyone so long as proper attribution is given.

Manuscripts are submitted and reviewed in PDF format, and will be publicly available online while under review. Accepted manuscript will be converted to a standardized format prior to publication.

Prior- and post-publication is allowed. That is, authors can release or publish the work elsewhere however they want, both before they submit and after review is completed. However, to avoid wasting reviewer time, we ask authors to tell us where a work is already published and to not submit it to other journals concurrently.

Authors are encouraged to suggest reviewers and even to advertise (e.g., on social media) that their work is under review so that other interested researchers may self-nominate as reviewers (see below). The list of submitted manuscripts will be available here after the submission deadline.

Notice to authors without an email from a research institution: We use OpenReview.net and new author profiles on that platform can (sometimes) take up to two weeks to be approved without an institutional email. If you are considering submitting, please sign up for a profile there well before the submission deadline to avoid unnecessary delays.

Dual abstracts

For the forthcoming issue of Proceedings, each published paper will appear with a traditional abstract written by the authors alongside a “reviewer abstract” written by one or more of the reviewers and approved by the authors. Any of the reviewers may choose to sign the reviewer abstract with their name or a reasonable pseudonym. Like the manuscript, the reviewer manuscript will be released under a CC-BY 4.0 license.

The reviewer abstract is not intended to perfunctorily summarize the paper nor to simply issue a final assessment. Rather, it aims to be the abstract a potential reader would most want to read before reading the full paper. In particular, the reviewer abstract should (as appropriate) contain caveats, strengths, weaknesses, implications, and relationship to prior art. It should distill the insights generated by the review process, and should help a potential reader decide — on the paper’s merits — if it’s worth reading.

Review Process

We encourage outside researchers to view the posted manuscripts under consideration and nominate themselves or others as reviewers by contacting the editors. Self-nominating reviewers may optionally send in comments or a full review on the manuscript for consideration by the editors.

OpenReview is used for the review process:

• During the review, author and editor names are visible while reviewers are anonymous.

• In lieu of a traditional "summary" first paragraph of their report, we encourage reviewers to draft a reviewer abstract. The rest of the report is conventional, including criticisms and requested changes addressed directly to the authors, as appropriate.

• After submitting their report, reviewers will see other reviewer's reports on the same manuscript along with the author's responses. The back-and-forth discussion will be kept private between reviewers, authors, and editors to incentivize honest and constructive discussion.

• If a manuscript is accepted, one reviewer will be asked by the editor to write the reviewer abstract, incorporating insight and explicit text from any of the reviews.

• Authors can request changes to the reviewer abstract, but the reviewer and editor control the contents. If the authors cannot reach agreement on the review abstract, they can withdraw their manuscript without publication.

Reviewer compensation

For the forthcoming issue of Proceedings, we are experimenting with reviewer compensation:

• Useful reviews will receive ~\$200, and unusually excellent reviews will get double (~\$400). An additional ~\$100 will go to the reviewer who writes the reviewer abstract.

• Quality is judged by the editors in their sole discretion.

• We prize insight, constructive criticism, helpful suggestions, and the discovery of substantive errors. Reviewers will be paid for positive and negative reviews alike.

• Self-nominated reviewer are eligible for compensation.

• We may adjust these amounts before the review process starts depending on available funding.

FAQs

Does the Proceedings host public discussion?

No. We do not have the resources to moderate a public discussion. We encourage authors and readers seeking broader engagement to link-post on LessWrong, the Alignment Forum, or elsewhere.

Why must manuscripts and reviewer abstracts be licensed under CC-BY 4.0?

We believe this makes research maximally useful to others and is consistent with the fact that most of the research we publish will be publicly or philanthropically funded. Although we won’t make exceptions on a case-by-case basis, we encourage authors to contact us with concerns.

Why are manuscripts posted publicly during the review process?

This allows any researcher to self-nominate as reviewers, and to publicly critique the manuscript prior to publication.

Won’t compensating reviewers distort incentives for the worse?

It’s certainly possible, but we suspect the net effects will be positive and significant. We consider this experimental.

Editorial Board

C. Jess Riedel & Alexander Oldenziel. (Former: Clem von Stengel.)

Contact

iliadconference@gmail.com