AISTATS Workflow

Use this as the project-management skill for an AISTATS submission. Replace all dates with the current official timetable and work backwards from OpenReview cutoffs.

AISTATS is a conference, not a journal: it has no standing editor-in-chief and no article-processing charge. The rotating leadership is the per-edition General Chairs and Program Chairs (2026 General Chairs: Emtiyaz Khan and Yingzhen Li; Program Chairs: Arno Solin and Aaditya Ramdas, verified 2026-06-22), and the cost model is registration fees, not APCs — PMLR proceedings are open-access with no author fee. Conference organizers rotate yearly, so re-check the current CFP and organization page rather than carrying a name forward.

Milestones

• Venue fit: confirm the contribution is genuinely at the AI, ML, and statistics interface.
• Evidence lock: freeze theorem statements, assumptions, experiments, simulations, baselines, reproducibility checklist, and supplement contents.
• Abstract deadline: submit real title, abstract, authors, subject areas, and conflicts.
• Full-paper deadline: upload anonymous PDF and required OpenReview fields.
• Supplement deadline: upload anonymized appendix/code/data if current cycle allows or requires separate supplementary material.
• Review release: triage correctness, statistical validity, novelty, clarity, and reproducibility concerns.
• Discussion period: draft concise anonymous text-only clarifications; avoid forbidden links or unsupported new results.
• Decision: archive reviews, discussion, meta-review, decision, and submitted versions.
• Acceptance: prepare PMLR camera-ready files, registration, in-person presentation, and public artifact release.

Backward plan from the paper deadline

Weeks out (heuristic)	Theory-plus-experiments milestone
8+	Theorems proved, assumption set frozen
6	Simulations designed against each theorem
4	Real-data runs complete, seeds logged
3	Full draft sitting in AISTATS two-column format
2	Internal mock review by a statistics-minded reader
1	Checklist pass, anonymity sweep, supplement assembly
0	Abstract then full paper on OpenReview; supplement by its own cutoff

These offsets are planning heuristics only — anchor every one of them to the current official timetable, never to a previous cycle's calendar.

Failure modes by stage

• Theory still moving at week 3 forces last-minute theorem edits nobody has verified — the classic AISTATS correctness reject in the making.
• Leaving format conversion to the final week surfaces overflow late, because two-column math is far tighter than a one-column working draft.
• Skipping the mock review forfeits the only chance to hear "your experiments violate Assumption 2" from a friend instead of a reviewer.
• Building the supplement after the paper deadline under time pressure is how anonymity leaks ship.

Coordination notes

• Assign one named owner for the reproducibility checklist and another for the anonymity sweep; shared ownership is how both slip.
• Archive the exact submitted PDF, supplement, and checklist, since discussion-phase replies must quote them precisely.

Output format

[Current stage] idea / experiments / writing / abstract / submission / supplement / discussion / accepted
[Next official deadline] <date and source, or unknown>
[Critical path] <three tasks that determine readiness>
[Risk register] <page/anonymity/statistical evidence/supplement/reproducibility/presentation>
[Owner map] <task -> person or role>