NeurIPS 2024 Call for Competitions
We are glad to announce the eighth edition of the competition track at NeurIPS 2024. Through this call, we solicit competition proposals on topics of interest to the NeurIPS community.
We especially encourage submissions with a clear scientific question and from fields with a positive societal impact promoting causes that use AI to help disadvantaged communities. Besides societal impact, we seek proposals in areas where machine learning can positively influence other scientific, technological, or business domains. We hope that interesting competitions will attract a significant cross-section of interdisciplinary and diverse communities to our NeurIPS 2024 competition track.
Technological advances in our field can have the potential to disproportionately hurt marginalized sectors in society — including people of color, people from working-class backgrounds, women, and LGBTQ people. Hence, we strongly encourage proposals that address these problems, especially from researchers with these identities or who are members of other marginalized or under-represented communities.
Proposals should highlight an inclusiveness plan to promote diverse participation among both the organizing team and competitors. Separate recognition tiers to incentivize broad participation, such as recognizing top submissions from high school students or other participant groups are encouraged. Organizers are encouraged to collaborate with affinity groups to host on-site bootcamps and other initiatives aimed at promoting diversity of participation.
NeurIPS 2024 will be hosting a dedicated Competition Track, where results will be presented and discussed by participants and organizers. The Competition Track is currently planned to be held in person at NeurIPS. Similar to last year, we request that the competition analysis paper be submitted to the NeurIPS 2025 D&B track; there will be no separate proceedings. Further details on the organization will be released in the following months.
PROPOSAL SUBMISSION
Competition proposals must both be submitted via OpenReview at:
https://openreview.net/group?id=NeurIPS.cc/2024/Competition_Track
Note: Newly created profiles in OpenReview can take up to two weeks for approval, please plan accordingly
Please carefully follow the provided Latex template when preparing proposals.
Note that the guidelines and template have been updated from last year.
To reduce the reviewers’ workload, we will accept only 8 page submissions.
REVIEWING AND SELECTION PROCESS
A competition program committee will be formed, consisting of experts on both machine learning and challenges organization. Each proposal will be reviewed by members of the program committee. The factors that will be considered when evaluating proposals include:
- Scientific relevance and Task(s): competitions should be motivated by clear scientific questions and curiosity. Impact, originality, and relevance to the NeurIPS community will all be considered. Tasks that include humanitarian and/or positive societal impact are highly encouraged, although other topics relevant to the NeurIPS community are also welcomed. If humanitarian projects are submitted, the involvement of the community in question is strongly desired, and “parachute science” is strongly discouraged.
- Evaluation Protocol: Feasibility of the task chosen, baseline availability, sufficient data for training and testing algorithms to solve the proposed task, soundness of the evaluation criteria, and clarity and fairness of the competition rules will all be evaluated.
- Logistics: The competition schedule, plan for attracting competition participants, and experience and diversity of the organizers will all be considered. The specific plan for attracting competition participants, including groups under-represented at NeurIPS, will be important during the review process.
PROCEEDINGS
This year, there are new publication requirements for competition reports co-authored by both organizers and participants. Similar to last year, accepted competitions in 2024 will be required to submit their post-competition analyses as papers to the 2025 NeurIPS D&B track (next year). In order to ensure that the competition proposal and results are consistent, reviewers in 2025 will have access to the 2024 proposals. To minimize experimental bias, any deviations from the proposal will need to be justified.
IMPORTANT DATES (anywhere on earth)
- Competition proposal submission deadline: Apr 05, 2024 AOE
- Acceptance notification: May 10, 2024
- 2024 Competition track: December 9-14, 2024
ADDITIONAL COMMENTS
Competition organizers should propose a timeline for running the competition to ensure participants have enough time to contribute high-quality entries. It is recommended that competitions be launched in May and completed by the end of October 2024 at the absolute latest.
Competition organizers that require help or suggestions regarding competition platforms for running the competition can contact the competition chairs for advice.
COMPETITION CHAIRS
Jake Albrecht, Sage Bionetworks
Tao Qin, Microsoft Research
Megan Yates, Zindi
Contact: competitions-chairs@neurips.cc