Author Guide: Instructions for Final Preparation

Journal of Machine Learning Research

Congratulations on the acceptance of your paper into JMLR. Once a paper has been accepted for publication, you should follow the procedure outlined below. The final version of your manuscript is due to us within three months of the acceptance date.

JMLR is a volunteer-led, open access journal. Therefore, please follow the formatting instructions carefully.

  1. Make sure that your article is formatted according the JMLR style. The JMLR style is described in Instructions for Formatting JMLR Articles. This page contains more information, including the official JMLR style file, and example papers.Please pay particular attention to the list of common formatting errors.

    Your paper should be prepared in LaTeX, using the official JMLR style file, which you should not modify. We must be able to compile your paper using latexmk via pdflatex. In particular, this means that if you use PostScript figures, you must use eps files rather than ps files.

    Most likely, you will have already done this for the submission of your paper. However, you should go over the formatting rules and the checklist again carefully before submitting the camera ready copy. It is our experience that most authors break at least a dozen formatting rules.

    Authors are responsible for correctly formatting their article.

  2. Make any final changes and have your article proofread. Because our production staff is all volunteer, we ourselves cannot copy edit your paper. Authors are notoriously bad proofreaders. Have the paper proofread by a skilled proofreader — NOT one of the authors.

  3. If you wish, create an appendix. We recommend adding your appendix to your manuscript such that it appears at the very end, in the same PDF. You may separately provide a link to your source code. It is the authors responsibility to maintain any links to source code.

  4. Create a file archive (zip or tar.gz is file) with your paper. This archive should contain the LaTeX source, the .bib file, figures, and everything needed to compile your document. The archive should ideally contain only one .tex file. You may want to run your through latexpand (https://ctan.org/pkg/latexpand). We process your paper via an automatic system, so please follow these rules:

    1. Your submission must be an archive that contains all of the files necessary to compile the paper. It must be compilable using latexmk.

    2. Do not color your hyperlinks. Do not put boxes around your hyperlinks. Use \hypersetup{ hidelinks }.

    3. Do not change the geometry/margins of the manuscript.

    4. Your page numbers should start at 1, both in the \jmlrheading command and in your actual paper.

    5. You file should include an \editor{...} command that lists the action editor who has corresponded with you.

    6. Your \jmlrheading command should contain the correct year, volume number, publication dates, etc. You must fill in all of the information. The format for this is:

      \usepackage{lastpage} 
      \jmlrheading{volume}{year}{1-\pageref{LastPage}}{[DATE SUBMITTED]; Revised [DATE REVISED]}{[DATE PUBLISHED]}{PAPER ID}{all authors FULL names} 
              

      For example, suppose that you submitted your paper to the production system in September 2019 and revised it on December 2021. It is now January 2022 and you are uploading your paper to the JMLR production system. Your header should then look like this.

      \usepackage{lastpage} 
      \jmlrheading{23}{2022}{1-\pageref{LastPage}}{9/19; Revised 12/21}{1/22}{PAPER ID}{all authors FULL names}       
              

      Please use the current month and year as the publication date.

      If you never needed to submit a revision (i.e., you submitted one version that was accepted with no changes), then you should leave off the "Revised" date. These dates will be verified against the paper database, so it is important that they be correct.

    7. The scripts specifically check whether the paper headings are correct (e.g., page numbers, \jmlrheading, \ShortHeadings, \editor, and so on). To speed processing of your paper, please give special attention to make sure that these are correct and follow the lines of the example file.

  5. Upload your paper archive to the JMLR production system. You should have received an email with the URL of the automated system when your paper was accepted. If you have not received this email, please contact the production editor.

  6. Verify your paper. It is your responsibility to verify that the JMLR production system has correctly compiled your manuscript. Please carefully check that all parts of your paper have been correctly compiled.

  7. The JMLR production editor will review your submission. We generally process papers every 6 to 8 weeks. We cannot accept edits/modifications to your paper once it has been published to our website.

  8. You will receive an email with a link to your paper once it has been published.