Transactions on Machine Learning Research

As in previous years, TMLR will pause new submissions over the upcoming holiday period from November 30, 2026 at 11:59 PM to January 3, 2027 at 11:59 PM (AoE timezone for both). We will resume accepting new submissions on January 4, 2027. Happy Holidays!

blog.tmlr.orgAdapting Our Processes to the Changing World of Scientific PublicationTMLR is adapting its submission and review processes to handle rapid growth while protecting review quality, reviewer time, and scientific integrity.

What is TMLR doing under a 300% increase in submissions? - Suspensions of >150 authors - Publicly naming major violations - Submission quotas distinguishing slop patterns - Desk rejections 6% → 53%; focus on clarity - AI reviews evaluating soundness blog.tmlr.org/2026/adaptin...

blog.tmlr.orgTMLR BlogNews, announcements, and editorial notes from the Transactions on Machine Learning Research (TMLR).

18 Sept

TMLR now has a shiny new blog! By popular demand, the days of Medium are over. All the old posts are already ported, please check it out (and its beautiful colour scheme). Thanks to Managing Editor @paulvicol.bsky.social for setting it up! blog.tmlr.org

blog.tmlr.orgAsking Authors About Their Own PapersAn Editor-in-Chief invited the authors of ten submissions headed for desk rejection to discuss their papers; most could not answer basic or technical questions about their own work.

18 Sept

ICYMI, here's the latest post, where Co-EiC Nihar Shah asked authors of papers to be desk rejected about their own submissions. They couldn't answer his questions! blog.tmlr.org/2026/asking-...

medium.comAsking Authors About Their Own PapersBy Nihar B. Shah

16 Sept

TMLR has faced a deluge of submissions, necessitating stricter desk rejection policies due to limited reviewer capacity Co-EiC Nihar Shah reached out to authors of 10 papers slated for desk reject. Could they answer questions about their *own* submission? medium.com/@TmlrOrg/ask...

16 Sept

Spoilers: all 10 ended up being desk rejected. - 1 paper withdrawn - 1 author was too busy for a call - 1 author no-showed - Authors of 3 papers couldn't answer basic qs - Authors of 3 papers could, but not technical qs - 1 author answered all qs, but paper had a major flaw

16 Sept

Another detail that might be interesting to folks: "The fraction of desk rejected papers at TMLR used to be about 6% in 2023 but is now at about 53%." (Important caveat that our policies and stances towards desk rejection have shifted, not just submission quality.)

medium.comIncreasing Emphasis on Clear Writing in Acceptance CriteriaThree things are true today:

31 Aug

TMLR has refocused its acceptance criteria to place more emphasis on clear writing. Read more in this blog post: medium.com/@TmlrOrg/inc...

jmlr.orgTransactions on Machine Learning Research

31 Aug

You can read the revised acceptance criteria here: jmlr.org/tmlr/accepta...

13 Aug

Starting September 1, 2026, TMLR will no longer be considering survey papers for review. This is in part due to limited reviewer resources and significant required labour for reviewing surveys, as well as the evolving role of surveys in our field.

6 July

Some of the TMLR Editors in Chief are doing a meet-and-greet tomorrow at #ICML2026! July 7 at 11 AM in The Platz Come and: - discuss new policies (submission quotas, AI reviewer) - pick up stickers if you're an AE, expert reviewer, etc. - just hang out!

maps.app.goo.glmaps.app.goo.gl

6 July

Find The Platz within the COEX compound -- it's where the Luggage check is! maps.app.goo.gl/9NtJ7UaNncm2...

6 July

Folks should be around until at least 12:30 PM, so drop in any time during that period.

4 July

TMLR will be experimenting with an AI reviewer, solely to judge submissions against the soundness criterion ("are the claims supported by accurate, clear, and convincing evidence?"). More details in the following blog post. medium.com/p/4405d7813cc8

2 July

We're pleased to announce our newest Editor-in-Chief, Yoshitomo Matsubara (@yoshitomo-matsubara.net)! He started his term July 1, 2026. He has long been one of our most committed and thoughtful Action Editors, and we know he'll do a great job as a leader of the journal.

TMLR has been facing an significant uptick in the number of submissions since the start of 2026. This is placing an extreme burden on our amazing team of reviewers & action editors. To ease this burden, TMLR will be implementing submission quotas, effective July 1. 1/n medium.com/@TmlrOrg/ann...

jmlr.orgTransactions on Machine Learning Research

Members of our editorial team, including AEs and reviewers, enjoy doubled quotas. You can self-nominate to be an AE or a reviewer, see our FAQ: jmlr.org/tmlr/faq.html 4/n

medium.comAnnual Author Submission Quotas for TMLRTMLR submissions have grown substantially in recent times (Figure 1). In some cases, we have seen authors submit as many as five papers in…

More details in our post: medium.com/@TmlrOrg/ann... We understand this will (by design!) prevent submissions that authors would have liked to undergo review. But strong measures (this is one of several) are necessary to protect our valuable and human team of reviewers and AEs. 5/5

Quotas follow the generalized harmonic quota rule. It's a bit tough to describe succinctly. Each individual has a budget starting Jan 1, partially spent on each submission. Cost of a submission depends on its # of authors. All authors must have enough budget to submit. 2/n

cs.cmu.eduAuthor Submission Quota Checker

An individual's budget can be spent with 2 1-author submissions. Alternatively, it can be spent on 9 9-author submissions. Other cases interpolate or extrapolate from these, and you can play around with numbers here: www.cs.cmu.edu/~nihars/quot... 3/n

Transactions on Machine Learning Research reposted

Paul Vicol

@paulvicol.bsky.social

10 Mar

🎨 Introducing the TMLR Beyond PDF Editor, a web-based editor for creating Beyond PDF submissions! 🚀 Zero setup + live preview + download & import. 🤝 Compatible with local compilation. 🎉 Thanks to Hugo Larochelle, @gautamkamath.com, Naila Murray, Nihar B. Shah, and Laurent Charlin!

5 Mar

Wanna earn yourself one of these bad boys? Sign up to be an Action Editor for TMLR! We are also looking for reviewers as well. Please fill out one of the following forms: - Volunteer to action editor: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F... - Volunteer to review: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

TMLR's 2025 annual report! The word of the year is growth: whether it's our number of submissions, published papers, or reviewers, pretty much everything has increased ~50%. EXCEPT: our review period, which is still shorter than NeurICMLR (91 vs 126 days) Read on for more! 1/n

And finally, we bade farewell to our final founding EiC, Hugo Larochelle. But we are happy to welcome Laurent Charlin onto the team! 7/n bsky.app/profile/tmlr...

Transactions on Machine Learning Research@tmlrorg.bsky.social

With a new year comes a new Editor-in-Chief! Please give a warm welcome to Laurent Charlin (HEC Montréal and Mila)! He rounds out the team with Gautam Kamath, Naila Murray, and Nihar Shah to help lead TMLR through 2026.

docs.google.com2025 TMLR Annual Report2025 TMLR Annual Report Gautam Kamath Hugo Larochelle Naila Murray Nihar Shah Paul Vicol Summary The Transactions on Machine Learning Research (TMLR) is now almost 4 years old! At the time of writing...

Check out the full TMLR annual report from 2025 for more info on an amazing year for the journal! 8/8 docs.google.com/document/d/1...

We expanded our Journal to Conference partnerships in a huge way! Now we have a J2C Certification, which supports high quality TMLR work in being presented at any of the three big ML conferences, NeurIPS, ICML, and ICLR. This is on top of maintaining our other partnerships. 5/n

We also launched our Beyond PDF format! We're excited to see what sort of creative submissions people choose to share with us. 6/n

Nevertheless, at ~90 days median turnaround time, we're faster than our neighbouring venues like NeurIPS and JMLR. There are certainly outliers, but for most papers, we have a relatively expeditious review process. Thank you to our reviewers and AEs for making this happen! 3/n

Like most ML venues, there are unfortunately some problematic cases. As the venue grows and tools which enable poor behaviour become more powerful, we anticipate more over time. We're being proactive in new measure to address these. 4/n

Our number of submissions per month has increased from ~150 per month in 2024, to > 250 per month in 2025. Some unusual behaviour due to our December pause, but early 2026 numbers are very strong! 2/n

5 Jan

2 Jan

The end of 2025 marks the end of Hugo Larochelle's term as (Founding co-) Editor-in-chief of TMLR. It is an understatement to say that he was indispensable to making TMLR what it is today. Huge thanks to Hugo for everything he's done!

2 Jan

Now, all three founders of TMLR (Hugo Larochelle, Kyunghyun Cho, and Raia Hadsell) have completed their service (though they still guide us via the advisory board). The initiative is in the hands of the community now. Let's make them proud!

27 Nov 2025

Will you be at #NeurIPS2025? Come talk TMLR and collect swag! EiCs Gautam Kamath (@gautamkamath.com) and Nihar Shah will be there -- if you are an AE or an Expert Reviewer, or have a Featured or Outstanding Certification, you can get a free TMLR laptop sticker! Locations ⬇️

27 Nov 2025

You'll be able to find them from 9:30 to 10:30 AM on Thursday Dec 4 and Friday Dec 5 for a TMLR meet-and-greet (precise location TBA), or if you run into them at any other time during the conference!

3 Dec 2025

bsky.app/profile/tmlr...

Transactions on Machine Learning Research@tmlrorg.bsky.social

The location for the meet and greet has been decided! Meet @gautamkamath.com and Nihar from 9:30 to 10:30 AM on Thursday Dec 4 and Friday Dec 5 in Sails Pavilion, most likely at the edge near Ballroom 20.

3 Dec 2025

Transactions on Machine Learning Research@tmlrorg.bsky.social

🥁 Announcing the 2025 TMLR Outstanding Certification! The committee decided upon 1 recipient and 3 finalists. Read on to learn more! Committee: Pablo Samuel Castro, Pin-Yu Chen, Vincent Dumoulin, Amir massoud Farahmand, Andreas Kirsch, Jasper Lee, Jeffrey Pennington, Colin Raffel, Chang Xu 1/n

openreview.netGradient Scarcity in Graph Learning with Bilevel OptimizationGradient scarcity emerges when learning graphs by minimizing a loss on a subset of nodes under the semi-supervised setting. It consists in edges between unlabeled nodes that are far from the...

🏅Finalist: Gradient Scarcity in Graph Learning with Bilevel Optimization, by Hashem GHANEM, Samuel Vaiter, Nicolas Keriven 5/n openreview.net/forum?id=10Y...

medium.comAnnouncing the 2025 TMLR Outstanding CertificationBy Gautam Kamath, on behalf of the 2025 TMLR Outstanding Paper Committee: Pablo Samuel Castro, Pin-Yu Chen, Vincent Dumoulin, Amir-massoud…

For more details on the process, check out our full blog post! 6/6 medium.com/@TmlrOrg/ann...

openreview.netCausal Reasoning and Large Language Models: Opening a New Frontier...The causal capabilities of large language models (LLMs) are a matter of significant debate, with critical implications for the use of LLMs in societally impactful domains such as medicine, science,...

There are an additional three finalists! In no particular order, 🏅Finalist: Causal Reasoning and Large Language Models: Opening a New Frontier for Causality, by Emre Kıcıman, Robert Osazuwa Ness, Amit Sharma, Chenhao Tan 3/n openreview.net/forum?id=mqo...

openreview.netCognitive Architectures for Language AgentsRecent efforts have augmented large language models (LLMs) with external resources (e.g., the Internet) or internal control flows (e.g., prompt chaining) for tasks requiring grounding or reasoning,...

🏅Finalist: Cognitive Architectures for Language Agents, by Theodore Sumers, Shunyu Yao, Karthik Narasimhan, Tom Griffiths 4/n openreview.net/forum?id=1i6...

openreview.netMantis: Interleaved Multi-Image Instruction TuningLarge multimodal models (LMMs) have shown great results in single-image vision language tasks. However, their abilities to solve multi-image visual language tasks is yet to be improved. The...

🏆 The Outstanding Certification goes to: Mantis: Interleaved Multi-Image Instruction Tuning, by Dongfu Jiang, Xuan He, Wyett Zeng, Cong Wei, Max Ku, Qian Liu, Wenhu Chen 2/n openreview.net/forum?id=skL...

Transactions on Machine Learning Research reposted

Paul Vicol

@paulvicol.bsky.social

25 Nov 2025

🚀 Introducing TMLR Beyond PDF! 🎬 This is a new, HTML-based submission format for TMLR, that supports interactive figures and videos, along with the usual LaTeX and images. 🎉 Thanks to TMLR Editors in Chief: Hugo Larochelle, @gautamkamath.com, Naila Murray, Nihar B. Shah, and Laurent Charlin!

14 Oct 2025

As Transactions on Machine Learning Research (TMLR) grows in number of submissions, we are looking for more reviewers and action editors. Please sign up! Only one paper to review at a time and <= 6 per year, reviewers report greater satisfaction than reviewing for conferences!

docs.google.comSelf-nomination (reviewers) -- Transactions on Machine Learning Research (TMLR)Please fill out this form to volunteer to be a reviewer for Transactions on Machine Learning Research. More details on the journal are available on the website; in particular, check out the submissio...

14 Oct 2025

Please fill out one of the following forms: - Volunteer to review: docs.google.com/forms/d/17_G... - Volunteer to action editor: docs.google.com/forms/d/15Nh....

26 Mar 2025

Following the success of last year's initiative, RL Conference 2025 (@rl-conference.bsky.social) is again having a Journal to Conference track! Accepted TMLR within scope are invited to submit for consideration by May 1! docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

docs.google.com2024 TMLR Annual Report2024 TMLR Annual Report Kyunghyun Cho Gautam Kamath Hugo Larochelle Naila Murray Paul Vicol Summary Editorial Team Submissions and Decisions Problematic Case(s) and Policies Certifications OpenReview...

28 Jan 2025

Check out TMLR's 2024 Annual Report! Featuring stats, updates, and details about plans for the future! docs.google.com/document/d/1...