The ACL Rolling Review (ARR) initiative is seeking nominations (including self-nominations) for several co-Editors-in-Chief (henceforth “EiCs”, with the “co-“ understood) positions, serving a 2.5-year term1. Successful candidates should be able to start in September 2025 or as early as possible.
ARR is increasingly used as the main submission channel for *CL conferences. In the recent two cycles for ACL and EMNLP, respectively, ARR has received over 7000 submissions in each cycle. To continue supporting these large cycles, there is a pressing need to scale the EiCs team managing the 10-week cycles. EiCs rotate to lead reviewing cycles. However, the entire team coordinates and oversees the following activities:
- Recruit and manage (senior) area chairs ((S)ACs) and reviewers
- Coordinate with conference program chairs, becoming guest PCs during cycles tied to *CL conferences
- Oversee review forms and CFPs
- Review and update submission tracks
- Make final desk reject decisions (in collaboration with PCs in conference-associated cycles)
- Provide reports to the ACL Exec
- General work on the ARR system hosted on OpenReview
- Coordinate with the rest of the ARR team, including support, communications, etc.
- Participate in review policy development in coordination with ACL peer review committee, Publication Ethics Committee and other ACL bodies
The ideal candidate would have a strong publication record across more than one NLP research area and a solid record as an outstanding member of the *CL community. Experience serving in ARR as SAC and/or AC is highly valued, as is having served as a past PC in one of our top *CL conferences and/or as an EiC for one of our *CL journals. At a minimum, candidates should have at least some experience in managing submission and reviewing processes, for example, as workshop co-organizers.
Being an ARR Editor-in-Chief is a major, ongoing time commitment requiring, on average, 2-3 hours a week but absorbing a significant amount of time during peak cycle phases. When an EiC is co-leading a cycle, it is expected that they can dedicate a large portion of their time during these peak critical times. However, contributing to our community this way is also a very rewarding experience. We are aware that the ARR process needs to continue to improve; we are looking for candidates with ideas on improving what we do who are also eager to dedicate their energy and time to help us implement better reviewing practices and workflows.
ARR is a diverse team, and we are determined to keep it that way. This includes researchers at different career stages, although we recognize that due to the requirements we specified, most junior researchers might not yet be eligible.
Nomination procedure
Nominations should be submitted via email to EiC member Jing Jiang (jing.jiang@anu.edu.au), with a Cc to EiC member Xiaodan Zhu (xiaodan.zhu@queensu.ca), by August 10th, 2025, subject line “Nomination for ARR co-EiC”, and should contain the following information:
- Name, email address, and website of the nominee
- If not a self-nomination, confirmation that the nominee is willing to serve (a dated excerpt of an email from the nominee suffices); if a self-nomination, a statement affirming willingness to serve.
- Statement of nominee’s goals/vision for ARR and/or relevant prior experience and/or reasons for interest in the position. The length of the statement is up to the nominator, but 1 paragraph may suffice, and more than 4 paragraphs are not anticipated to be necessary.
Nominations will be acknowledged by reply email; should acknowledgment not be received within 3 days, please resend your email.
The existing ARR EiC team will evaluate the nominations and make decisions, after which the search committee chair will contact the selected nominee via email.
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The last 6 months are not considered as full on EiCs but more of a transition period to support training of new EiCs. ↩