Formatting Instructions For NeurIPS 2020

David S. Hippocampus∗
Department of Computer Science
Cranberry-Lemon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
[email protected]

Abstract
The abstract paragraph should be indented 1/2 inch (3 picas) on both the left- and
right-hand margins. Use 10 point type, with a vertical spacing (leading) of 11 points.
The word Abstract must be centered, bold, and in point size 12. Two line spaces
precede the abstract. The abstract must be limited to one paragraph.

1 Submission of papers to NeurIPS 2020

NeurIPS requires electronic submissions. The electronic submission site is

https://cmt3.research.microsoft.com/NeurIPS2020/
Please read the instructions below carefully and follow them faithfully.

1.1 Style

Papers to be submitted to NeurIPS 2020 must be prepared according to the instructions presented
here. Papers may only be up to eight pages long, including figures. Additional pages containing only
a section on the broader impact, acknowledgments and/or cited references are allowed. Papers that
exceed eight pages of content will not be reviewed, or in any other way considered for presentation at
the conference.
The margins in 2020 are the same as those in 2007, which allow for ∼15% more words in the paper
compared to earlier years.
Authors are required to use the NeurIPS LATEX style files obtainable at the NeurIPS website as
indicated below. Please make sure you use the current files and not previous versions. Tweaking the
style files may be grounds for rejection.

1.2 Retrieval of style files

The style files for NeurIPS and other conference information are available on the World Wide Web at

http://www.neurips.cc/
The file neurips_2020.pdf contains these instructions and illustrates the various formatting re-
quirements your NeurIPS paper must satisfy.
The only supported style file for NeurIPS 2020 is neurips_2020.sty, rewritten for LATEX 2ε .
Previous style files for LATEX 2.09, Microsoft Word, and RTF are no longer supported!
∗
Use footnote for providing further information about author (webpage, alternative address)—not for
acknowledging funding agencies.

34th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2020), Vancouver, Canada.
The LATEX style file contains three optional arguments: final, which creates a camera-ready copy,
preprint, which creates a preprint for submission to, e.g., arXiv, and nonatbib, which will not
load the natbib package for you in case of package clash.

Preprint option If you wish to post a preprint of your work online, e.g., on arXiv, using the
NeurIPS style, please use the preprint option. This will create a nonanonymized version of your
work with the text “Preprint. Work in progress.” in the footer. This version may be distributed as
you see fit. Please do not use the final option, which should only be used for papers accepted to
NeurIPS.
At submission time, please omit the final and preprint options. This will anonymize your
submission and add line numbers to aid review. Please do not refer to these line numbers in your
paper as they will be removed during generation of camera-ready copies.
The file neurips_2020.tex may be used as a “shell” for writing your paper. All you have to do is
replace the author, title, abstract, and text of the paper with your own.
The formatting instructions contained in these style files are summarized in Sections 2, 3, and 4
below.

2 General formatting instructions

The text must be confined within a rectangle 5.5 inches (33 picas) wide and 9 inches (54 picas) long.
The left margin is 1.5 inch (9 picas). Use 10 point type with a vertical spacing (leading) of 11 points.
Times New Roman is the preferred typeface throughout, and will be selected for you by default.
Paragraphs are separated by 1/2 line space (5.5 points), with no indentation.
The paper title should be 17 point, initial caps/lower case, bold, centered between two horizontal
rules. The top rule should be 4 points thick and the bottom rule should be 1 point thick. Allow 1/4 inch
space above and below the title to rules. All pages should start at 1 inch (6 picas) from the top of the
page.
For the final version, authors’ names are set in boldface, and each name is centered above the
corresponding address. The lead author’s name is to be listed first (left-most), and the co-authors’
names (if different address) are set to follow. If there is only one co-author, list both author and
co-author side by side.
Please pay special attention to the instructions in Section 4 regarding figures, tables, acknowledgments,
and references.

3 Headings: first level

All headings should be lower case (except for first word and proper nouns), flush left, and bold.
First-level headings should be in 12-point type.

3.1 Headings: second level

Second-level headings should be in 10-point type.

3.1.1 Headings: third level

Third-level headings should be in 10-point type.

Paragraphs There is also a \paragraph command available, which sets the heading in bold, flush
left, and inline with the text, with the heading followed by 1 em of space.

4 Citations, figures, tables, references

These instructions apply to everyone.

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 Figure 1: Sample figure caption.

4.1 Citations within the text

The natbib package will be loaded for you by default. Citations may be author/year or numeric, as
long as you maintain internal consistency. As to the format of the references themselves, any style is
acceptable as long as it is used consistently.
The documentation for natbib may be found at
http://mirrors.ctan.org/macros/latex/contrib/natbib/natnotes.pdf
Of note is the command \citet, which produces citations appropriate for use in inline text. For
example,
\citet{hasselmo} investigated\dots
produces
Hasselmo, et al. (1995) investigated. . .
If you wish to load the natbib package with options, you may add the following before loading the
neurips_2020 package:
\PassOptionsToPackage{options}{natbib}
If natbib clashes with another package you load, you can add the optional argument nonatbib
when loading the style file:
\usepackage[nonatbib]{neurips_2020}
As submission is double blind, refer to your own published work in the third person. That is, use “In
the previous work of Jones et al. [4],” not “In our previous work [4].” If you cite your other papers
that are not widely available (e.g., a journal paper under review), use anonymous author names in the
citation, e.g., an author of the form “A. Anonymous.”

4.2 Footnotes

Footnotes should be used sparingly. If you do require a footnote, indicate footnotes with a number2
in the text. Place the footnotes at the bottom of the page on which they appear. Precede the footnote
with a horizontal rule of 2 inches (12 picas).
Note that footnotes are properly typeset after punctuation marks.3

4.3 Figures

All artwork must be neat, clean, and legible. Lines should be dark enough for purposes of reproduction.
The figure number and caption always appear after the figure. Place one line space before the figure
2
Sample of the first footnote.
3
As in this example.

3
 Table 1: Sample table title

Part
Name Description Size (µm)
Dendrite Input terminal ∼100
Axon Output terminal ∼10
Soma Cell body up to 106

caption and one line space after the figure. The figure caption should be lower case (except for first
word and proper nouns); figures are numbered consecutively.
You may use color figures. However, it is best for the figure captions and the paper body to be legible
if the paper is printed in either black/white or in color.

4.4 Tables

All tables must be centered, neat, clean and legible. The table number and title always appear before
the table. See Table 1.
Place one line space before the table title, one line space after the table title, and one line space after
the table. The table title must be lower case (except for first word and proper nouns); tables are
numbered consecutively.
Note that publication-quality tables do not contain vertical rules. We strongly suggest the use of the
booktabs package, which allows for typesetting high-quality, professional tables:
https://www.ctan.org/pkg/booktabs
This package was used to typeset Table 1.

5 Final instructions
Do not change any aspects of the formatting parameters in the style files. In particular, do not modify
the width or length of the rectangle the text should fit into, and do not change font sizes (except
perhaps in the References section; see below). Please note that pages should be numbered.

6 Preparing PDF files

Please prepare submission files with paper size “US Letter,” and not, for example, “A4.”
Fonts were the main cause of problems in the past years. Your PDF file must only contain Type 1 or
Embedded TrueType fonts. Here are a few instructions to achieve this.

• You should directly generate PDF files using pdflatex.

• You can check which fonts a PDF files uses. In Acrobat Reader, select the menu
Files>Document Properties>Fonts and select Show All Fonts. You can also use the program
pdffonts which comes with xpdf and is available out-of-the-box on most Linux machines.
• The IEEE has recommendations for generating PDF files whose fonts are also ac-
ceptable for NeurIPS. Please see http://www.emfield.org/icuwb2010/downloads/
IEEE-PDF-SpecV32.pdf
• xfig "patterned" shapes are implemented with bitmap fonts. Use "solid" shapes instead.
• The \bbold package almost always uses bitmap fonts. You should use the equivalent AMS
Fonts:
\usepackage{amsfonts}
followed by, e.g., \mathbb{R}, \mathbb{N}, or \mathbb{C} for R, N or C. You can also
use the following workaround for reals, natural and complex:

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 \newcommand{\RR}{I\!\!R} %real numbers
\newcommand{\Nat}{I\!\!N} %natural numbers
\newcommand{\CC}{I\!\!\!\!C} %complex numbers
Note that amsfonts is automatically loaded by the amssymb package.

If your file contains type 3 fonts or non embedded TrueType fonts, we will ask you to fix it.

6.1 Margins in LATEX

Most of the margin problems come from figures positioned by hand using \special or other
commands. We suggest using the command \includegraphics from the graphicx package.
Always specify the figure width as a multiple of the line width as in the example below:

\usepackage[pdftex]{graphicx} ...
\includegraphics[width=0.8\linewidth]{myfile.pdf}
See Section 4.4 in the graphics bundle documentation (http://mirrors.ctan.org/macros/
latex/required/graphics/grfguide.pdf)
A number of width problems arise when LATEX cannot properly hyphenate a line. Please give LaTeX
hyphenation hints using the \- command when necessary.

Broader Impact
Authors are required to include a statement of the broader impact of their work, including its ethical
aspects and future societal consequences. Authors should discuss both positive and negative outcomes,
if any. For instance, authors should discuss a) who may benefit from this research, b) who may be
put at disadvantage from this research, c) what are the consequences of failure of the system, and d)
whether the task/method leverages biases in the data. If authors believe this is not applicable to them,
authors can simply state this.
Use unnumbered first level headings for this section, which should go at the end of the paper. Note
that this section does not count towards the eight pages of content that are allowed.

Acknowledgments and Disclosure of Funding

Use unnumbered first level headings for the acknowledgments. All acknowledgments go at the
end of the paper before the list of references. Moreover, you are required to declare funding
(financial activities supporting the submitted work) and competing interests (related financial activities
outside the submitted work). More information about this disclosure can be found at: https:
//neurips.cc/Conferences/2020/PaperInformation/FundingDisclosure.
Do not include this section in the anonymized submission, only in the final paper. You can use
the ack environment provided in the style file to autmoatically hide this section in the anonymized
submission.

References
References follow the acknowledgments. Use unnumbered first-level heading for the references. Any
choice of citation style is acceptable as long as you are consistent. It is permissible to reduce the
font size to small (9 point) when listing the references. Note that the Reference section does not
count towards the eight pages of content that are allowed.

[1] Alexander, J.A. & Mozer, M.C. (1995) Template-based algorithms for connectionist rule extraction. In
G. Tesauro, D.S. Touretzky and T.K. Leen (eds.), Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 7, pp.
609–616. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
[2] Bower, J.M. & Beeman, D. (1995) The Book of GENESIS: Exploring Realistic Neural Models with the
GEneral NEural SImulation System. New York: TELOS/Springer–Verlag.

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[3] Hasselmo, M.E., Schnell, E. & Barkai, E. (1995) Dynamics of learning and recall at excitatory recurrent
synapses and cholinergic modulation in rat hippocampal region CA3. Journal of Neuroscience 15(7):5249-5262.