AAAI - the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence - is the premier nonprofit scientific society for artificial intelligence. Founded in 1979 as the American Association for Artificial Intelligence and renamed in 2007, it is headquartered in Washington, DC. Unlike commercial publishers, AAAI's publishing program is built around conferences: the flagship AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence is one of the most selective venues in computer science, and its proceedings are a primary publication channel for AI researchers, on par with journals in most other fields.

This guide covers what AAAI publishes, what it costs (usually nothing beyond conference registration), how the two-phase double-anonymized review process works, and how to prepare a submission with the official AAAI author kit.

• Conference proceedings - the Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (which include the IAAI and EAAI tracks), plus proceedings for ICWSM, HCOMP, AIIDE, and the AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society (AIES, co-published with ACM). All are hosted on AAAI's OJS platform at ojs.aaai.org.
• Symposium series - papers from the AAAI Spring and Fall Symposium Series and the EAAI symposium series, also on the OJS platform.
• AI Magazine - the society's quarterly magazine of record since 1980, carrying expository articles, surveys, and community news. It has been published with Wiley since 2022.
• AAAI Press - books and technical reports, now distributed through a third-party vendor.

AAAI's model is very different from APC-driven publishers:

Two caveats worth knowing. First, open access here means free to read: AAAI retains copyright in proceedings papers rather than applying a blanket CC BY license, and republication requires permission under the AAAI copyright form. Second, the real cost of publishing with AAAI is conference registration and travel, not an APC - budget accordingly.

• Model: double-anonymized review - authors do not see reviewer identities and reviewers do not see author identities.
• Two-phase process (main conference): papers are first screened in Phase 1, where clearly-below-bar submissions are rejected early; surviving papers get additional reviews in Phase 2, followed by an author feedback window and program-committee discussion.
• Timeline: the cycle is fixed by the conference calendar. For AAAI-26 (held January 20-27, 2026 in Singapore), submissions opened in June 2025, Phase 1 rejections went out in mid-September, and final decisions arrived in early November - roughly 3-4 months end to end.
• Selectivity: the main track's acceptance rate is typically in the 20-25% range; treat any specific year's rate as its own data point.

1. Pick the venue and read the call for papers. Each AAAI conference publishes a detailed CFP with scope, dates, and policies (including AI-assistance and dual-submission rules).
2. Download the AAAI author kit. The official LaTeX author kit (aaai style) enforces the two-column format and AAAI author-year citation style. SciSpace hosts ready-to-use AAAI templates.
3. Anonymize your manuscript. Remove author names, affiliations, and self-identifying references for double-anonymized review.
4. Submit via OpenReview. The main AAAI conference runs its submission and review workflow on OpenReview; author registration typically opens a week or two before the submission portal.
5. Respond during the author feedback window, then, if accepted, prepare the camera-ready version, sign the AAAI copyright form, and ensure an author registers for the conference.

AAAI publishes formal codes of conduct and author policies for its conferences, covering plagiarism, dual submission, responsible use of AI assistance in writing, and reproducibility expectations. As a nonprofit scientific society, its stated mission includes advancing safe and responsible AI. Papers are checked against the venue's policies during review, and violations can lead to desk rejection or retraction from the proceedings.