IEEE/CVF is not a traditional journal publisher - it is the joint publishing arrangement behind the world's leading computer-vision conferences: the Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR, first held 1983), the International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV, first held 1987), and the Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision (WACV). The conferences are co-sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society and the Computer Vision Foundation (CVF), a non-profit that has co-sponsored CVPR since 2012 and, crucially for authors, provides free open-access versions of all accepted papers at openaccess.thecvf.com.

In computer vision, these conference proceedings - not journals - are the primary publication venue. A CVPR or ICCV paper carries as much or more weight than most journal articles in the field. This guide explains how the venues differ, how the dual CVF/IEEE publication model works, what it costs, and how to submit.

Every accepted main-conference paper is published twice, and understanding the difference matters for access and citation:

Authors typically transfer copyright to IEEE as part of publication; the CVF-hosted version is made freely available under the sponsorship agreement. Check the copyright notice on your specific paper rather than assuming a Creative Commons license.

There is no article processing charge (APC) at any IEEE/CVF venue. The open-access CVF version is free to publish and free to read. The real costs are conference registration - at least one author must register (typically a few hundred to over a thousand US dollars depending on venue, membership, and timing) - plus travel if attending in person.

• Model: multi-tier double-anonymized review. Program chairs oversee area chairs, who manage three or more reviewers per paper.
• Anonymity: submissions must be fully anonymized; violating anonymity is grounds for desk rejection.
• Rebuttal: CVPR and ICCV include an author rebuttal phase; WACV runs a two-round process where Round 1 papers can be revised and resubmitted in Round 2.
• Selectivity: CVPR historically accepts under 30% of submissions, with under 5% selected for oral presentation.
• Timeline: fixed by the conference calendar - roughly 3-4 months from submission deadline to final decision.

1. Pick the venue and check the deadline. CVPR deadlines fall around November for the following June; ICCV around March of odd years; WACV runs two rounds in mid-to-late summer.
2. Prepare your manuscript in the official template. CVPR-style LaTeX (numbered citations, strict page limit - typically 8 pages plus references). SciSpace hosts the CVPR format at scispace.com/formats/cvpr.
3. Anonymize everything. Remove author names, affiliations, acknowledgments, and identifying self-citations.
4. Submit via OpenReview. CVPR, ICCV, and WACV all use OpenReview (CVPR moved off Microsoft CMT); recent CVPR cycles also require a compute-reporting form.
5. Respond in the rebuttal phase, then upload the camera-ready version and complete the IEEE copyright form if accepted.

Cite the conference proceedings, not the CVF website - e.g., "In Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), 2026." Use the IEEE Xplore DOI when available. Most reference managers and Google Scholar resolve CVF Open Access papers to the correct proceedings entry automatically.

Submissions must be original and not under review elsewhere (arXiv preprints are generally allowed under each venue's dual-submission policy - check the current call for papers). Plagiarism and duplicate submission are handled under IEEE Publication Services and Products Board policies. Recent CVPR cycles have added policies on the disclosure of large-scale compute and the responsible use of generative AI in writing and review.