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Normally, a CS conference will give a clear indication in its Call For Paper (or in its submittion instruction) if the peer review of the conference is blind. However, if an author forget the anonymity requirement and submit a named paper, the result may be a merciless rejection even without any peer review. I have encountered such a thing, so I am just wondering is it acceptable to submit a anonymous paper to a conference even if the conference does not ask for it ? whether an anonymous paper would cause some trouble to the reviewers or the Program Committee of a conference if the peer review is not blind? Of course, the submittion system of a conference would record the information of all authors, including their names.

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    So you are suggesting to send everything at every conference without your name, just in case one of those hundreds CS conferences requires a blind review? That makes no sense. Would not it be easier to read more carefully the respective CFP?
    – Alexandros
    Jan 18, 2015 at 12:31
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    It will look like you took your previous rejection from a conference with blind submissions and resubmitted precisely the same document, without addressing any of the comments that you got or without even bothering to re-format the paper so that it follows the submission guidelines of the current conference. Most likely it will also be somewhat off-topic for this conference. Not the best possible first impression that you can give.
    – Jukka Suomela
    Jan 18, 2015 at 13:05
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    Let me rephrase: So you are suggesting to send anonymized PDFs at every conference, just in case one of those hundreds CS conferences requires a blind review? That makes no sense. Would not it be easier to read more carefully the respective CFP?
    – Alexandros
    Jan 18, 2015 at 13:08
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    Thanks for your suggestion, JukkaSuomela and Alexandros. Over half of the top CS conferences require the blind review, and I certainly will re-format the same paper for different conferences, since they focus on different fields and apply different templates. I just want to develop a good 'habit' to avoid the same mistake when submitting a paper.
    – foool
    Jan 18, 2015 at 13:40
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    The habit you should cultivate is following the directions in the call for papers.
    – JeffE
    Jan 18, 2015 at 15:08

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This is not a good idea. You just have to read every Call for Papers carefully and submit according to the instructions. That being said, I'm surprised that your program chair didn't ask you to resubmit with proper blinding instead of outright rejecting your paper. Submission errors happen, and authors are frequently given the opportunity to resubmit as long as the content isn't changed. The latter fact might be a little hard if the self-references weren't originally blinded, but I would think that most program chairs would have worked with you on this.

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    Thanks for your empathy. I am also surprised and regretful about the rejection, since my careless wastes all authors' plenty of time and effort. I think I should form a good habit to re-read the submission guideline carefully before the final submission, rather than simply submitting the anonymous paper.
    – foool
    Jan 18, 2015 at 13:50
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    At least if the CfP was very clear about the blindness requirement (thus making any unintentional mistake by the authors reasonably unlikely), I can imagine the non-blind submission was not so much seen as a "submission error [that] happen[s]", but as a possible deliberate attempt to get an unfair advantage over other submissions by means of personal or affiliation reputation and thus the program chair saw no point in rewarding that behaviour with a slight deadline extension to fix the issue.
    – O. R. Mapper
    Jan 18, 2015 at 14:11
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    @O.R.Mapper, I suppose that a program chair could choose to be that uncharitable, but why? If someone was a known repeat offender in this area, I could see using an outright rejection, but for a first offense, give me a break.
    – Bill Barth
    Jan 18, 2015 at 14:50
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    @O.R.Mapper, what's the supposed bonus here? A slight amount of extra time because the blinding process was ignored? As long as the PC requires that no additional content be modified except that required to do the blinding, I think that's sufficient to make the process fair. A stern warning to follow the rules next time should also be sufficient to keep people from abusing the process.
    – Bill Barth
    Jan 18, 2015 at 15:34
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    I'm not surprised. Conferences I submit to do warn in their instructions to authors that submissions that haven't been anonymized will be rejected without review, and a conference I review for has, as the first question in the review form, "Is the submission anonymous?" (with instructions to stop the review there if the answer is 'no')
    – ff524
    Jan 19, 2015 at 7:35

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