The requirements are straightforward and publicly known. Here's everything you need to know to submit a paper to JMLR (http://www.jmlr.org/author-info.html http

The requirements are straightforward and publicly known. Here's everything you need to know to submit a paper to JMLR (http://www.jmlr.org/author-info.html http://www.jmlr.org/author-info.html). Here's the complete instructions for NIPS (https://nips.cc/Conferences/2017/CallForPapers https://nips.cc/Conferences/2017/CallForPapers). The problem with amateurs publishing papers is emphatically not that the requirements are secretive and arbitrary. The problem is that virtually no one is able to write a publishable paper without basically going to graduate school where you have years to become an expert in the minutia of your chosen field of study. There are a lot of amateur researchers who have the ability to contribute to cutting edge research, but the vast majority of them lack the background to know exactly where the cutting edge lives and how to design, conduct, and then describe a convincing experiment proving to others that the idea stands up to scrutiny. And those aren't things that anyone can or does secret away so they can form some artificial gatekeeper. They're just things that usually require a lot of concentrated effort to study and learn.