2023 IJCAI-JAIR Prize Awarded

We congratulate Rodrigo Toro Icarte, Toryn Klassen, Richard Valenzano, and Sheila McIlraith who have been awarded the 2023 IJCAI-JAIR best paper prize for their article "Reward machines: Exploiting reward function structure in reinforcement learning”, which appeared in JAIR Volume 73 (2022).

As noted in the award citation, This work considers how the structure of an explicitly-described reward function can be exploited to support efficient learning. This important setting has so far been under-explored; reward functions are typically expert-designed and therefore contain structure that most existing work ignores. The article proposes representing such a structure using a reward machine, a richly expressive type of finite-state machine; it also describes several powerful and effective methodologies to exploit the resulting structure. This article is the culmination of an influential line of research that bridges and enriches three different communities: AI planning, reinforcement learning, and formal methods.

The IJCAI-JAIR Best Paper Prize is one of the most prestigious awards for a single publication in the field of AI. It has been awarded annually since 2003 to an outstanding paper published in JAIR in the last 5 calendar years, selected based on the significance of the work and the quality of the presentation.

This year’s selection committee consisted of Mykel Kochenderfer, (Stanford University, chair), George Konidaris (Brown University), Renata Wassermann (University of Sao Paulo), Matthijs Spaan (TU Delft) and Nick Hawes (Oxford University).

Special Track on Hybrid Human-Artificial Intelligence

JAIR has opened a new special track on Hybrid Human-Artificial Intelligence. Hybrid Human-Artificial Intelligence is the field focusing on the study of artificial intelligent systems that cooperate synergistically, proactively and purposefully with humans, amplifying instead of replacing human intelligence. The submission period for the track is January 15-May 15, 2023.

JAIR Now Available in ACM Library

JAIR and ACM are very pleased to announce that JAIR articles are now being hosted by the ACM Digital Library, in addition to the JAIR.org website. While the journal will continue to be managed and published as an independent, open access journal, this partnership will provide greater visibility for JAIR articles and their authors.

JAIR Transparent Publishing

When it was launched in 1993, JAIR was one of the very first open access scientific journals. Since then, JAIR has not only emerged as one of the top publication venues in artificial intelligence, but also inspired the creation of other, similarly successful open access journals.

Now, JAIR is taking another major step by launching its transparent publishing initiative. Starting today, JAIR publishes, on a regular basis, detailed metrics on its submission handling process, including empirical likelihoods for all evaluation outcomes and average times for reaching these outcomes. This transparent publishing approach is intended to provide useful information to prospective authors and valuable calibration to the editorial team and to reviewers.

More information about JAIR Transparent Publishing and the latest metrics are found here.

Special Track on Artificial Intelligence and COVID-19

JAIR is now publishing the new special track on Artificial Intelligence and COVID-19 . This special track focuses on solutions that data science and AI provide to address challenges related to the global pandemic, and on relevant deployments and experiences in gearing AI to cope with COVID-19. 

Please Support JAIR 

AI Access Foundation manages JAIR largely through the efforts of volunteers throughout the world. However, we occasionally have some small, but important, operating and infrastructure costs. Please support us by making a donation. All donations are appreciated, no matter how small, and they are tax dedectable.

And on this topic, we also want to thank David Smith for his financial contributions to the organization, as well as IJCAI, and InferLink Corporation for their ongoing support for JAIR's infrastructure. These gifts make it possible for JAIR to continue operating a freely-available journal.