Definition
Plain language
The final, polished version of a paper prepared for publication after it has been accepted.
As stated in the literature
The publication-ready manuscript submitted after peer review and acceptance; a stage where citation errors can be introduced (e.g., by bibliography-generating tools) after reviewers have stopped looking.
Why it matters: It is the last chance to catch mistakes, yet errors added at this late stage often slip through because reviewers are no longer checking.
For example, after reviewers accept a paper, the authors submit the camera-ready version with the final figures and formatting in place.
Heard on the show
“Uniformly, authors traced the errors to LLM-based tools that generated or reformatted their bibliographies, in some cases at the camera-ready stage, after review had already finished.”Episode 201 — One in Four NeurIPS Papers Cites a Reference That Doesn't Exist