AoE Deadlines: What 'Anywhere on Earth' Means
"Anywhere on Earth" means the deadline passes only when that date has ended everywhere — at 23:59 in UTC−12, which is noon UTC the next day. How to convert it, the mistakes that cost submissions, and how to count down to it.
An AoE deadline — "anywhere on Earth" — closes when the given date has ended in every time zone on the planet. A date ends last in UTC−12, so "May 15, 23:59 AoE" means May 15, 23:59 at UTC−12, which is May 16, 11:59 UTC — noon UTC the next day. That is 17:29 in India, 17:44 in Nepal, 07:59 in New York and 13:59 in central Europe in summer. If it is still May 15 somewhere, you still have time.
Where AoE comes from
The convention was popularised by the IEEE 802.16 working group, whose ballot deadlines were set as "end of day AoE": the deadline has not passed if, anywhere on Earth, the deadline date has not yet passed. The day ends last on Howland and Baker Islands, uninhabited US territories just east of the International Date Line in UTC−12 — which is why AoE is sometimes written as "UTC−12" or "IDLW" (International Date Line West).
Computer-science conferences adopted it for the same reason standards bodies did: submissions come from every time zone. A deadline in the organisers' local time quietly favours whoever lives near them, and a deadline in UTC still gives some authors most of an extra working day. AoE is the fair version: nobody anywhere loses a day. It also makes the rule easy to state — if the date on the deadline hasn't ended where anyone is, you're fine.
Converting an AoE deadline to your time zone
The conversion is always the same four steps:
- Take the date and time as written — almost always 23:59.
- Treat it as UTC−12.
- Add 12 hours to get UTC: the same clock time, the next day, at 11:59.
- Add your own UTC offset for that date.
For "May 15, 23:59 AoE":
| Your location | UTC offset in May | Local deadline |
|---|---|---|
| Los Angeles | UTC−7 | May 16, 04:59 |
| New York | UTC−4 | May 16, 07:59 |
| London | UTC+1 | May 16, 12:59 |
| Berlin | UTC+2 | May 16, 13:59 |
| Mumbai | UTC+5:30 | May 16, 17:29 |
| Kathmandu | UTC+5:45 | May 16, 17:44 |
| Beijing | UTC+8 | May 16, 19:59 |
| Tokyo | UTC+9 | May 16, 20:59 |
| Sydney | UTC+10 | May 16, 21:59 |
Almost everyone gets the next day in their own time zone — that is exactly the part people forget. Only places west of UTC−12 would get the same day, and there aren't any.
The mistakes that cost submissions
Reading AoE as your local midnight. Everywhere people live, that makes you early — by a few hours in the Americas, by most of a working day in Asia or Australia. Harmless for the submission, but you give away the most productive hours before a deadline, and co-authors in other zones end up working to different clocks.
Reading AoE as UTC. 23:59 UTC is twelve hours earlier than 23:59 AoE. People who make this mistake either panic for nothing or, worse, carry the wrong clock into the abstract deadline and then misjudge the real one.
Forgetting daylight saving time. Your offset changes during the year; AoE doesn't observe it. Recompute for the week of the deadline, not today — a conversion done in January for a May deadline is an hour off in much of Europe and North America.
Confusing the abstract and full-paper deadlines. Many venues require an abstract a week before the paper, also AoE. Missing the abstract can mean the paper can't be submitted at all. Put both in the calendar the day the call for papers comes out.
Trusting the submission system's banner. Some submission systems show a countdown in the server's time zone, or in yours with a different rounding. The call for papers is the source of truth; a screenshot of "3 hours left" is not.
Leaving co-authors to convert on their own. Five authors in four time zones will produce five different beliefs about the deadline. Convert once, write down the single instant, and share that.
Count down to the instant, not the date
The safest habit is to store the deadline as one instant — May 16, 11:59:59 UTC — rather than as a date plus a note that says "AoE". Software can then show a countdown in each person's own time zone and never get the offset wrong. Time zone databases such as IANA's even name the zone: Etc/GMT+12 (the sign is inverted by POSIX convention — Etc/GMT+12 means UTC−12).
A lab-wide deadline calendar helps more than individual reminders. Put every target conference and journal, each paper's own deadline, the rebuttal window and the internal review due dates in one list, with the AoE conversion done once, correctly. Then plan backwards: internal review a week before, a full draft to co-authors two weeks before, experiments frozen before that. For how a group can keep that rhythm week to week, see how to manage PhD students without chasing them, and for scheduling the review meetings, booking internal meetings without the back-and-forth.
A worked example: planning backwards
Say a lab in Kathmandu targets a conference whose full-paper deadline is May 15, 23:59 AoE, with the abstract due a week earlier.
- Abstract: May 8, 23:59 AoE is May 9, 17:44 in Kathmandu. Put May 9, 12:00 in the calendar as the internal target, so there are five hours of slack for the submission system.
- Full paper: May 16, 17:44 local. The internal target becomes the morning of May 16 — not the night of May 15, which is what "the 15th" suggests at a glance.
- Internal review: a colleague reads the full draft a week before, so the draft is due to them by May 8 and their comments by May 11.
- Experiments frozen: results that go into the paper are fixed by May 5; anything later becomes the camera-ready or the rebuttal.
A co-author in California, working from the same instant, sees the paper deadline as May 16, 04:59 — an early-morning deadline, so their own target is the evening before. One instant, two very different local plans, and nobody is wrong.
How LetRelay handles AoE
In LetRelay's research workspace, tick "Anywhere on Earth" on a paper or a conference deadline and it stores the right instant, counts down on the paper board ("4d 11h AoE"), lists it on the group's deadline calendar next to milestones and grant calls, and reminds the paper's authors 7 days and 1 day before. Everything else the workspace does for a lab is on the LetRelay for research groups page.
FAQ
What time is an AoE deadline in UTC?
23:59 AoE on a given date is 11:59 UTC on the following day — noon UTC, minus a minute.
Is AoE the same as UTC−12?
Yes. AoE deadlines are defined by the end of the day in UTC−12, the last time zone in which any given date ends.
Does AoE change with daylight saving time?
No. UTC−12 has no daylight saving time. Your own offset may change, so convert for the week of the deadline.
If the deadline says AoE, can I submit after midnight where I live?
Almost always, yes — for everyone east of UTC−12, which is everyone, the deadline falls on the next calendar day locally. Check the exact local time with the conversion above.
Sources
Building Relay — the internal request desk with AI triage and SLA tracking.
Run your internal requests on LetRelay
AI triage, SLA-tracked queues, and bottleneck analytics — the help desk your team actually likes. Free to start.
Keep reading
Lab Onboarding Checklist for New PhD Students and Members
A lab onboarding checklist for the first day, first week and first month of a new PhD student, postdoc or visiting researcher, plus the offboarding list that keeps data and keys from walking out the door.
PhD Weekly Update Template (With Real Examples)
A weekly update a PhD student can write in three minutes and a supervisor can read in thirty seconds. The template, good and bad examples, versions for each stage of the degree, and how supervisors should answer.
Lab Management Software for Research Groups: A 2026 Guide
Lab management software is really four kinds of tool: notebooks, sample systems, inventory and ordering, and group management. Here is what each does, the names PIs actually use, and how to pick a stack for a small academic lab.