facct-submission

FAccT Submission

Run this audit before uploading to the FAccT OpenReview site. FAccT papers are **archival ACM

proceedings** in an interdisciplinary responsible-AI venue, reviewed mutually anonymously by a

mixed CS+law+social-science pool. Every number below was read from the FAccT 2026 CFP and Author

Guide on 2026-07-09 via search renderings (see resources/official-source-map.md); treat them as a

one-cycle snapshot and reopen the live call first.

The two-step deadline (abstract gate first)

FAccT separates abstract registration from paper submission, and the gate is hard:

• Abstract registration locks title, abstract, authors, and focus areas roughly a week early

(FAccT 2026: 8 January 2026). Authors who do not register by this date **cannot submit a

paper** — the focus areas drive reviewer/AC matching in the mixed pool.

• Paper submission uploads the anonymized acmart PDF (FAccT 2026: 13 January 2026).

Register with the real title, abstract, and honestly chosen focus areas, not placeholders — a

mismatch between your registered focus areas and your actual contribution mis-matches you to

reviewers from the wrong discipline, the most damaging thing that can happen at an interdisciplinary

venue.

Format and page budget

• ACM acmart template, built anonymized for review, e.g.

\documentclass[manuscript,screen,review,anonymous]{acmart} (single-column review format). The

camera-ready later uses the sigconf proceedings format.

• Page budget (verify per cycle): up to 14 pages excluding references (most papers 12-14),

plus one additional content page for endmatter statements; references unlimited. Revised

and accepted papers may use 15 content pages.

• Do not modify margins, font, or spacing to gain space — editorial compression, not template

tampering, is how you recover room.

Mutual-anonymity sweep

FAccT review is mutually anonymous: authors and reviewers are hidden from each other. Because

FAccT papers often name systems, communities, and field sites, the leak surface is wide:

# Mechanical pass on the submission PDF and any anonymized artifact archive
pdfinfo paper.pdf | grep -Ei 'author|creator|producer'
pdftotext paper.pdf - | grep -nEi 'github\.com/[a-z0-9-]+|osf\.io|acknowledg|funded|grant|IRB #' | head
grep -rniE 'our (lab|group|team|university)|@[a-z0-9.]+\.edu' artifact/ --include='*.md' | head
unzip -l artifact.zip | grep -Ei '\.git/|\.DS_Store|/home/|/Users/' | head

The FAccT-specific leaks: a positionality statement left in the anonymous PDF (it is

identity-revealing by design — remove it), acknowledgements or funding, an IRB protocol number, a

named field site or partner organization that identifies the team, and a data-availability link to a

personal repository.

Required and optional endmatter (do not skip)

• Generative AI Usage Statement — REQUIRED. State whether and how generative AI was used to

prepare the manuscript. FAccT prohibits using generative AI to wholesale-generate text. A

missing statement is a compliance defect independent of the paper's merit.

• Optional but expected where relevant: Ethical Considerations and Adverse Impacts statements —

include them anonymized; they are read seriously.

• Withhold until acceptance: Positionality, Author Contributions, Acknowledgements, Competing

Interests — all identity-revealing; they must not appear in the anonymous submission.

Archival vs non-archival

Choose deliberately: archival (the default) publishes in the ACM DL proceedings; non-archival

presents at the conference without proceedings publication (useful for work headed to a journal or

already-published elsewhere). All accepted papers present in person regardless. Confirm the

current non-archival mechanics on the Author Guide (待核实 per cycle).

Desk-risk triage

| Finding at audit time | Severity | Real fix |

|---|---|---|

| Abstract/focus areas not registered by the earlier date | No submission slot exists | Nothing fixes this post-deadline — calendar it now |

| Main text over the 14-page budget | Desk-reject-grade | Cut or move to appendix; endmatter page does not absorb body text |

| Template altered (margins, shrunk font) | Desk-reject risk | Recompile clean, recover space editorially |

| Missing Generative AI Usage Statement | Compliance defect | Add it before upload |

| Positionality/acks left in the anonymous PDF | Anonymity violation | Remove; restore only at camera-ready |

| Focus areas mismatched to the actual contribution | Wrong-discipline reviewers | Fix at registration; realign before the abstract gate |

| Identity leak (field site, IRB #, repo, funder) | Anonymity violation | Re-anonymize and re-host |

Final-week order of operations

1. Freeze the body early; endmatter statements can be drafted in parallel.
2. Register title/abstract/authors/focus areas well before the abstract gate.
3. Write the Generative AI Usage Statement; draft Ethical Considerations and Adverse Impacts.
4. Run the mutual-anonymity checks on the final PDF and archive — and confirm positionality/acks

are out.

1. Fill every OpenReview field — focus areas, conflicts for every coauthor's institution and recent

collaborators, archival/non-archival choice — a day early; late conflicts are the classic

midnight failure.

1. Re-download the uploaded PDF and read it cold to confirm it is the file you meant.

Reverify each cycle

• The abstract-gate and paper deadlines and their time zone.
• The page budget (14 vs 15, endmatter-page counting) and the exact acmart options.
• Whether the Revise decision, OpenReview platform, and Generative AI Usage requirement persist

(all introduced in 2026), plus non-archival mechanics and any APC/fee-waiver policy (待核实).

Output format

[FAccT submission status] ready / blocked / needs work
[Registration] title/abstract/authors/focus-areas locked by the earlier gate? yes/no
[Format] pages used (body/endmatter/refs), acmart anonymous-review compliance
[Anonymity] clean / leaks: <where> / positionality+acks withheld? yes/no
[Endmatter] Generative AI Usage present? ethics/adverse-impacts included?
[Archival choice] archival / non-archival, deliberate?
[Fix queue] <ordered, with owners and dates before the deadline>