Instructions for Authors

Disclaimer

ACM is revising its Publication Workflow and Article Templates for the article submission and publication process (see https://www.acm.org/publications/taps/word-template-workflow). As part of this process, ACM is switching to a single-column manuscript and camera-ready version format and phasing out the SIGCHI Extended Abstracts format.

The purpose of the updated process is to increase accessibility of articles published in the ACM Digital Library by including both a traditional PDF and a new HTML version of the article.

With this in mind, we ask authors to periodically review the ACM Master Article Templates and Publication Workflow for updated versions of the templates and instructions.

Preparing Your Article for Submission

Authors must write and submit their article manuscript using the "Review Submission Format". Your manuscript will need to be formatted in a single-column using the template for either Word or LaTeX. Please note, that the Word and LaTeX templates do not necessarily look the same. This is due to the differences in the way Word and LaTeX handle text formatting.

Please refer to the figure below for a graphical presentation of the process.

Article Submission and Publication flow
For Word Users
  1. Prepare your paper in the single-column Word Submission Template (available at https://www.acm.org/binaries/content/assets/publications/taps/acm_submission_template.docx). Follow the instructions embedded in the template file for detailed guidance on applying the paragraph styles and including figures in your manuscript. Your manuscript will be produced in a single-column without any additional formatting.
  2. Submit your paper’s manuscript for review.
  3. If accepted, you will receive an email notification to format your paper by using the ACM Master Article Template for Word.
    1. Choose the correct version of the ACM Master Article Template depending on the version of Word you are using: Word for Windows, Word for Mac 2011, Word for Mac 2016.
    2. Use the instructions available at https://www.acm.org/binaries/content/assets/publications/taps/acm_master_article_template_instructions.pdf to attach the ACM Master Article Template to your manuscript and prepare it for uploading to The ACM Publishing System (TAPS). The camera-ready version that you are preparing will still need to be in the single-column format.
  4. You will receive another email notification with instructions on uploading the camera-ready source file of your paper to TAPS. Instructions on using TAPS are available at https://www.acm.org/binaries/content/assets/publications/taps/acm_taps.pdf.
  5. If the camera-ready source file of your paper has been formatted correctly, TAPS will automatically generate a final PDF and HTML version of your paper and send you an email notification to review the final version of the paper. If needed, you can modify the final version of your paper by uploading a revised version of the manuscript’s source file.
For LaTeX Users
  1. Prepare your paper in the single-column format by using the ACM Master Article LaTeX template (available at https://www.acm.org/binaries/content/assets/publications/consolidated-tex-template/acmart-master.zip). You will need to use the “manuscript” call to format your paper in a single-column. To do this, please use the \documentclass[manuscript]{acmart} command in the beginning of your document to format the paper in the single-column layout. The output should use the sample-manuscript.pdf formatting, as can be seen in the template folder. Please refer to the ACM’s LaTeX best practices available at https://www.acm.org/publications/taps/latex-best-practices for additional details on preparing your manuscript.
  2. Submit your article for review.
  3. If accepted, you will receive an email notification with instructions on uploading the camera-ready source file of your paper to The ACM Publishing System (TAPS). Instructions on using TAPS are available at https://www.acm.org/binaries/content/assets/publications/taps/acm_taps.pdf.You do not need to change the formatting to two-columns and should submit your camera-ready source file in single-column manuscript format.
  4. If the camera-ready source file of your paper has been formatted correctly, TAPS will automatically generate a final PDF and HTML version of your paper and send you an email notification to review the final version of your paper. If needed, you can modify the final version of the paper by uploading a revised version of the manuscript’s source file.
For Overleaf Users

As ACM is in the process of updating their LaTeX templates, we currently do not recommend using the ACM Master Article Template available in Overleaf’s template gallery for formatting your manuscript, as this might be outdated. Instead, please use the latest ACM Master Article LaTeX template (available at https://www.acm.org/binaries/content/assets/publications/consolidated-tex-template/acmart-master.zip) and import it manually to your Overleaf project. Afterwards, please follow the instructions for LateX users (above) on formatting your manuscript.

Page limits

Long research papers Up to 15 pages in single-column format, excluding references
Short research papers Up to 6 pages in single-column format, excluding references
Case studies 4 to 12 pages in single-column format, excluding references
Posters 3 to 4 pages in single-column format, excluding references
Demos and installations Up to 4 pages in single-column format, excluding references
Workshops 3 to 4 pages in single-column format, including references
Courses 3 to 4 pages in single-column format, including references
Doctoral colloquium 4 to 6 pages in single-column format, excluding references

Submission of Accompanying Material

We encourage submission of video material to accompany your papers.

Anonymisation Policy

Authors are expected to remove author and institutional identities from the title and headers of the paper, as noted in the submission instructions. Please note that changing the text colour of the author information is not sufficient.

Please make sure that information that may identify you does not appear in the document's meta-data (e.g., the “Authors” field in your word processor's “Save As” dialogue box).

Further anonymisation of identity in the body of the paper is left to the authors' discretion. We expect authors to leave citations to their previous work unanonymised, so that reviewers can ensure that all previous research has been taken into account by the authors. However, authors are encouraged to cite their own work in third person, for example, avoiding “As described in our previous work [10],…” and using instead “As described by [10], …”