fse-submission

name	fse-submission
description	Use when auditing an ESEC/FSE research-track submission for HotCRP readiness, covering the mandatory paper-registration step, the ACM Primary Article Template page budget, double-anonymous "heavy" anonymity, the open-science Data Availability statement, PACMSE publication, and desk-reject triage before the AoE cutoff.

FSE Submission

Run this audit before uploading to the FSE HotCRP site. FSE research papers are published as journal articles in PACMSE (Proceedings of the ACM on Software Engineering), so the submission is judged like a journal manuscript that also earns a conference slot. Every number below was read from the FSE 2026/2027 research-papers calls on 2026-07-09 via search renderings of the conf.researchr.org URLs (see resources/official-source-map.md); treat them as a one-cycle snapshot and reopen the live call first.

The two-step deadline

FSE separates paper registration from paper submission, and both are AoE:

• Registration locks in title, abstract, authors, and conflicts a week early (FSE 2026: 4 September 2025). Miss it and the system will not accept the PDF later.
• Submission uploads the anonymized PDF (FSE 2026: 11 September 2025). FSE 2027's single research deadline is 2 October 2026.

Register with the real title and abstract, not a placeholder — the abstract drives reviewer bidding, and a registered abstract that diverges from the final paper quietly worsens your PC match.

Format and page budget

• ACM Primary Article Template, unmodified, in the single-column review format. This is the ACM path, not IEEE — do not carry an IEEEtran habit over from a sibling venue.
• Page budget (verify per cycle): FSE 2027 posts ≤18 pages for all text and figures plus 4 pages for references only. There is no separate unlimited appendix; anything reviewers must read to judge the paper lives inside the budget.
• Margins, font size, and spacing are fixed by the template; editorial compression, not template tampering, is how you recover space.

Double-anonymous "heavy" sweep

FSE runs heavy double-anonymous review: anonymity is preserved through all reviewing and discussion, and even a later Major Revision response letter must stay anonymous. Because SE papers lean on tools, repositories, and mined data, 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-]+|gitlab|zenodo\.org/record|acknowledg|grant' | head
unzip -l artifact.zip | grep -Ei '\.git/|\.DS_Store|/home/|/Users/' | head
grep -rni 'university\|@[a-z0-9.]*\.edu\|our (tool|group|lab)' artifact/ --include='*.md' | head

The SE-specific leaks: a tool named after your lab, a screenshot showing a username, a data- availability link pointing at a personal GitHub, commit metadata inside a zipped repository, and issue-tracker URLs in the evaluation. Re-host artifacts behind an anonymizing service before upload.

Open science at submission time

FSE expects sharing by default under an open-science policy. Concretely for the submission:

• Provide an anonymized artifact link or upload anonymized material, and add a Data Availability statement describing what exists and where it will live after acceptance.
• If you genuinely cannot share (industrial confidentiality, human-subjects limits), say so and why — a missing availability story reads as a scored weakness, not a neutral choice.
• Cache LLM outputs and pin mining provenance now; these cannot be reconstructed at review time.

Desk-risk triage

Finding at audit time	Severity	Real fix
Main text over the page budget	Desk-reject-grade	Cut or move to the artifact; reference pages do not absorb body text
Template altered (margins, shrunk font)	Named desk-reject ground	Recompile clean, recover space editorially
Identity leak in PDF, artifact, or tool name	Anonymity violation	Re-anonymize and re-host; scrub PDF metadata
Abstract/paper not registered by the earlier date	No submission slot exists	Nothing fixes this post-AoE — calendar it now
No availability statement, no artifact	Scored against the paper	Add the statement + an anonymized package
Same study under review elsewhere	Dual-submission exposure	Withdraw one venue; verify the current concurrent-submission wording

Final-week order of operations

1. Freeze the body early; references can churn, the argument cannot.
2. Register title/abstract/authors/conflicts well before the registration cutoff.
3. Build the anonymized artifact and place its link and Data Availability statement in the paper.
4. Run the mechanical anonymity checks on the final PDF and the final archive, not drafts.
5. Fill every HotCRP field — topics that match your evidence, conflicts for every coauthor's institution and recent collaborators — a day early; late conflicts are the classic midnight failure.
6. Re-download the uploaded PDF and read it cold to confirm it is the file you meant.

Reverify each cycle

• Whether the year runs one deadline or two (FSE 2024 used two; 2025-2027 post one).
• The page budget and which ACM template revision is required.
• Supplementary handling, artifact-track timing, dual-submission wording, and any AI-disclosure rule — all cycle-volatile; none should be assumed stable.

Output format

[FSE submission status] ready / blocked / needs work
[Registration] title/abstract/authors/conflicts locked by the earlier deadline? yes/no
[Format] pages used (body/refs), ACM template compliance
[Anonymity] clean / leaks: <where>
[Open science] artifact link present? Data Availability statement present?
[Fix queue] <ordered, with owners and dates before the AoE cutoff>