| name | sigir-submission |
| description | Use when auditing a SIGIR full or short paper before the deadline — the 9-page vs 4-page budgets with appendices counted inside, ACM sigconf anonymization, per-track OpenReview groups, the PC-member nomination duty, cross-track double-submission bans, AI-use disclosure, and desk-reject triage for the ACM SIGIR conference. |
SIGIR Submission
Run this audit before anything is uploaded to a SIGIR OpenReview group. SIGIR is a
multi-track venue where the same manuscript can be legal in one track and
desk-rejectable in another, so the audit starts with "which track is this PDF for?"
and only then checks format. Reopen the current edition's track page — every number
below is a 2026-cycle anchor (verified 2026-07-08, exact deadlines 待核实), not a rule.
The two-format trap
SIGIR's full and short formats are not a long and a short version of the same bar.
A 4-page short paper is a complete argument about one focused finding; a 9-page full
paper is expected to carry a rounded evidence program (multiple collections, ablations,
significance tests, efficiency notes). The most common self-inflicted wound is
submitting a compressed full paper as a short paper — reviewers see missing evidence,
not admirable focus.
| Check | Full papers | Short papers |
|---|
| Page budget (2026) | ≤ 9 pages, references excluded | ≤ 4 pages, references excluded |
| Appendices | Count inside the budget (2025 wording: everything except references) | Same — no appendix escape hatch |
| Template | ACM Primary Article Template, LaTeX sigconf / Word Interim | Same |
| Review | Double-blind, fully anonymized | Double-blind, fully anonymized |
| OpenReview group | Main conference group | Separate Short Papers Track group |
| PC duty | One author nominated as PC member per submission | Confirm on the current track page |
The appendix rule is the sharpest edge on this table: unlike NeurIPS-style venues,
SIGIR gives you no unlimited appendix after the references. Proofs, prompt listings,
extra tables — either they fit in the budget or they move to the cited repository.
Anonymization for IR papers specifically
Generic double-blind advice misses the leaks IR papers actually have:
- The system name. If your ranker is already public under the same name (arXiv,
a leaderboard, a plugin for Anserini/PyTerrier), the name itself de-anonymizes.
Rename for review or argue from the current policy page that preprints are allowed.
- Leaderboard submissions. MS MARCO / TREC-style leaderboards show team names and
dates. Do not cite your own leaderboard row in a way that only the submitting team
could.
- Proprietary query logs. "Queries sampled from our commercial search engine's
logs in country X" can identify the company. Genericize the description, keep the
statistics.
- Self-citations in third person; repository links anonymized (e.g., an
anonymous.4open.science mirror); PDF metadata stripped.
Policy gates (2026, source: submission-policies page)
- Parallel submission = desk reject, regardless of how the other venue decides.
- Cross-track double submission inside SIGIR is banned — e.g., the dataset you
submit as a Resource paper cannot also be the novel contribution of your full paper.
Decide which track owns each contribution before the abstract deadline.
- Generative-AI use must be disclosed; AI tools cannot be authors; SIGIR reserves
automated compliance checks. Assume your PDF will be machine-screened.
- ACM authorship policy applies: the author list is expected to be stable and human.
Desk-reject triage
| Trigger | Severity | Can it be fixed after the deadline? |
|---|
| Over budget (appendix counted in) | Desk reject | No |
| Wrong track's OpenReview group | Desk reject or forced withdrawal | Usually no |
| Identity leak (name, log, leaderboard) | Desk reject | No |
| Parallel submission discovered | Desk reject at any time | No |
| Same content in two SIGIR tracks | Both at risk | Only by withdrawing one first |
| Missing PC-member nomination | Chair follow-up / submission incomplete | Sometimes, briefly |
| No significance testing on close results | Review-stage damage | Only before the deadline |
Final-week sequence for a retrieval paper
- Freeze runs: regenerate every table from versioned run files (TREC-format
runs/*.trec) so the PDF, repository, and any leaderboard entry agree.
- Re-run the significance script last — copy-pasted p-values from stale runs are a
classic reviewer catch when the numbers moved.
- Compress into the page budget by demoting per-query analyses to the repository,
not by shrinking floats or tampering with
sigconf spacing.
- Anonymity sweep: PDF metadata, acknowledgments, repo URL, system name, log
provenance.
- Upload to the correct track group, complete the AI-disclosure and PC-nomination
fields, and verify the OpenReview abstract matches the PDF abstract.
pdfinfo paper.pdf | grep -iE "author|creator"
grep -inE "acknowledg|our (system|engine|company)" *.tex
grep -c "documentclass\[sigconf" main.tex
pdftotext paper.pdf - | grep -icE "p ?[<=] ?0\.05|t-test|significan"
Abstract-deadline gotchas
The abstract deadline (a week before the PDF in recent cycles) is a harder gate
than teams expect:
- Title, author list, and track are effectively frozen there; ACM authorship policy
makes later author changes painful and cross-track moves are usually impossible.
- The abstract text should be the PDF's abstract, not a placeholder — reviewers bid
on it, and a bait-and-switch abstract draws mismatched expertise.
- Conflicts-of-interest declarations and the PC-member nominee belong to this
stage; chasing a nominee's consent during PDF week is a self-inflicted crisis.
What this audit does not cover
Evidence quality lives in sigir-experiments; page-budget writing strategy in
sigir-writing-style and sigir-supplementary; track choice in
sigir-topic-selection. If the paper is a dataset or a replication, stop here and
re-route: Resources and Reproducibility have different budgets, different anonymity
regimes (Resources is single-anonymous), and different dates.
Output format
[SIGIR readiness] Ready / Needs fixes / Wrong track / Not ready
[Track + group] full / short + OpenReview group id
[Budget check] <pages used>/<budget>, appendix-inside-budget confirmed yes-no
[Anonymity risks] <system name / leaderboard / logs / metadata / links>
[Policy gates] parallel-submission, cross-track, AI-disclosure, PC-nomination status
[Fix order] <ordered blocking fixes>
[Reopen first] <current track page URL to re-verify dates and budgets>
