| name | facct-submission |
| description | Use when auditing an ACM FAccT submission for OpenReview readiness — the mandatory abstract-registration gate with focus-area selection, the acmart anonymous/review PDF, the 14-page (+1 endmatter) budget, mutual anonymity, the required Generative AI Usage Statement and optional ethics/adverse-impacts statements, archival vs non-archival choice, and desk-reject triage before the deadline. |
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:
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
- Freeze the body early; endmatter statements can be drafted in parallel.
- Register title/abstract/authors/focus areas well before the abstract gate.
- Write the Generative AI Usage Statement; draft Ethical Considerations and Adverse Impacts.
- Run the mutual-anonymity checks on the final PDF and archive — and confirm positionality/acks
are out.
- 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.
- 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>
