| name | sigir-camera-ready |
| description | Use when an accepted SIGIR paper must become the ACM Digital Library version of record — de-anonymizing the sigconf source, CCS concepts and keywords, the e-rights form, TAPS source upload and proof checking, restoring real system and dataset names, and the April camera-ready window before the July conference. |
SIGIR Camera Ready
SIGIR publishes through ACM: the version of record is produced by ACM's pipeline
(e-rights, then TAPS) from your source files, and it appears in the Digital
Library as both PDF and HTML (SIGIR 2025's volume is DOI 10.1145/3726302). The 2026
camera-ready window sat in late April for the tracks whose dates were verifiable
(April 29, 2026 for Resources / Low Resource Environments); take your own track's
date from the acceptance email, and note the July conference leaves little slack.
What changes between the reviewed PDF and the record
| Item | Reviewed submission | Version of record |
|---|
| Document class | sigconf + anonymous/review options | sigconf with rights commands from TAPS |
| Authors | Hidden | Restored; order frozen before e-rights |
| System name | Possibly a review alias | Real name, consistent with the public repo |
| Dataset/log provenance | Genericized for anonymity | As precise as data agreements allow |
| Repository link | Anonymous mirror | Public, licensed, stable (archival DOI best) |
| Acknowledgments | Absent | Restored — and they cost body pages at SIGIR |
| CCS concepts + keywords | Often placeholders | Final; they drive DL search forever |
| Leaderboard references | Scrubbed | Restorable — align run IDs with the paper |
Two SIGIR-specific pressure points hide in that table:
- Acknowledgments and restored details consume the page budget, because SIGIR
counts everything except references inside the limit. If the camera-ready allowance
for your track is the same as submission (whether acceptance buys an extra page was
not verifiable for 2026 — 待核实), something you wrote must shrink to make room.
- The anonymity aliases must be unwound consistently. A paper that called its
system "ANON-RANK" in review must not leave one stale alias in a figure caption or
a run-file name cited in a table. Grep, don't skim.
The ACM production sequence
- e-rights: the contact author receives ACM's rights form; completing it stamps
the copyright block, so title and author list must be final first.
- TAPS upload: zip your LaTeX (or Word) source per the instructions in the
acceptance email. TAPS compiles the DL's PDF and HTML5 — HTML is where homemade
macros,
\vspace hacks, and missing figure files fail loudly.
- Proofs: check both renderings. Tables that were hand-tuned for two-column PDF
are the usual HTML casualties, and IR papers are table-heavy.
grep -rn "ANON\|anonym" *.tex sections/
grep -rn "4open\|anonymous.4open" *.tex
grep -rn "vspace\|renewcommand{\\\\baselinestretch}" *.tex
ls figures/ | wc -l && grep -c includegraphics *.tex
Digital Library metadata that outlives the conference
- CCS concepts: pick from the ACM taxonomy deliberately (e.g., Information
systems → Retrieval models and ranking / Evaluation of retrieval results). They are
the DL's routing layer for your paper's entire life.
- Keywords: include the terms IR searchers actually use — task name, collection
names, method family ("dense retrieval," "learning to rank," "conversational
search"). Your future citers search the DL and Google Scholar with these.
- Author name forms: match each author's existing DL record; inconsistent forms
split citation identities.
- ORCID and funding: attach ORCIDs; format grants the way the funder mandates.
- The abstract in TAPS metadata must equal the PDF abstract — the DL indexes metadata.
Artifacts at publication time
The camera-ready is the moment review-time artifacts become public commitments:
- Flip the repository public before the camera-ready deadline and test it from a
logged-out browser; the paper will cite it for decades.
- Freeze the exact run files behind every table (
runs/ with a manifest); IR
replication requests are usually "can you send the run file," and yes should be easy.
- If the paper introduced judgments, topics, or a corpus and it was not routed
through the Resources track, publish it with a license and a datasheet anyway —
the community treats missing licenses as unusable resources.
Worked example: absorbing review debts into the budget
An accepted full paper carries two commitments from the review phase: a promised
scope-limitation paragraph and a clarification of the tuning protocol. Camera-ready
also restores acknowledgments (~0.15 pp) and real provenance details (~0.1 pp).
With no verified extra page, the arithmetic forces trades:
- Review commitments land first — they are quasi-contractual and reviewers of
record may check.
- The restored acknowledgments displace the weakest analysis sentence-by-sentence,
not table-by-table: prose compresses, protocol does not.
- Nothing new enters: results and claims not seen by reviewers do not belong in
the version of record; they belong in the repository changelog or the next paper.
The heuristic: camera-ready pays debts and restores identity; it does not buy new
real estate.
Registration and presentation
Author registration by the camera-ready date was confirmed for the Resources track in
2026 (April 29); whether every accepted full/short paper requires a registered,
in-person presenting author — and the fee schedule — was not verifiable at build time
(待核实). Read the acceptance email as the controlling document, and budget for
Melbourne travel early: July is conference high season in the IR calendar.
Timeline discipline
- Week 0 (decision): settle author order; start e-rights; unwind aliases in source.
- Week 1: TAPS dry run with rights commands stubbed; fix class-file violations.
- Week 2: metadata pass (CCS, keywords, ORCID); repository public; proofs checked.
- Slack: TAPS support queues lengthen as thousands of ACM camera-readies converge —
finishing a week early is the only reliable mitigation.
Output format
[Camera-ready status] on-track / blocked-at-rights / blocked-at-TAPS / not started
[Page budget] <pages>/<track allowance> (allowance verified from acceptance email? y/n)
[De-anonymization] aliases unwound y/n, repo public y/n, provenance restored y/n
[Metadata] CCS final / keywords final / ORCIDs attached / abstract == PDF
[Artifacts] run files frozen / license present / archival DOI minted
[Registration] requirement confirmed from acceptance email? y/n (fees 待核实)
