Last Updated: December 2024
While FAccT welcomes papers that advance all areas related to the broad sociotechnical nature of computing (see the CFP for a long list of relevant topics), we ask submitting authors to select one or more focus areas that best describe their paper. These focus areas are used to match submissions with those Reviewers and ACs who have the most relevant expertise. Specifically, Reviewers and ACs select their own focus areas and may then bid on any paper that lists at least one of the focus areas they select.
Below we include a description of each focus area.
System development and deployment. This includes work concerned with the development and deployment of data, algorithms, models, systems, and applications, with the goal of making them, for example, more fair, just, safe, privacy preserving, accountable, transparent, explainable, inclusive, or ethical, including in specialized domains such as natural language processing, computer vision, health, and information retrieval.
Evaluations and evaluation practices. This includes papers that describe audits or evaluations of data, algorithms, models, systems, and applications to assess issues related to fairness, justice, safety, privacy, accountability, transparency, explainability, inclusiveness, ethics, or any risks or adverse impacts of existing computational systems on individuals, groups, and society. It also includes papers that introduce or examine evaluation metrics, measurements, or other risk identification or evaluation practices, both quantitative and qualitative. Papers that evaluate the cultural, environmental, social, or economic impact of computational systems may also be submitted to this track.
Experiences and interactions. This includes work examining human experiences, needs, perceptions, and interactions with real or envisioned computational systems in order to understand their impact and to inform FAccT-related policy and practice. It includes work on human-computer interaction, decision support and human-in-the-loop systems, algorithmic folk theory, visualization, participatory and deliberative methods, and studies of organizational and institutional practices.
Power and practice. This includes work that interrogates norms, practices, and power relations around data, computational systems, and related design, evaluation, and governance approaches by drawing insights from history, anthropology and sociology, cultural studies, and related fields.
Law and policy. This includes work examining, proposing, or discussing both public and private regulation, governance, and legal doctrines concerning the development, deployment, and use of computational systems. It also includes work interrogating the impact and effectiveness of these frameworks.
Normative foundations and implications. This includes work examining normative questions about data, computational systems, and related design, evaluation and governance practices by drawing insights from philosophy of science, epistemology, moral and political philosophy, science and technology studies, and related fields.