ACM FAccT Conference

Author Guide

Last Updated: October 2025

ACM FAccT encourages authors to submit their best work for inclusion in the conference proceedings, welcoming papers in all subject areas listed in the Call For Papers (CFP). Submissions are assessed through a rigorous, anonymous reviewing process. This guide should be read by all authors wishing to submit to the conference. It provides details of the reviewing process, applicable policies, formatting instructions, and responses to frequently asked questions. For specific deadlines, please refer to the CFP.

General Guidance

Papers will be evaluated based on scholarly criteria in their designated area, including

Authors are required to register their papers through the submission site by submitting a tentative title and abstract and specifying their submission’s focus area(s) by the Abstract Submission Deadline (this deadline and all following deadlines are listed on the Call for Papers). This process will enable the Program Chairs to better anticipate the submission load and to make necessary adjustments to the program committee to find reviewers with suitable expertise. Authors who do not register their submission by the Abstract Submission Deadline will be unable to submit their paper to FAccT. Program Chairs reserve the right to delete submissions with "placeholder" titles and abstracts (e.g., "TBA" or nothing) after the Abstract Submission Deadline.

Authors can change their preliminary titles, abstracts, and focus areas up until the Paper Submission Deadline, by which full papers must be submitted. However, the preliminary title and abstract should be representative of the work that is ultimately submitted, and the registered list of authors cannot be modified.

Review process. After submission, papers are assigned to Reviewers with expertise in relevant areas. Each paper is also assigned to an Area Chair who will oversee the review process for the paper. Please sign up to be a Reviewer or Area Chair, if you haven’t signed up yet! We encourage at least one author of every submitted paper to sign up to review.

After the initial reviewing period, these reviews will be shared with authors by the Preliminary Review Deadline, and there will be a short rebuttal period to allow the authors to raise any critical concerns they have with the reviews, clarify misunderstandings or factual errors, and signpost intended minor edits by the Rebuttal Deadline. Author responses and subsequent discussion among the reviewers will be incorporated by Area Chairs in their recommendations, which are then ratified by the Program Chairs. Papers will receive a recommendation from the Area Chairs for Accept, Revise, or Reject by the first Notification Deadline. Papers with the Accept recommendation may be asked to make minor changes while preparing the camera ready version of the paper. Papers with the Revise recommendation will be able to revise their paper to address the primary concerns of the Reviewers, as summarized and prioritized by the Area Chairs, by the Revision Deadline. Papers with Accept and papers with Revise will be allowed an extra content page (i.e., up to 15 pages, excluding references and Endmatter Sections).

Reviewers and Area Chairs will re-review the revision and provide an updated recommendation to the Program Committee. Authors will receive a final decision by the Final Notification Deadline, and authors of accepted papers will be expected to make any final edits while preparing the camera ready version of the paper by the Camera Ready Deadline.

Anonymity. FAccT uses a mutually anonymous review process. Authors must omit their names and affiliations from submissions, and avoid obvious identifying statements. For instance, citations to prior work from the authors should be made in the third person. This policy also applies to links to external sources, such as online material and code repositories, which should not contain identifying information. Moreover, Endmatters Sections which could contain identifying information (such as Author Contributions, Acknowledgements, Competing Interests, and Positionality Statement) should not be included at submission time. Submissions that do not comply with this policy may be rejected without review. FAccT maintains the confidentiality of submitted material. Upon acceptance, the titles, authorship, and abstracts of accepted papers will be released.

Note that submitting research for approval by authors' institutional ethics review body (IRB) may be necessary in some cases, but by itself may not be sufficient to address all ethical concerns. In cases where Reviewers, the Area Chairs, or the Program Chairs have concerns about the ethics of the work in a submission, the Program Chairs will consider the ethical soundness and justification of the submission, just as its methodological soundness is considered. The Program Chairs will take a broad view of what constitutes an ethical concern. You may be contacted during the review process if the Program Chairs have queries regarding ethical considerations.

Reviewing Process

The reviewing process proceeds linearly from submission to final decision over several months, as follows:

  1. Abstract Submission. Authors register their submissions by the abstract deadline, typically a week before the full paper submission. The full paper does not need to be uploaded at this stage.
  2. Final Submission. Full papers are submitted. At submission, authors select Focus Area designations, as well as indicate any conflicts of interest they have. Conflicts of interest include any current collaborators/students/authors/colleagues from the same institutions, and those who you have worked with in the last two years.
  3. Desk Rejection. Authors who fail to meet the submission requirements will have the papers desk rejected. Specifically, this includes violations of: anonymity, submission length and other formatting requirements, as well as ACM policies, such as the Code of Ethics, AI authorship, concurrent and dual submissions, etc.
  4. Initial Reviewing Period. Papers will be matched to multiple Reviewers (typically three) and one Area Chair with appropriate expertise based on the Focus Area designations selected by authors, the paper abstract, and a Reviewer and Area Chair bidding process. Reviewers are given several weeks to provide detailed assessments and feedback to the authors.
  5. Initial Discussion Period. After submitting their reviews, Reviewers engage in an initial discussion of the paper, facilitated by the Area Chair. This discussion period allows Reviewers to integrate their diverse expertise and address potential disagreements or inconsistencies between their reviews. This collaborative discussion helps Area Chairs identify key issues and write a preliminary Area Chair summary to guide authors during the rebuttal stage.
  6. Rebuttal. Reviews and the preliminary Area Chair summary are shared with the authors who are given a short period to write a rebuttal in response. The rebuttal is meant to clarify misunderstandings or errors in the review, not to debate substantive disagreements or introduce new data.
  7. Post-rebuttal Discussion and Review Updating. The Area Chair and Reviewers assigned to the paper discuss the response provided by the authors. If applicable, Reviewers update their reviews. They may or may not reach consensus on a recommendation for the paper.
  8. Meta-reviews and First Round Recommendations. A final recommendation is made by the Area Chair that incorporates the Reviewers' assessments, the rebuttal, and the discussion. The reasoning behind the recommendation is described in a meta-review.
  9. First Round Calibration. Program Chairs review all the meta-reviews and recommendations to ensure a consistent standard in decision-making has been reached, discuss selected papers with Area Chairs, and then make first round decisions—whether to Accept (with minor revisions), Revise, or Reject.
  10. First Round Notification. Authors are notified. Accepted papers move to finalizing camera-ready papers.
  11. Revision. Authors whose papers received the Revise decision are given time and an extra page (up to 15 content pages, excluding references and Endmatter Sections) to address reviewers' and Area Chairs' primary issues in the reviews, as summarized and prioritized in the meta-review.
  12. Re-reviews and Final Recommendations. The Area Chair and Reviewers assigned to the paper discuss the response provided by the authors. If applicable, Reviewers update their reviews and the Area Chairs update the meta-review. A final recommendation is made by the Area Chair that incorporates the Reviewers' updated assessments and the discussion.
  13. Final Calibration. Program Chairs review all the updated meta-reviews and recommendations to ensure a consistent standard in decision-making has been reached, discuss selected papers with Area Chairs, and then make final decisions—whether to Accept (with minor revisions) or Reject.
  14. Final Notification. Authors are notified. Accepted papers move to finalizing camera-ready papers.
  15. Camera-ready. Authors prepare the "camera-ready" version of the paper, to adhere to the ACM and TAPS publishing format guidelines.

Formatting Instructions

Papers that violate the following guidelines on length and formatting may be rejected without review.

Templates and Formatting
We will use the ACM TAPS workflow for formatting manuscripts, described here. Options and templates are available for both Word and LaTeX users.

If using LaTeX, please use the template given in sample-manuscript.tex when downloading the latest version of the ACM LaTeX documents. Please set the anonymous option for review. Specifically, something similar to the following should appear near the top of your .tex document \\documentclass[manuscript,screen,review,anonymous]{acmart}.

If the paper is accepted, authors will have to reformat their paper in the ACM format. Authors are encouraged to refer to the CHI Guide to an Accessible Submission for pointers on how to make their submission accessible.

Submission Length
Submitted papers must be up to 14 pages (including all figures and tables) in single-column format, plus unlimited pages for references. References should be in the ACM Reference Format for archival submissions. Please note that non-archival submissions may use whatever reference format you prefer (e.g., Bluebook).

An extra page is permitted for authors who wish to include endmatter statements on the last page of the paper (and this extra page can only be used for these statements). See the section on Endmatter Sections below for further details on which endmatter elements can be included already at the submission stage and which endmatter elements should only be included in the camera-ready submissions.

Appendices.
Appendices are allowed. Authors should include the appendices within the same PDF, submitting only one document, placing them at the end of the submission. The main paper should be self-contained and should be reviewable without reference to any appendices. Reviewers are not obligated to review the appendices.

Camera-ready Submissions.
Authors of accepted papers will be given the opportunity to make final edits to the paper. Accepted papers are allowed an additional page for content to address feedback raised by Reviewers (i.e., up to 15 pages of content, excluding References and Endmatter). Final versions of papers must meet the ACM formatting requirements for camera-ready submissions and should be uploaded by the Camera-ready Deadline or face withdrawal from the conference proceedings. Papers will be included in the ACM Digital library and appear on the FAccT website.

Policies and Research Integrity

Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct
Submitted papers are held to a high standard of ethical practice. The ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct provides the basis upon which ethical considerations are made. The code of ethics comprises seven principles: Contribute to society and to human well-being, acknowledging that all people are stakeholders in computing; Avoid harm; Be honest and trustworthy; Be fair and take action not to discriminate; Respect the work required to produce new ideas, inventions, creative works, and computing artifacts; Respect privacy; Honor confidentiality. Authors are encouraged to reflect on how these principles apply to their work.

Submitted papers will be flagged to the Program Chairs if Reviewers or ACs believe that they need further consideration in areas listed above, and specifically: improper treatment of human subjects or data annotators, including issues to do with fair pay; use of unethically collected datasets, datasets that have been retracted, or datasets not allowed to be used in the research context; potential negative downstream harms that require additional scrutiny or mitigation; environmental concerns; rights concerns; privacy concerns; safety or security concerns; legal concerns, including around copyright; dangerous materials and practices; warfare; discrimination, bias, and fairness issues; deception or harassment; and other topics of concern. Authors are encouraged to proactively address any such concerns directly in their paper (for instance, in an ethical considerations statement at the end of the paper).

Authorship and AI Writing Tools
Authors should refer to the April 2023 ACM Policy on Authorship and use of large language models (LLMs), and the associated SIGCHI blog post.

Human Subjects Research
For research involving human participants, please see the 2021 ACM publications policy on research involving humans.

Experiment Pre-registration
For research involving experimental work, FAccT supports the role and use of pre-registration of experiments and analyses. By pre-registration, we refer to the research practice of registering the types of experiment and methods without results before experimental work is done, and having this experimental protocol be logged. For authors who have pre-registered their work, please provide information on how to access the pre-registration outline if an anonymous version is available. Do not provide a link to any pre-registration material that would identify the authors as this is considered a violation of the anonymity policy. Further information on pre-registration and examples of registration websites can be found at The Center for Open Science and PLOS.

Concurrent and Dual Submission policy
You may not submit papers that are identical, or substantially similar to papers that are currently under review at another peer-reviewed conference or journal, have been previously published, or have been accepted for publication. Such submissions violate our concurrent submission policy and will be removed from submission. There are three main exceptions to this rule:

Preprints
Use of preprints is allowed. See the section on Self-Archiving and Posting Rights in the ACM Publication Rights & Licensing Policy.

Archival and Non-archival Submissions.
To support the participation of authors from disciplines that do not primarily publish research in conference proceedings (e.g., law, policy, social sciences, humanities), FAccT offers authors the choice of archival and non-archival paper submissions:

Authors must choose whether they are making an archival or non-archival submission at the time the paper is registered (at the abstract submission deadline). Changes to this submission type are not possible afterwards.

All submissions will have the same page length requirements and be judged by the same quality standards, regardless of whether the authors choose the archival or non-archival option. Regardless of norms in your primary discipline(s) and the choice to submit as archival or non-archival, papers submitted to FAccT are expected to be of publication-ready quality. For fields that typically publish in journals, submissions should be of the quality that would warrant a journal submission but may be shorter due to different page constraints. Reviewers will not be told whether submissions under review are archival, to avoid influencing their evaluations.

Authors of all accepted papers must present their work at the FAccT conference, regardless of whether their paper is archival or non-archival.

Endmatter Sections

Authors may include any or all of the following endmatter sections at the end of the paper if applicable: author contributions, acknowledgements, conflicts of interest, ethical considerations statement, adverse impacts statement, and positionality statement. These statements can be added on their own page in the paper and do not count towards the page limit. These sections are not meant for the discussion of limitations of your methodology, which should be addressed in the main body of the paper. Please note that some of these sections should not be included in the anonymous submission. In particular, this pertains to: Author Contributions, Acknowledgements, Competing Interests, and Positionality Statement.

Author Contributions
Should not be included in the anonymous submission
A statement that summarizes the different contributions of each of the authors to the paper. There are many approaches to contribution statements, and authors can choose an approach they prefer, e.g., CRediT.

Acknowledgements
Should not be included in the anonymous submission
A short statement that often recognizes sources of funding/funders or key resources that were provided and enabled this particular research and paper. These statements also acknowledge people who supported the research, but have not made contributions that meet the standard for authorship.

Competing Interests
Should not be included in the anonymous submission
A statement that explicitly notes sources of funding generally for authors, and notes any dual affiliations or other outside interests for transparency.

Positionality Statement
Should not be included in the anonymous submission
A short statement that summarizes how the background and experiences of the authors inform or shape the work. See this blog post on considerations and tradeoffs when writing positionality statements in research papers.

Ethical Considerations Statement.
Can be included at submission time
This statement is a description of the ethical concerns and potential adverse impacts that authors considered and mitigated while conducting the work. Authors should describe the ethical challenges they faced in their submission and how they addressed such challenges. In particular, submissions that (1) describe experiments with human subjectsusers and/or deployed systems (e.g., websites or apps), or (2) rely on sensitive user data (e.g., social network information) must adhere to precepts of ethical research and community norms. These include compliance with applicable laws and applicable professional ethical codes; respect for privacy; secure storage of sensitive data; voluntary and informed consent when appropriate; avoiding deceptive practices when not essential; beneficence and non-maleficence (maximizing the benefits to an individual or society while minimizing harm to the individual); risk mitigation; and post-hoc disclosure of audits. See also the section on Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct above. We also encourage authors to discuss any potential adverse or unintended impacts the work might have once published, and how they have mitigated those potential impacts.

Frequently Asked Questions

Am I able to change the author list after submission?
It is not possible to change the author list after the abstract submission deadline. Authors should be clear on the contributions of those who submit and have permission from all the authors to submit the paper.

Are appeals to decisions possible?
Decisions from the Program Chairs are final and no appeals are possible. Where there are concerns of misconduct, the Program Chairs welcome reports to be submitted to them for full investigation and assessment.

How are the best paper awards selected?
FAccT awards several best paper awards. These are selected by a review panel, using nominations and input from Reviewers, Area Chairs, and the Program Chairs.

Attending the conference.
Details of the conference, including information on visas, registration, accommodation, financial aid, and more will be available on the conference website. All accepted papers are expected to have at least one author that attends the conference in order for the paper to appear in the proceedings. Adjustments can be made for necessary and unforeseen circumstances. Contact the General Chairs in such cases for guidance.