ACM FAccT Conference

Author Guide

Last Updated: August 2026

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.

Please note two updates:

General Guidance

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

More information on these criteria can be found in the Sample Reviewer Form.

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 as well as focus area descriptions 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.

For FAccT 2027, there will be a new process for revision and re-review. In the initial decision notification, papers will be assigned Accept, Revise (major or minor), or Reject. Papers with the Accept recommendation may be asked to make minor changes while preparing the camera ready version of the paper. The papers with the Revise (major or minor) decision will have time to revise their submission to address the reviewers' feedback and concerns. Authors will also submit a rebuttal with their revised paper. Revised papers will receive a re-review from reviewers and Area chairs before a final decision is made. An extra page (up to 15 pages excluding references) will be allowed for papers in this stage.

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, by updating their OpenReview profile with institutional affiliations and other potential conflicts of interest. 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. Meta-reviews and Initial Recommendations. A recommendation is made by the Area Chair (Accept, Revise minor, Revise major, or Reject) that incorporates the Reviewers' assessments and the discussion. The reasoning behind the recommendation, including the primary issues to be addressed if a Revise decision is likely, is described in a meta-review.
  7. Initial 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 initial decisions—whether to Accept, Revise (major or minor), or Reject.
  8. Initial Notification. Authors are notified of the decision. Authors of Accept papers may be asked to make minor changes while preparing the camera-ready version. Authors of Revise papers proceed to the Revision and Rebuttal stage.
  9. Revision and Rebuttal. Authors whose papers received a Revise (major or minor) decision are given time to revise their submission to address the Reviewers' and Area Chair's feedback and concerns, as summarized and prioritized in the meta-review. Authors submit their revised paper together with a rebuttal explaining how the feedback was addressed. An extra page (up to 15 pages, excluding references and Endmatter Sections) is permitted for papers at this stage.
  10. Re-review and Final Recommendation. The Area Chair and Reviewers assigned to the paper re-review the revised paper and rebuttal, and discuss the changes made. In this process, the Area Chair may rely on the judgment of the Senior Area Chair to determine outcome. Reviewers update their reviews and the Area Chair updates the meta-review, culminating in a final recommendation.
  11. Final Calibration. Program Chairs and Senior Area 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.
  12. Final Notification. Authors receive a final decision by the Final Notification Deadline. Authors of accepted papers are expected to make any final edits while preparing the camera-ready version of the paper by the Camera Ready Deadline.
  13. Camera-ready and Poster. Authors prepare the "camera-ready" version of the paper, to adhere to the ACM and TAPS publishing format guidelines. Additionally, authors prepare a poster formatted presentation of the content of their accepted paper.

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. Options and templates are available for Overleaf, LaTeX, and Microsoft Word users. Please take special care to avoid formatting errors (especially when using Microsoft Word), as these will lead to automatic desk rejection. We strongly recommend using Overleaf and LaTeX in order to avoid formatting errors. Submissions should be in single-column format.

If using LaTeX, please use the template given in “sample-sigconf-authordraft.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.

For accepted papers, please refer to the Camera-Ready Instructions (link to be updated with calendar dates closer to the conference) for further guidance.

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. Note that there is now a required statement in the Endmatter disclosing your use of Generative AI (or not).

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.

Presentation Instructions.
Authors of accepted papers presenting at FAccT will be asked to ensure that their slides are designed with accessibility in mind. Presenters should follow established accessibility guidelines - such as the SIGACCESS Accessible Presentation Guide - to support participants with diverse needs. This includes, for example, using high-contrast visuals, readable font sizes, and clear verbal descriptions of visual content. Further details will follow closer to the conference dates.

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:

  1. Contribute to society and to human well-being, acknowledging that all people are stakeholders in computing
  2. Avoid harm
  3. Be honest and trustworthy
  4. Be fair and take action not to discriminate
  5. Respect the work required to produce new ideas, inventions, creative works, and computing artifacts
  6. Respect privacy
  7. 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 May 2026 ACM Policy on Authorship and use of large language models (LLMs), and the associated SIGCHI blog post. Building on the ACM policy, given the values of the conference, FAccT prohibits the use of LLMs to generate text for publications, although authors may use it to assist with formatting (e.g., tables), or assist with grammar or fluency of writing, provided they disclose this usage.

Individual authors will be considered non-delegably responsible for the content of their submitted papers. This responsibility cannot be transferred to, or shared with, any LLM or AI system. Any lack of veracity in content that is surfaced in the Reviewing Process will be considered grounds for desk rejection.

To help reviewers evaluate the authors’ contributions in submissions, given issues other conferences have experienced with LLM-generated submissions, all authors are required to include a generative AI usage statement as part of their anonymized submission, explaining whether and how they used generative AI in the writing of the paper (e.g., to rewrite passages for grammatical changes). This information should be included as an endmatter section, and it does not count against the page limit.

If you did not use generative AI in the writing of the paper, you must still include this statement in the Endmatter.

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

All authors must include a Generative AI Usage Statement. They also 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 and 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 where the information shared risks identifying one or more of the authors. In particular, this pertains to: Author Contributions, Acknowledgements, Competing Interests, and Positionality Statement.

Generative AI Usage Statement
Required, must be included at submission time
A statement from all authors regarding whether generative AI tools (including but not limited to LLMs) were used during manuscript preparation. If such tools were used, the statement should identify the tool (e.g., ChatGPT, version X) and briefly describe the tasks it supported (e.g., grammar and style editing, summarization, figure or table structuring). Building on the ACM policy, given the values of the conference, FAccT prohibits the use of LLMs to generate text for publications. Use of generative AI does not diminish author responsibility for the originality, accuracy, or integrity of the manuscript. Authors retain full responsibility for the correctness, veracity, and reliability of all content, including references and citations, and are accountable for verifying the accuracy, authenticity, and appropriate attribution of all information included in the work. Failure to disclose the use of generative AI tools is grounds for desk rejection.

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
A short statement that summarizes how the background and experiences of the authors inform or shape the work. This should not be included in the anonymous submission if the information shared might identify the authors. See this blog post on considerations and tradeoffs when writing positionality statements in research papers. See this section of the UK’s AI Ethics and Governance in Practice guidance for details on how to carry out positionality reflection.

Ethical Considerations Statement.
Should 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 subjects/users 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; respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms; 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 register for, attend, and present the work at the conference for the paper to appear in the conference proceedings. The expectation is to present the work in-person, but an option for virtual presentation will be available for authors who cannot attend in person. Adjustments can be made for necessary and unforeseen circumstances. Contact the General Chairs in such cases for guidance.

Can I submit a paper that has already been accepted or published at a journal to the non-archival track?
As outlined in exception 3 in the Concurrent and Dual Submission Policy described above, authors may submit papers that are currently under review at a journal or that they plan to submit to a journal to the non-archival track. However, authors may not submit papers to this track if they have already been accepted or published in a journal as of the submission deadline.

Can I submit a paper to the non-archival track if I plan to submit it to another archival conference?
No. The non-archival track is intended for authors from fields that typically publish in journals.

My paper is under review at CHI or another conference with a notification date between FAccT's abstract submission deadline and paper submission deadline. May I register an abstract?
Yes, you may register an abstract. However, you must withdraw your paper from FAccT before the full submission deadline if it is accepted or will still be under review past the full submission deadline.

Does the appendix count towards the page limit?
No. You may include an appendix of any length in your submission. However, reviewers are not obligated to read or review the appendix.

Can I remove the copyright and bottom-page information from the FAccT LaTeX template?
Yes, this is allowed for the initial paper submission.

ACM Publication Policies

By submitting your article to an ACM Publication, you are hereby acknowledging that you and your co-authors are subject to all ACM Publications Policies, including ACM's new Publications Policy on Research Involving Human Participants and Subjects. Alleged violations of this policy or any ACM Publications Policy will be investigated by ACM and may result in a full retraction of your paper, in addition to other potential penalties, as per ACM Publications Policy.

ORCID ID

Please ensure that you and your co-authors obtain an ORCID ID so you can complete the publishing process for your accepted paper. ACM has been involved in ORCID from the start and we have recently made a commitment to collect ORCID IDs from all of our published authors. We are committed to improve author discoverability, ensure proper attribution and contribute to ongoing community efforts around name normalization; your ORCID ID will help in these efforts.

Open Access

Important update on ACMs new open access publishing model for 2026 ACM Conferences! Starting January 1, 2026, ACM will fully transition to Open Access. All ACM publications, including those from ACM-sponsored conferences, will be 100% Open Access. Authors will have two primary options for publishing Open Access articles with ACM: the ACM Open institutional model or by paying Article Processing Charges (APCs). With over 2,600 institutions already part of ACM Open, the majority of ACM-sponsored conference papers will not require APCs from authors or conferences (currently, around 76%).

Authors from institutions not participating in ACM Open will need to pay an APC to publish their papers, unless they qualify for a financial waiver. To find out whether an APC applies to your article, please consult the list of participating institutions in ACM Open and review the https://www.acm.org/publications/policies/policy-on-discretionary-open-access-apc-waivers. Keep in mind that waivers are rare and are granted based on specific criteria set by ACM.

Understanding that this change could present financial challenges, ACM has approved a temporary subsidy for 2026 to ease the transition and allow more time for institutions to join ACM Open. The subsidy offered:

This represented a 65% discount, funded directly by ACM. Authors were encouraged to help advocate for their institutions to join ACM Open during this transition period.

This temporary subsidized pricing applied to all conferences scheduled for 2026. We will update the details of any 2027 subsidy as this information becomes available.