\documentclass[sigconf]{acmart}. Submissions that modify the official ACM conference template in any way will be desk-rejected.Submissions (both abstract and paper) should be prepared for double-blind review, i.e., without author names or other identifying material. The submission system requests information about the authors. This information will not be given to the reviewers. Authors should refer to themselves in the third person when citing their own work. Authors should under no circumstances reveal their identity or affiliation through any side channels, including but not limited to the metadata of the submitted PDF files, their prior work, or acronyms of systems which have already been released to the public. If you are improving upon your prior work, refer to your prior work in the third person and include a full citation for the work in the bibliography. For example, if you are building on your own prior work, you would say something like: “While the authors of~\cite{your prior work } did X, Y, and Z, this paper additionally does W, and is therefore much better.” Do NOT omit or anonymize references for blind review. The only exceptions for your own prior work are discussed later in the sections on arXiv Submissions and on Concurrent Submissions and Workshops.
If authors have any doubts on whether any aspect of their submission violates anonymity they should contact the Program Co-Chairs. Authors may contact only the Program Co-Chairs for any matters regarding submitted papers during and after the review process. Contacting PC or ERC members about submitted paper(s) is an ethical violation and grounds for immediate rejection of the paper.
All authors of the paper must be declared upfront. The addition or removal of authors once the paper is accepted is not allowed since it potentially undermines the goal of eliminating conflicts for reviewer assignment.
Authors must adhere to the ACM’s guidelines regarding the use and disclosure of content generated by artificial intelligence (AI).
Authors should indicate specific topics covered by the paper on the submission page. If you are unsure whether your paper falls within the scope of the conference, please check with the Program Co-Chairs — ICS is a broad, multidisciplinary conference and encourages new topics.
Authors must register all conflicts on the paper submission site. Conflicts are needed to ensure appropriate assignment of reviewers. If a paper is found to have an undeclared conflict that causes a problem OR if a paper is found to declare false conflicts in order to abuse or `game’ the review system, the paper may be rejected.
Please declare a conflict of interest with the following people for any author of your paper. A conflict occurs in the following cases:
`Service’ collaborations, such as co-authoring a report for a professional organization, serving on a program committee, or co-presenting tutorials, do not themselves create a conflict of interest. Co-authoring a paper that is a compendium of various projects with no true collaboration among the projects does not constitute a conflict among the authors of the different projects. On the other hand, there may be others not covered by the above with whom you believe a COI exists, for example, an ongoing collaboration which has not yet resulted in the creation of a paper or proposal. Please report such COIs; however, you may be asked to justify them. Please be reasonable. For example, you cannot declare a COI with a reviewer just because that reviewer works on topics similar to or related to those in your paper. The Program Co-Chairs may contact co-authors to explain a COI if its origin is unclear.
Most reviews will be solicited among the members of the PC, but other members from the community may also write reviews. Please declare all conflicts (not just restricted to the PC) on the submission form. When in doubt, contact the Program Co-Chairs.
Authors may submit their work to ICS 2026 for publication even if the paper has been submitted to or currently appears on arXiv. However, please do recognize that arXiv submissions cause serious issues with the double-blind review process. The PC chair will advise the PC members not to consider arXiv submissions in their evaluation. However, we encourage the authors to reduce the possibility of their name being disclosed. While there is no magical solution to hide from the power of web search in locating arXiv papers, we encourage authors to reduce similarity to arXiv submissions where possible.
By submitting a manuscript to ICS 2026, the authors guarantee that the manuscript has not been previously published or accepted for publication in a substantially similar form in any conference, journal, or the archived proceedings of a workshop (e.g., in the ACM/IEEE digital libraries) — see exceptions below. The authors also guarantee that no paper that contains significant overlap with the contributions of the submitted paper will be under review for any other conference or journal or an archived proceedings of a workshop during the review period. Violation of any of these conditions will lead to rejection.
The only exceptions to the above rules are for the authors’ own papers in (1) workshops without archived proceedings such as in the ACM/IEEE digital libraries (or where the authors chose not to have their paper appear in the archived proceedings), or (2) venues such as IEEE CAL or arXiv where there is an explicit policy that such publication does not preclude longer conference submissions. In all such cases, the submitted manuscript may ignore the above work to preserve author anonymity. This information must, however, be provided on the submission form — the Program Co-Chairs will make this information available to reviewers if it becomes necessary to ensure a fair review. As always, if you are in doubt, it is best to contact the Program Co-Chairs. Finally, we also note that the ACM Plagiarism Policy covers a range of ethical issues concerning the misrepresentation of other works or one’s own work.
Authors will be notified of acceptance or rejection on the Decision Notification Date. At this point, contact authors of accepted papers will receive instructions on how to prepare and submit a final version by the Camera-Ready Deadline.
AUTHORS TAKE NOTE: The official publication date is the date the proceedings are made available in the ACM Digital Library. This date may be up to two weeks prior to the first day of the conference. The official publication date may affect the deadline for any patent filings related to published work. (For those rare conferences whose proceedings are published in the ACM Digital Library after the conference is over, the official publication date remains the first day of the conference.)
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 1,800 institutions already part of ACM Open, the majority of ACM-sponsored conference papers will not require APCs from authors or conferences (currently, around 70-75%).
Authors from institutions not participating in ACM Open will need to pay an APC to publish their papers, unless they qualify for a financial or discretionary waiver. To find out whether an APC applies to your article, please consult the list of participating institutions in ACM Open and review the APC Waivers and Discounts Policy. 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 will offer:
This represents a 65% discount, funded directly by ACM. Authors are encouraged to help advocate for their institutions to join ACM Open during this transition period.
This temporary subsidized pricing will apply to all conferences scheduled for 2026.
Authors are required to present their work in a scheduled session with other ICS Papers. Papers that are not presented in person at the conference may be removed from the ACM Digital Library.
In the case of authors who may require visas to enter the UK to attend the conference, we encourage them to apply for them early (e.g., at submission time). Please, have in mind that in the unfortunate event that authors do not receive visas on time for the conference, they will be required to provide a proof of the pending or rejected visa application. More details will be provided on this matter.
Papers accepted for this conference will be published in the ACM proceedings. ACM’s publication policy is as follows.
Elements in this document were adapted from those of the previous ICS conferences, the Program Co-Chairs of which we wish to thank.