--- 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 1. **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. 2. **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. 3. **Proofs**: check both renderings. Tables that were hand-tuned for two-column PDF are the usual HTML casualties, and IR papers are table-heavy. ```bash # Sweep before zipping for TAPS grep -rn "ANON\|anonym" *.tex sections/ # stale review aliases grep -rn "4open\|anonymous.4open" *.tex # anonymous mirror still linked? grep -rn "vspace\|renewcommand{\\\\baselinestretch}" *.tex # spacing hacks ls figures/ | wc -l && grep -c includegraphics *.tex # figure inventory match ``` ## 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: 1. Review commitments land first — they are quasi-contractual and reviewers of record may check. 2. The restored acknowledgments displace the weakest analysis sentence-by-sentence, not table-by-table: prose compresses, protocol does not. 3. 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 ```text [Camera-ready status] on-track / blocked-at-rights / blocked-at-TAPS / not started [Page budget] / (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) ```