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Publishing Your Accepted C&C’22 Submission

The authors of all submissions accepted to C&C’22 will need to go through a process of up to 3 more steps to transform the single-column submission into the double-column format used for the C&C’22 proceedings. This page describes these 3 steps, and recaps the 2 undertaken to reach this stage.

During the next 3 steps, the authors can continue to work in Microsoft Word, Overleaf or LaTeX. If you have a choice, we recommend LaTeX, as it is quicker and easier.

An overview of the C&C’22 publication process

The remaining steps of the process, steps 3, 4 and 5, are shown as a flow diagram below. The activities that the author(s) undertake in each step are coloured.

 

Steps 1 & 2: The process so far

So far, you have completed steps 1 and 2.

During step 1, all authors should have prepared their manuscripts for review in a single column format. Those of you using Microsoft Word should have used the Submission Template (Review Submission Format). Authors working in LaTeX should have used the latest version of the Primary Article Template – LaTeX, and used the “manuscript” call to create a single column format.

Note that the remaining 3 steps of the publication process assume that the above templates have been used. If you have not used them, you are likely to encounter more problems during publication. Therefore, you must re-import your submission into the correct relevant template, before starting step 3.

During Step 2, all authors submitted their papers, pictorials, artwork reports, posters, tool demos and graduate student symposium submissions for review.

Now, your submission has been accepted. Again, congratulations. Please proceed to Step 3.

In addition to the guidance that follows, the ACM provides a video to guide authors through its publication process. You can view this video here.

 

Step 3: Revising your submission in response to the reviewer comments

The acceptance email that you received from the track co-chairs will have included feedback from the reviewers and associate chairs. In this step, you need to:

  • Produce and upload a revised version of your submission, based on this feedback, then;
  • Complete the ACM’s e-Rights form
 

Step 3.1: Revising your submission

Start the step by producing a revised version of your submission, to address all relevant reviewer feedback and requests. Please note that this revised version should use the same (and hopefully correct) template that you used for the submission. However, in this step, please de-anonymize the revised version.

It is important that you DO NOT make any other changes the submission format at this stage. Focus only on your submission’s content. If you are working in Microsoft Word, your submission will look like something like this:

Furthermore, if your submission was conditionally accepted, you will also need to prepare a separate document that described the changes made to your submission.

Step 3.2: Uploading your revised submission into PCS

Once your revised submission is ready, you will need to upload it again to PCS, as a PDF file. Generate this PDF file from your revised submission in the original template. Check that the paper title, abstract, and all author information entered into the PCS forms are correct and match exactly what is in the submission. If your submission was conditionally accepted, also upload the document describing the changes made to your submission as a second PDF file. The deadline for submitting the revised submission to PCS is TBD.

The C&C’22 co-chairs of your submission track will then check your submission. This might take a little time, so don’t worry. You will receive an email if any further changes are needed. If no changes are needed, the co-chairs will authorize the submission for publication.

Step 3.3: Receiving and revising your ACM e-Rights form

Once the co-chairs authorize the submission for publication, you will receive an automatically-generated email from the ACM e-Rights system. The ACM e-Rights form will only be sent to the contact author, so it is important that this person is able to respond to emails and complete the form. This email will come from rightsreview@acm.org. Please remain alert for this email as it may be sent to spam.

The contact author needs to complete the ACM e-Rights form as soon as possible. Note that it is NOT POSSIBLE to progress to steps 4 or 5 of the publications process until the ACM’s e-Rights form is complete. To give yourselves as much time as possible to finalize the publication, complete this form as soon as possible.

When completing the ACM e-Rights form, ensure that information such as the paper title, authors names, affiliations and emails match exactly how you want this to appear on your final publication. Any mismatches could delay the publication of your submission.

For any issues with ACM e-Rights form, please contact rightsreview@hq.acm.org.

Once you have completed the form, the ACM’s publication system, called TAPS, will send an automatically-generated email to the contact author to invite you to begin the final step(s) of the publication process. Do not panic if you do not receive this email straightaway. In our experience, it can take over 24 hours for the ACM e-Rights system to communicate with TAPS. The email will come from tapsadmin@aptaracorp.awsapps.com. Again, please remain alert after your acceptance notification as this email may be sent to spam. Of course, if you do not receive an email after several days, let us know, and we will investigate.

At this point, your publications process can follow one of two processes. One is applied to all types of submissions apart from pictorials. The other is applied only to pictorials. Please note your type of submission, and follow the correct process.

 

Step 4: Preparing your paper, artwork, poster, technical demonstration and GSS submission, using Microsoft Word

If you an author of a paper, artwork, poster, technical demonstration or GSS submission and used LaTeX, proceed directly to Step 5.

Step 4.1: Attaching ACM Primary Article Template to your submission

However, if you are an author using Microsoft Word, you will need to download the ACM Primary Article Template – Microsoft Word. Please choose the correct template version based on your platform – MAC 2011, MAC 2016, or Windows – and save the .zip file to your local machine. Then open the zip file and save the template file to your machine.

Note that this ‘template’ is something different to the submission ‘template’ described in Step 1. The purpose of the new template is to manage the submission’s formatting for publication, by attaching it to the file containing your submission.

Attach the downloaded template to your accepted submission. To do this, follow the relevant section of the first three pages of these instructions from the ACM. In our experience, this task should be relatively straightforward.

Step 4.2: Preparing your submission for validation in TAPS

Once the template is attached to your submission, you will need prepare the submission for validation, prior to input into TAPS. TAPS requires each input Microsoft Word document to be formatted correctly. Therefore, you are required to check the formatting of your submission, and run a series of macros to validate the formatting. To do this, follow the guidelines presented on the last three pages of these instructions from the ACM.

A macro in Microsoft Word is a series of automated commands. The macros used in this step that have been developed by the ACM and recorded in the template for you to run, during this step. The macros have been written in order to validate the formatting of your submission, so that it can be input effectively into TAPS.

Please note that, at this stage, your submission will still be a single-column document. What you are doing is preparing your single-column document for input into TAPS. TAPS will take this input, then automatically generate an optimised, double-column version of it in PDF and HTML. It is this auto-generated double-column version that will be your camera-ready submission that will appear in the C&C’22 conference proceedings. Moreover, the new output formats provide enhanced accessibility, responsive formatting, and reusable components (i.e., extractable math) within the HTML output.

Please note. To prepare the single-column document for input into TAPS, the macros will make changes to your single-column document that you might think are incorrect. They will, for example, restyle all of your references. When you see these changes, do not panic. More importantly, do not try to change them back to the original style, as this will cause errors. The new styles are all part of the pre-processing needed to pass your submission through TAPS. Your revised submission will look something like the following. The left image shows the first page in outline view, and the right image shows the reformatted references in print view.

In our experience, preparing a Microsoft Word submission for input into the TAPS system can take a little time. It can also sometimes be a little frustrating. Some of the problems that can happen are due to some limitations of Microsoft Word. However, you can reduce these problems significantly by adhering rigidly to the Submission Template (Review Submission Format). For example, use the captions style for all captions, and tag all images as images.

Once you have run the Manuscript Validation macro (found under the “ACM Templates” menu) and your submission does not have any errors, you will receive a message stating that the process is completed successfully, and you can proceed to Step 5.

For any technical issues with the Word or LaTeX templates, please contact acmtexsupport@aptaracorp.com.

And remember – we are here to help – so also do reach out to the C&C’22 publications team if there are any issues.

 

Step 5: Submitting your paper, artwork, poster, technical demonstration and GSS submission to TAPS

You can now submit your Microsoft Word or LaTeX submission to TAPS using the unique link in the email that you received from tapsadmin@aptaracorp.awsapps.com at the end of step 3. This is the email that you received after completing the ACM e-Rights form).

It is important to note that you will need to submit more than just the file. The submission will include a finalized source file set composed of your single-column submission and other file such as figure images. To know what to submit, and how, download and follow these instructions from the ACM.

If you have followed the instructions, TAPS will process your paper and auto-generate proofs of your article for your review. Your camera-ready proofs will look something like the paper below. The deadline for completing this process is TBD, although the publication chair will be chasing authors to complete before this date.

If you need to make corrections to the output in TAPS, you MUST revise the file which was uploaded to TAPS. Do not reupload new versions of your locally kept source files. Likewise, do not update the version in PCS.

The version submitted to TAPS will be the official version that is entered into the ACM Digital Library.

Please note that the TAPS process can take several days to respond, after you make the submission. It is possible that there is a backlog of papers that need processing. It is also possible that the TAPS team are making some simple corrections to your submitted file, so that the production of the official version of the paper is possible. Our advice is to give the TAPS team up to 72 hours after submission, before contacting the C&C’22 team.

For any questions regarding the overall publication process and its deadlines, please contact publication2022@cc.acm.org.

For technical assistance when using TAPS, please contact confsupport@aptaracorp.com.

If you are an author of a paper, artwork, poster, technical demonstration or GSS submission, the publications process ends here.

Step 6: Preparing your pictorial

Upon notification of acceptance, you will produce the publication version of your submission. Unlike other forms of submission, pictorials should be published using the same templates that were provided for the submission. ACM is currently moving to a new publications workflow that seeks to make papers more accessible, and pictorials authors are required to be sure that they produce accessible work. Please be sure that “Enable Accessibility and Reflow with tagged Adobe PDF” is checked when you create your PDF submissions file. Please be sure that all images have correct associated Alt Text. Please see:

Instructions for inDesign

Instructions for Word or PowerPoint

Upload your final source files and PDF version of the pictorial to PCS. Ensure that all the information, such as the paper title, abstract, and author names and affiliations listed in the PCS form are correct and match exactly the content of the paper as requested. There is no Step 4 for pictorials publication.

For all questions regarding the publication process, please contact publication2022@cc.acm.org.

LaTeX Collaborative Authoring Tool on Overleaf Platform

ACM has partnered with Overleaf, a free cloud-based, collaborative authoring tool, to provide an ACM LaTeX authoring template.

  • Overleaf is a collaborative platform: Authors can easily invite colleagues to collaborate on their documents. 
  • Authors can write using ‘Rich Text mode’ or regular ‘Source Mode.’ This is useful for cross-disciplinary collaboration in the cases where some authors prefer to write in LaTeX while others might prefer a Word processing format. 
  • The platform automatically compiles the document while an author writes, so the author can see what the finished file will look like in real time.  
  • The template allows authors to submit manuscripts easily to ACM from within the Overleaf platform.
 

The ACM LaTeX template on Overleaf platform is available to all ACM authors  at https://www.overleaf.com/gallery/tagged/acm-official#.WOuOk2e1taQ

Best Practices

If you are a Microsoft Word user, ACM has been working hard to create a usable and accessible experience for Microsoft Word authors, while adding new features to archival formats.

If you are a LaTeX user, ACM continues to revise the Primary Article Templates for LaTeX authors, to improve their usability, functionality, and accessibility. To ensure 100% compatibility with The ACM Publishing System (TAPS), please restrict the use of packages to the list of approved LaTeX packages when using the Primary Article Template to your document.

Please see the ACM’s best practices guidelines for Microsoft Word, LaTeX, and The ACM Publishing System (TAPS). These have been compiled and will be updated regularly to serve as a reference to help authors prepare their text for publication by the most efficient means possible.

If you wish to provide feedback on the templates, documentation, or workflow, please contact production@hq.acm.org:

  1. For Microsoft Word best practices, please see embedded instructions within the formatted 2-column example of the submission template which includes alt-text for floats
  2. LaTeX best practices; also available in PDF
  3. The ACM Publishing System (TAPS) best practices; also available in PDF
 

Accessibility

ACM is committed to publishing in an accessible format (https://www.acm.org/accessibility) that permits all its readers to have the content presented to them in a thorough and useful way. ACM needs the assistance of its authors to help achieve this goal. It is important that ACM authors provide descriptions for figures in their content so that ACM readers with visual impairment can be given equivalent text-based information for images. Figure descriptions are complementary to figure captions and should not repeat the same information. Refer to writing figure descriptions for guidance on writing descriptions and insert them into your manuscript in different versions of Word.

Seeking Help

Help is always available.

More examples of formatted submissions to last year’s C&C conference can be found here.

If you have specific questions, or are seeking help, to format your submission correctly from the C&C22 publications team, you are asked to fill out the form on the publication support portal here. The publications team will respond to requests made via this system as quickly as possible. You can also write an email to support@publication2022.hipporello.net, but we prefer that you use the system that has been put in place.

You can also put your specific questions or seek help about how to format your submission correctly to the ACM support team directly at acmtexsupport@aptaracorp.com . However, the ACM support team handle multiple conferences, and might not respond until closer to the deadline to complete the C&C22 publication process.

ACM Production Workflow Background

Microsoft Word: ACM has been working hard to create a usable and accessible experience for Microsoft Word authors. It has completely changed it approach to the production process to achieve ACM’s goal of a publication portfolio available in flexible formats with accessibility features. More information about the motivation behind this change and how we prepare publications can be found at https://www.acm.org/articles/pubs-newsletter/2019/blue-diamond-mar-2019#3.

Working with volunteers from the SIG and journal communities, ACM has developed a new, easier to use Microsoft Word authoring format and workflow that completely replaces the previous formats that were difficult and unusable. This new approach enables authors to concentrate on their content rather than print output formatting, and alleviates the time needed to prepare the text for submission.

LaTeX: ACM continues to revise the Primary Article Templates to improve usability, functionality, and accessibility as needed. Please review the Primary Article Templates documentation in section 2 of this page for the latest version and update history. To ensure 100% compatibility with The ACM Publishing System (TAPS), please restrict the use of packages to the list of approved LaTeX packages when using the Primary Article Template to your document. The approved package webpage also provides information on how to submit additional LaTeX packages for review and adoption.

Should you have any questions or issues going through the below steps, please contact support at acmtexsupport@aptaracorp.com for both LaTeX and Microsoft Word inquiries.