Technical Papers Frequently Asked Questions

What types of papers should be submitted to SIGGRAPH 2021?

We are looking for high-quality research papers that cover a broad spectrum of areas including but not limited to animation, simulation, imaging, geometry, modeling, rendering, human-computer interaction, haptics, fabrication, robotics, visualization, audio, optics, programming languages, and immersive experiences. We value a diverse set of contributions such as AI techniques, algorithms, perceptual studies, systems, benchmarks, and applications. We welcome fundamental ideas as well as applied contributions to the domains of entertainment, games, scientific imaging, medical applications, design, photography, fashion, architecture, communication, forensics, and more. Last but not least, we encourage creative and original submissions that define their own new area: the scientific excellence of the ideas is the predominant acceptance criterion.

How do I decide whether to submit my work as a Technical Paper, a Talk, or a Poster?

The Technical Papers program is the most competitive of these three categories. Technical Papers present the opportunity to work out your ideas at greater length and describe them in a citable archive. SIGGRAPH Talks and Posters provide an opportunity to disseminate ideas and get feedback from colleagues but do not represent a citable research paper. Authors of accepted Technical Papers will present their work during the Technical Papers Fast Forward (30-seconds) and a presentation at SIGGRAPH 2021, and also will have the opportunity to gain further exposure for their work as part of the Posters and Labs programs.

If I have previously presented a Talk or Poster on my topic, or I have an online report about it already available on arXiv, can I then submit a full Technical Paper?

Yes. Authors of a prepublication (Talk, Poster, technical report, thesis, etc.) can later submit a full Technical Paper on the topic. However, other authors of submitted Technical Papers must consider such prepublications as non-peer-reviewed prior art and cite them as such. See Submission Policy for more information on plagiarism and prior art.

Can I submit a Technical Paper and submit the same work to the General Submission process or to Posters?

SIGGRAPH 2021 does not allow simultaneous submission to the Technical Papers and Talks tracks, though it does allow content related to a Technical Papers submission to also be submitted to the other General Submission venues. The General Submission form has a checkbox to indicate work submitted elsewhere. Please check this box and explain that the work was submitted as a Technical Paper for SIGGRAPH 2021.

Papers rejected from the SIGGRAPH 2021 Technical Papers program may be submitted as Posters. Accepted SIGGRAPH 2021 Technical Papers also will be given the opportunity to present their work in the Posters program.

Please explain the different Technical Papers deadlines.

There are three deadlines in the submission process of a paper to the Technical Papers program.

Of course, contributors are strongly advised to complete everything prior to the first deadline, but if you wish to wait until the final hours (and bear the risk of having to deal with hard-to-reach web servers), please read on.

Submission Form and Conflicts Deadline (Stage 1), Wednesday, 27 January 2021, 22:00 GMT/UTC

By the submission form/COI deadline, you must have created the submission form, entered the complete list of co-authors and their affiliations, and had each co-author specify or update a complete list of their conflicts of interest.

Paper Deadline (Stage 2), Thursday, 28 January 2021, 22:00 GMT/UTC

By the paper deadline, you must have completed the following requirements:

• All basic information about the submission (title, abstract, author list, etc.) must be finalized.
• Either the submission materials (paper PDF, optional video, and optional supplemental materials) must be uploaded, or the MD5 checksums of all the submission materials must be provided. The MD5 option will be required in the final hours before the deadline to lighten the web server load.
• If you are shipping physical supplemental materials for review, six copies must arrive by Thursday, 28 January.

Upload Deadline, Friday, 29 January 2021, 22:00 GMT/UTC

Finally, if you uploaded a MD5 checksum by the Stage 2 deadline, you must upload the matching submission materials by the upload deadline. For more information about this MD5 option, please see the following question regarding MD5 checksums.

What is the deal with MD5 checksums?

If you upload all your files well before the deadline, you can ignore the MD5 checksum.

If you are uploading in the last few hours before the submission deadline, server response may be slow. To make the deadline, you can then upload just the MD5 checksum for your files. For each MD5 checksum received by the deadline, you will have 24 hours to complete the upload of the files that matches this checksum; i.e., you will have another day to upload files matching the MD5 checksums previously uploaded (but, of course, not another 24 hours to do your work).

We have tested the following MD5 calculators:

• Linux: md5sum command
• Mac: md5 command in Terminal
• Windows: FastSum

Can I submit after the paper deadline?

No. The deadline is absolute.

But my equipment has failed just before the deadline, and I have no control over such events!

The deadline is absolute. Equipment failures are common, and SIGGRAPH 2021 cannot adapt its schedule to accommodate them, so please submit early to avoid equipment failure issues.

But I was unable to upload my submission on time. The system was overloaded, and halfway through uploading my submission, the deadline passed.

The deadline is absolute. Submissions that are in progress when the deadline passes, even if it’s because our server has slowed down due to high load, will not be accepted. You should allow enough lead time to avoid this kind of problem. Please see How to Submit for explanations of the MD5 checksum process.

Unfortunately, in our rush to meet the deadline, we incorrectly set the parameters for our video, resulting in a significantly lower quality result. I have since corrected the problem. May I substitute new videos for the ones I submitted? The video is identical, except for the gamma correction.

No. The submission deadline is absolute. All materials must be submitted by the deadline. If your paper is accepted, you will have an opportunity to replace the video.

But I’m using the SIGGRAPH 2021 English Review Service, and they didn’t get back to me soon enough. So, it’s SIGGRAPH’s fault that my paper isn’t ready.

The deadline is absolute. The English Review Service makes no guarantees about turnaround, and it’s up to you to make contingency plans. Please see the English Review Service Deadlines to plan accordingly.

I’m not in the United States, and Customs often holds up physical submissions, so I have to send my physical supplemental materials off two weeks earlier than other researchers would. Can I send it by the deadline instead, and you’ll receive it about two weeks late, after Customs has had a chance to process it?

The deadline is absolute. If your physical supplemental materials must pass through various hurdles to get here, you must plan in advance how to submit them early enough to ensure arrival on time. If the PDF file is uploaded by the deadline, we will review your paper without any shipped material that arrived late.

I gave my physical submission materials to Fedex/UPS/other courier service, and I have a receipt to prove that they promised delivery before the deadline, but there was a snowstorm in XYZ, and FedEx/UPS/etc. couldn’t meet their promise.

If you can provide the receipt (and we’ll ask for it), then we’ll accept the materials whenever the courier service delivers them, but we cannot guarantee that reviewers will receive them in time to influence their reviews. You still must have completed the submission form and uploaded the PDF file before the deadline, though.

Can I email my submission to the Technical Papers Chair if the online submission system is overloaded?

No. Papers and submission materials emailed to the Technical Papers Chair or other conference representative are not considered as having been submitted. You must use the online submission system. Please leave yourself enough time before the deadline to avoid problems.

I would like to submit my paper to conference X or journal Y as well as to SIGGRAPH 2021. Is this acceptable?

You must submit to just SIGGRAPH 2021 and await our response before submitting elsewhere (should your work not be accepted by SIGGRAPH 2021). If you submit your paper to another conference or journal simultaneously, we will reject your paper without review. We will be in contact with the editors of several journals and chairs of other related conferences, exchanging information. Several double submissions to SIGGRAPH have been found in recent years.

But I want my paper to be in SIGGRAPH 2021. I promise that if it is accepted by SIGGRAPH 2021, I will withdraw it from the other conference or journal.

Dual submissions are not allowed. Your submission will be rejected if it is under review by any other conference or journal during the SIGGRAPH review process.

I would like to submit my paper to conference X. Their submission deadline is after SIGGRAPH 2021’s Technical Papers Committee meeting, but they require abstracts to be submitted before the SIGGRAPH 2021’s Committee meeting. May I submit the abstract?

Yes. The prohibition against dual submission kicks in when a full paper substantially equivalent to your SIGGRAPH 2021 paper submission is submitted elsewhere. For conferences that require extended abstracts or other formats, you should ask the Technical Papers Chair before submitting to avoid risking your paper being rejected from SIGGRAPH 2021.

We have submitted a paper about a pilot study to conference X, and now we would like to submit a paper about the full-blown user study to SIGGRAPH 2021. How should we go about that to avoid the perception that it is a dual submission?

Anonymously cite the paper in your SIGGRAPH 2021 submission with a note to the reviewers that either it will be accepted by conference X, or you will publish it as a tech report and make it freely available on the web. Include an anonymous version in your submission as supplemental material. Then when you write the SIGGRAPH 2021 paper, treat the pilot study as already published and cite it as [Anonymous]. Do not repeat text or figures from that paper in the SIGGRAPH 2021 version.

I sent in a paper to workshop X with the understanding that it was for review purposes only, and the workshop would have no published proceedings. Now, four months later, they tell me that they are going to publish the proceedings and include it in the digital library. Unfortunately, there is significant overlap between that paper and my submitted SIGGRAPH 2021 paper. How should I handle this?

We realize that you did not intend to do anything against the SIGGRAPH 2021 rules, but now that the workshop rules have changed, you should either withdraw the workshop paper from the proceedings or withdraw your SIGGRAPH 2021 submission.

I have a paper that was previously published in a little-known conference or in another language. Can I submit it to SIGGRAPH 2021?

Previously published papers in any language or submitted to any other conference or journal may not be submitted. A paper is considered previously published if it has appeared in a peer-reviewed journal or meeting proceedings that are visibly, reliably, and permanently available afterward in print or electronically to non-attendees, regardless of the language of that publication.

Can I submit a paper on my work that has previously appeared in my thesis, a tech report, a patent, and/or an abstract of a talk at another conference?

Publications such as theses, tech reports, patents, or abstracts in other conferences do not preclude subsequent publication of a complete paper on the same topic by the same authors. However, such prepublications should be mentioned in your submission form. See Submission Policy for more precise instructions.

How do I reference an ACM SIGGRAPH Talk, Poster, or Sketch on the same topic as the paper that I am writing?

Depending on the year of presentation, the Sketch or Talk might appear in the ACM Digital Library. If it does, you should use the ACM Digital Library as a reference. If it is not archived, you may refer to the oral presentation at the conference, or if it appeared in one of the conference publications, the abstract. If you were the author of the Sketch or Talk, then citation is not strictly necessary because publication of a Sketch or Talk does not preclude publication of a full paper. Do not cite it as your own work (in first person), so that anonymity is preserved. If you were not the author of the Sketch or Talk, then you should cite the Sketch or Talk to respect the author’s ideas. If the authors have published a subsequent paper, thesis, or tech report about their work, you should cite that instead of the Sketch or Talk, because it will be a more useful pointer for your readers.

A month after submitting our paper, we obtained much better results. Can we withdraw our paper from review and submit it elsewhere (or wait until next year)?

SIGGRAPH submissions can be withdrawn at any time. However, authors should remember that the reviewers on their paper may have already spent considerable effort handling and reviewing their paper. If your paper is provisionally accepted, you may be able to add your new results, subject to approval by the senior reviewers.

Will my submission be penalized if I put it on a repository like arXiv?

No, putting a submission on a repository like arXiv is allowed, and there is no penalty for publishing a submission as a prepublication. However, there are restrictions, described in the Submission Policy, on how one can discuss the work in a prepublication while it is under review. Note that the policy has been updated for SIGGRAPH 2021 to reflect the growing importance of prepublications in the scientific discourse while maintaining the review process as double-blind as possible. Authors are encouraged to familiarize themselves with the latest version. The program committee members and the reviewers also will be reminded about the updated policy. We refer the interested readers to the references below for more information on the topic of double-blind reviews.

[1] Reviewer bias in single- versus double-blind peer review. A. Tomkins, M. Zhang, and W.D. Heavlin. PNAS, 2017, 114 (48). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1707323114

[2] Effectiveness of Anonymization in Double-Blind Review. C. Le Goues, Y. Brun, S. Apel, E. Berger, S. Khurshid, Y. Smaragdakis. Communications of the ACM, 2018, 61 (6), https://doi.org/10.1145/3208157

What supplemental material can be uploaded with my submission?

Authors are invited, but not required, to include supplemental materials such as additional images and videos, results of a user study, executables, data for reproducibility of results, and a cover letter explaining the list of changes in case of a resubmission, related papers, etc. Some of the supplemental materials can be uploaded as part of your submission, while the others are there to support the reviewing process. For instance, if you have a related paper that is under review or in press elsewhere, you should upload a version of this paper as an anonymous supplementary document for the attention of the reviewers, with a note explaining differences with the current submission. For more information, see Submission Requirements. If your paper is a revision of a paper that was previously submitted to SIGGRAPH, please see the Resubmission section.

Although your paper should always stand alone, and supplemental materials are never required, past experience shows that certain kinds of submissions (especially those involving video or animation) tend to fare better if they are accompanied by a supplemental video. Similarly, if your paper is an interactive system and/or presents quantitative results, we recommend that you upload a zip or tar file with an executable, data, and scripts that can be used to reproduce the results presented in the paper. A README.txt file should be included to describe how to run the executable on the data and how to interpret the results (please make these descriptions as simple as possible). The instructions can be followed by the reviewers to run your code on the data you provide and (even better) on other data of the same type to validate the results presented in the paper. Clearly, reviewers will appreciate your claims of generality if they can validate those claims directly.

Do I have to submit code and data with my paper?

We encourage providing code and data in the supplemental material, but we understand that this may not be always possible. The reviewers will be instructed not to penalize submissions without code and data. In all cases, the paper should provide enough information for the code and data to be recreated by the readers.

My submission is a revision of a paper that I submitted to an earlier SIGGRAPH conference. Will the reviewers get to see the earlier reviews?

Only if you authorize them to see them. When you submit your paper, you can optionally identify it as a resubmission, in which case all reviews (suitably anonymized) and discussions from all previous submissions will be made available to the current reviewers. The identity of the previous reviewers will also be made available to the sorters and the senior reviewers. If you do not choose this option, none of the materials from any previous submission will be known to this year’s reviewers. For more details on these options, see Submission Requirements.

Do I have to prepare the paper in the final format?

Yes, please format your paper according to the SIGGRAPH Technical Papers submission formatting guidelines. If you use LaTeX, you must change the \documentclass{} command to: \documentclass[acmtog,anonymous,review]{acmart} and add your paper ID through: \acmSubmissionID{your_paper_ID_here}. Please ensure that you are using version 1.64 or higher of the acmart class. Earlier versions (e.g., from your previous submissions) will not produce a valid submission format. Download the latest acmart class along with other necessary materials here. A LaTeX submission template is provided for your convenience.

Please also refer to Submission Requirements.

What is the page limit for papers?

There is no arbitrary maximum (or minimum) length imposed on papers. Clearly, writing plays an important role in assessing the quality of the paper submission. Papers may be perceived as too long if they are repetitive or verbose or too short if they omit important details or tamper with formatting rules just to save on page count. Have a look at previous proceedings to get a sense of the range of paper lengths, where typical lengths are between 8 and 10 pages (not including citations), but the variation is large.

Can I provide a video with my paper?

Papers may be accompanied by a video that is five minutes or less in length. In recent years, well over half of the accepted papers were accompanied by some kind of video material.

What file formats are allowed?

The paper must be submitted in Adobe PDF format with embedded fonts, and the representative image must be JPEG. Please see the submission form for allowed formats of the other materials. You can upload a zip/gzip file as supplemental material that contains any format. There is no guarantee that the referees will view supplemental materials, especially if they are available only in an obscure format.

What types of keywords should I include with my paper?

Select one primary topic area and optionally one or more secondary topic areas from the list in the online submission form, as well as 1–7 keywords from the suggested list.

As a non-native English speaker, I would appreciate help to improve the text in my paper submission.

Non-native English speakers may optionally use the English Review Service to help improve the text of submissions. Please note that this process takes time, so plan far ahead.

The details in my imagery are very subtle. I am concerned that the reviewers will not print my paper on a suitable printer or view my video with an appropriate codec.

You still need to submit your paper as a PDF file, but you are welcome to use the physical submission process and send a hard copy of the paper (in addition to submitting it electronically), or selected images, or of your video.

Does the submitted video have to be final quality? Or will people whose papers are accepted have the opportunity to prepare a more polished video?

You will have the opportunity to prepare a more polished video. Of course, the better the submitted video looks, the more likely reviewers will be able to see the strength of your work, so polishing may be a good investment of time and energy.

How do I upload my submission files?

Uploading is not always perfectly smooth. To make sure that all submissions will get to us with minimal frustration, please follow these guidelines:

Don’t Wait Until the Last Minute

The online submission system uses a robust server with high-bandwidth access to the internet, but everything has a limit. In previous years, we have observed exponential growth in the hours and minutes leading up to the deadline, leading to the need to close the system to all but MD5 uploads.

Upload Early and Often

Once your submission is complete, you are still allowed to edit it and add to or modify the supplementary materials right up to the deadline. This means you can upload some materials early and the remainder later, avoiding the need to upload everything at once. This also means you can upload a rough draft of your materials early and replace it with more polished versions later. Upload drafts that are roughly the same size as your final material. This will allow you to get a feel for the upload process, understand the time it takes to upload files of that size, and give you time to diagnose problems. Then, as you refine your draft, upload revisions. This way, if the last polish or final render encounters problems, you only lose the polish, not the entire submission.

We Do Not Control the Internet

In our tests, we have found upload speeds of anywhere from 20 megabit/sec to five kilobit/sec. We have tested uploads from two gigabytes to 10 kilobytes. We have seen upload times from one second to 24 hours. If you are traversing a path to our server that is through congested nodes, your upload may fail, and you will have to retry. You may even have to do the upload from work, school, home, or a local business services firm. Do not wait until the last minute to find out.

Do Not Try to Upload Too Much

Some programs have upload limitations. Upload limits for required materials are described in the online submission system.

Do Not Wait Until the Last Minute

Yes, we said this already, but it’s worth repeating! The deadlines are absolute. We are on a tight schedule, and we will not be able to extend the deadline to accommodate straggling uploads.

Despite all these dire warnings, we are happy to report that the online submission process works very well. We do not anticipate major problems. Just do not wait until the last minute!

MD5 Checksum of Uploaded Materials

In an effort to conserve server resources and bandwidth, file uploading and downloading will be disabled temporarily as needed as each of our deadlines nears. If uploading and downloading are disabled, all submitters will be required to use the MD5 checksum mechanism. We do not know the exact time when this might take effect. It will be determined by server loads to ensure that all submitters are able to access their submissions. It may not apply to all programs. Check instructions on the online submission form for details.

What Do I Have to Do?

To be accepted as uploaded, all files must either be completely uploaded by the appropriate deadline or have an MD5 checksum computed and be submitted before the deadline. Files submitted before the deadline that do not match the MD5 checksum will not be accepted. If you choose to submit an MD5 checksum, you will then have 24 hours after the deadline to upload your files with the matching MD5 checksum previously uploaded by the appropriate deadline.

What Does MD5 Checksum Look Like?

If you use the MD5 option, the MD5 checksum should be submitted without additional characters surrounding it and without any breaking characters.

An example of a correct MD5 checksum is:

871A51785E2A6414DEB097C2CEE89743

Examples of incorrect MD5 checksums:

871A51785E2A6414DEB097C2CEE89743 filename.avi
and
871A 5178 5E2A 6414 DEB0 97C2 CEE8 9743

Note that letter case is ignored.

How do I calculate an MD5 checksum?

You must use an MD5 calculator. We have tested the following MD5 calculators:

• Linux: md5sum command
• Mac: md5 command in Terminal
• Windows: FastSum

How Can I Test This Process?

We recommend that you try uploading a small test file well in advance of the 22:00 GMT/UTC deadline to ensure that you are familiar with the procedure, that the MD5 calculator you are using is working properly, and that it is compliant with the MD5 standard that we are using.

What If I Do Not Want to Use MD5 Checksum?

If you complete the uploading of all the necessary files by your deadline and before we revert to the checksum-only mechanism, you can ignore the MD5 checksum. However, the system will compute and report MD5 checksum for all the files you upload. You may find this useful if you want to check that your file has been uploaded without corruption. Just compare the MD5 checksum you compute for your file with the checksum computed by the submission system.

What are the image guidelines?

• Every submission must include at least one representative image.
• The image must be digital, of the highest quality possible, with a pixel resolution of at least 1500 x 1000, at least 300 dpi at 5 inches (12.7 cm) wide, with proportional height, or the highest possible resolution screen grab.
• Images must be 24-bit (RGB, 8 bits per channel) uncompressed, in the highest possible JPEG resolution.
• A standard ICC color profile of sRGB also is recommended and will be assumed if not specified.
• Horizontal (landscape) images are required. Vertical (portrait) images are not acceptable.
• Your image will appear in 3 x 2 ratio on the SIGGRAPH 2021 website. Images that do not conform to this proportion will be cropped from the center.
• Avoid embedded rules, layers, tags, masks, color models (for example, CMYK), etc. If in doubt, use an image editor to paste into a new file.
• Please also specify copyright and image credits for each image. The file upload manager offers an input field for this optional information.
• If your work is accepted, your representative image will be used both as an identifying image during the jurying and selection process and in publications or for media purposes.
• Higher resolution images are often favored by media for publication use, so the minimum-resolution requirement is only a guideline.
• It is important that you have permissions to use this image.
• If you are not sure how to best represent your work with an image, you may consider an image that conveys the appropriate area of computer graphics or interactive techniques.

What should I do to make my submission anonymous?

Remove any information from the paper, video, and supplemental materials that identifies you, any of the other authors, or any of your institutions or places of work. In particular, replace the authors’ names with the paper ID (for example, papers_0000) in your submitted paper. Do not include any acknowledgement. See Submission Requirements for more information.

How do I include a reference to myself without identifying myself?

The general rule is to use the third person. For example, if Fred Brooks and Holly Rushmeier were to write a paper, they might say in their “related work” section: “Rushmeier et al. [2001] discuss a system in which molecular visualizations are … Our work builds on some of the ideas presented there, and on the ideas of Smith et al. [2003] and the interaction techniques described by Wolford [1999].” They would NOT say: “The authors, in prior work [Rushmeier et al. 2001], discussed a system in which molecular visualization … ” The only case in which anonymous references are appropriate are unpublished manuscripts, in which case they might write: “The authors have also developed closely related techniques for molecular manipulation [Anonymous 2021], but that work is outside the scope of this paper.” Reference [Anonymous 2021] would then read:

[Anonymous 2021] Anonymous Authors. Molecular manipulations through computer graphics, submitted. 2021.

You should submit the anonymous manuscript as supplemental material with your SIGGRAPH submission, along with an anonymous cover letter (also submitted as supplemental material) that briefly explains the differences.

My SIGGRAPH 2021 submission needs to cite one of our own web pages, which cannot easily be anonymized. Now what should I do?

The rules governing prepublication have been clarified (see Submission Policy). For other types of web content, if you can reasonably cite the web page in the third person, go ahead.

My SIGGRAPH 2021 submission needs to cite another, concurrent SIGGRAPH submission by our group. Now what should I do?

Cite it as [Anonymous 2021] Anonymous Authors, A grand unified theory of computer graphics, submitted to SIGGRAPH 2021 and include the other submission as anonymous supplemental material.

I know I am supposed to remove my name, company name, etc. from the document, but should I also remove names from the acknowledgements? If the paper is accepted, should I send another copy to you with this additional material?

You must not include an “acknowledgements” section in the submission. If your paper is accepted, you will submit a revised version that identifies you and your co-authors, your affiliations, and any appropriate acknowledgements. Keep in mind the additional space that will be required when stating how many pages the paper will require.

Can you give me some example reasons that my paper would get rejected without review?

Submissions will be rejected without review if it is found that:

• The submission violates the ACM Policy and Procedures on Plagiarism, Misrepresentation, and Falsification.
• The submission is a dual submission, that is if the submission is simultaneously under review for any other peer-reviewed conference or publication. For more details see the Prior Publication and Double Submissions sections.
• The paper is so incomplete or poorly written that review is impossible.
• The paper focuses on the advertising of a company’s product(s).
• The paper is on a topic clearly outside the scope of SIGGRAPH.
• Electronic files have been submitted that have been designed to have side effects other than presenting the submitted work to reviewers and committee members (for example, a “phone home” script).
• It appears that the paper contains material for which the submitters have not secured the necessary copyrights.

Why are good papers rejected?

Check out this article How to Get Your SIGGRAPH Paper Rejected by Jim Kajiya, the Technical Papers Chair for SIGGRAPH 1993, for many excellent reasons. Although some of the details are dated, the wisdom is timeless.

Am I allowed to ask for my paper to not be reviewed by someone from whom I do not expect a fair review?

No. The reviewer selection process includes no such provisions.

I am submitting a paper on topic X, which I know is an area of expertise for committee member Y. Can I ask that committee member Y be a senior reviewer of my paper?

No.

I am submitting a paper on topic X, which I know is an area of expertise for committee member Y. Can I ask that committee member Y not be a senior reviewer of my paper, because committee member Y works for a competing company?

No. Indeed, committee member Y may well be the best qualified reviewer for your work, and if so, we may ask them to be the senior reviewer. However, we do take cross-reviewing conflicts into account. Please see Technical Papers: Ethics of Review.

Who knows the identities of the authors, and how is that information used during the review process?

The Technical Papers Chair, sorters, and COI coordinators know the identity of the submissions’ authors. The sorters use this information to avoid conflicts of interest when assigning the senior reviewers, and the COI coordinators use this information to approve the tertiary reviewers suggested by the senior reviewers. No reviewers of any paper know the authors’ identities. Papers are judged solely on their merit, as determined by the reviews.

Isn’t the committee more likely to accept papers by committee members and other insiders? How do you prevent a conflict of interest?

Any paper on which a committee member has a conflict of interest will not be discussed while that committee member is in the room, and in fact, the committee member will not receive any information about such papers throughout the entire review process and committee meeting.

Is there a quota for the number or percentage of papers accepted?

There is no quota for the number of papers that should be accepted. This number arises organically each year from the actions of the committee.

I am a SIGGRAPH 2021 reviewer, and I would like to show this paper to one of my students, who frankly knows more about the topic of this paper than I do. May I?

Yes, under certain strict conditions. You may show a paper under review to a small number of people, normally one or two, providing that you:

1. List their name(s), title(s) (for example, “my Ph.D. student”), and affiliation(s) in the “Private Comments” section of the review form, which is only seen by the committee members.
2. Clearly instruct them on the rules of confidentiality of the SIGGRAPH review process. “THIS IS IMPORTANT: submissions are confidential!” For more information, see Ethics of Review.

However, it is not appropriate for others to write the review for you. If this is your intention, then you must discuss it with the senior reviewer who assigned you the paper. At that person’s discretion, the paper may be officially reassigned to the other person.

What is a rebuttal?

There will be an opportunity to upload a rebuttal to address factual errors and specific questions in the reviews via the SIGGRAPH online submission system from 8–12 March 2021. Reviews will be available via the online submission system. Then, authors may upload up to 1,000 words of text (no images, video, or URLs to external pages) in the system before 22:00 GMT/UTC, 12 March 2021. The rebuttals will be read by the referees and factored into the discussion leading up to the decisions made at the Technical Papers Committee meeting.

Should I write a rebuttal?

Any author may upload a rebuttal. The choice of whether to submit one and how much time to spend on it is up to each author. As a general guideline, submitting a rebuttal is a good idea if the paper seems to have a chance of being accepted, and if the reviews contain errors that can be corrected or specific questions that can be answered with short textual descriptions.

What should be included in the rebuttal?

The rebuttal is for addressing factual errors in the reviews and for answering specific questions posed by reviewers. It is limited to 1,000 words of text and must be self-contained. It cannot, for instance, contain URLs to external pages. There will be no uploads of images or videos during the rebuttal process. The rebuttal also can help clarify the merits and novelty of the paper with respect to prior work if it is felt that the reviewers misunderstood the paper’s contributions and scope.

Now that I have read the reviews of my paper, I see how to better organize it so it will be clear to the reader. Can I do this reorganization and upload the new version during the rebuttal period?

No. The rebuttal period is for addressing factual errors in the reviews, not for getting revised text into the review process. The reviewers will have only a short time in which to read and act on your rebuttal, and it must be short and to the point. Hence, it will be limited to 1,000 words of text (no images or video).

Between January and March, we have gotten some really cool new results for our paper. Can I upload those results during the rebuttal period? I am sure that they will make the reviewers realize the importance of our approach.

No. The rebuttal period is for addressing factual errors in the reviews, not for getting new results into the review process.

Reviewer No. 2 says that our collision-detection algorithm will not work on concave objects. But it will, as we just demonstrated with the lid of the teapot. Can we upload an image or movie showing this new result?

No. Images and video may not be uploaded with rebuttals. Several years ago, you could ask the primary referee for permission to upload additional material. However, that feature was eliminated in 2009 to provide greater fairness and less stress in the rebuttal process.

Reviewer No. 4 clearly did not read my paper carefully enough. Either that or this reviewer does not know anything about the field! How should I respond during the rebuttal period?

We have all received SIGGRAPH reviews that made us mad, particularly on first reading. The rebuttal period is short and does not allow for the cooling-off period that authors have before they write a response to a journal review. As a result, authors need to be particularly careful to address only factual errors or reviewer questions in the rebuttals rather than letting their emotions show.

Please do not say: “If reviewer No. 4 had just taken the time to read my paper carefully, they would have realized that our algorithm was rotation invariant.” Instead, say: “Unfortunately, Section 3 must not have been as clear as we had hoped because Reviewer No. 4 did not understand that our algorithm was rotation invariant; therefore, they were skeptical about the general applicability of our approach. Here is a revised version of the second paragraph in Section 3, which should clear up this confusion.”

I uploaded a rebuttal but got no feedback. How can I be sure the reviewers received and actually read my rebuttal?

If you can view your rebuttal comments in the online review system, so can your reviewers. Rest assured that rebuttal information is considered and can be very helpful in the selection process.

Why can’t we upload images and videos as was possible prior to 2009?

In previous years, authors could ask the committee for permission to post images, audio, and/or videos on a public bulletin board system (BBS). Although this feature was sometimes helpful for providing examples that answer specific questions posed by referees, it was used very differently by different authors and regulated differently by different referees. In some cases, an author would be allowed to upload entirely new examples, while nothing was allowed in others. The instructions clearly stated that rebuttals are only for “addressing factual errors in reviews.” Yet, some authors would push the limits (for example, “the review said my method doesn’t work, and so here are several new results to show that it does work …”), and some referees were more lenient than others in allowing such uploads. To improve the uniformity of the review process, rebuttals will be limited to only 1,000 words of text. No images and no video can be uploaded with the rebuttal for any paper. This change has improved the fairness of the rebuttal process and also decreased the pressure on submitters to create new results during the short rebuttal process.

Will we use the BBS for discussion during the rebuttal period?

There will be no discussion back-and-forth between authors and referees on any BBS during the review process. Prior to 2009, referees could ask questions of authors on a public BBS at any time prior to the committee meeting, and authors could provide extended answers, sometimes with new visual results in response to specific questions. Thus, the review process was different for different papers and unnecessarily stressful for all. Presently, there is no longer a public BBS. Instead, the authors have the opportunity to upload a single, text-only rebuttal. This change was made to increase the fairness and reduce the stress of the rebuttal process. If your paper is accepted, the bulletin boards will be opened for discussions during the revision process.

Are papers merely published digitally, or is there a presentation as well?

There is a presentation, which in recent years has been approximately 15–18 minutes in length, followed by a few minutes of discussion and questions.

Where can I get information on how ACM handles copyright transfers and publishing licenses? I need to show it to my employers before I submit.

The various levels of the rights management form that ACM offers to authors can be found here.

My paper was just accepted to SIGGRAPH 2021, and I am thrilled. But now my boss points out that I cannot use Bart Simpson as the example in my paper because I do not have the rights to use him. What do I do now?

The call for Technical Papers explicitly states that you must have permissions for all the images in your paper and the footage on your video at the time of submission. You should immediately tell the Technical Papers Chair what you propose to use as a replacement. If the new images or footage are not similar to that submitted for review in the judgment of the chair and the Papers Advisory Board, then acceptance of your paper will be rescinded. The archival record (conference proceedings) must contain material equivalent to what the reviewers saw at the time of review.

Is “referral to TOG” a possible outcome of the Technical Papers review process?

No. In the past it was possible that papers got rejected from SIGGRAPH/ASIA and accepted with major revisions to TOG, but this option has been eliminated starting with SIGGRAPH ASIA 2018.

When will my accepted paper become publicly available?

Public disclosure of a paper’s title, abstract, and contents can have important commercial and legal ramifications. The official publication date of accepted papers is 16 July 2021. The SIGGRAPH 2021 proceedings will be published as Volume 40, Issue No. 4 of ACM Transactions on Graphics. However, the paper’s title, abstract, 30-word summary, and possibly extracts from the supplemental video may be disclosed publicly already earlier, starting May, in SIGGRAPH 2021 communications.

What information about my rejected paper will become publicly available?

No information about rejected papers will be made public.

What about patents and confidentiality? Are the two senior reviewers and the three tertiary reviewers under a confidentiality agreement to not disclose the contents of the paper to others? Some organizations like IEEE have all reviewers sign a confidentiality agreement. It is very important that I know for sure, since my employer may want to apply for a patent, and it affects when I may submit the paper to the SIGGRAPH conference. Can I, for example, get a written guarantee of confidentiality?

Reviewers are asked to keep confidential all materials sent to them for review, but they do not sign a confidentiality agreement. In general, there is wide respect for the confidentiality of submissions, but we cannot promise anything or provide a written guarantee.

It would not be wise for SIGGRAPH 2021 to give you legal counsel on the matter of patents and publication. We urge you to seek independent legal advice. The main issue is that in different jurisdictions (such as Europe), prior public disclosure could invalidate a patent application. The situation is different in North America, where you have one year after public disclosure (for example, publication) to file a patent. It is a common practice for authors to prepare a patent filing coincidentally with their SIGGRAPH 2021 publication.

Can I contact members of the Technical Papers Committee with questions?

Although search engines make it a simple matter to find email addresses for these people, we ask that you do not contact them directly about the review process. Instead, please send messages to papersadmin@siggraph.org regarding the papers review process.

I have been doing graphics for years. May I be on the Technical Papers Committee?

The Technical Papers Chair selects the committee with several goals in mind, including: coverage of areas in which we anticipate submissions, getting some “old hands” who have been on the committee before, bringing some new folks into the process, recruiting people who will work well together and treat papers with respect and enthusiasm, and getting representation from diverse communities. If you’d like to participate, send email to the Technical Papers Chair and tell us about yourself and your areas of expertise.

I have volunteered to be on the committee for three years now, and I’ve never been chosen. What’s up with that?

It may be that we already have committee members with expertise in your area, that others are better qualified, that the chairs do not feel that you’ve been in the field long enough to be an effective committee member, or any number of other reasons. However, the committee composition does change from year to year. Please keep offering your services, and gain experience, if necessary, by accepting service for other conferences.

Just what sort of workload is involved in being on the Technical Papers Committee?

You must review about 10–20 papers. For about half of those papers, you must find two additional reviewers, and for the other half you must find one additional reviewer. You must attend a Technical Papers Committee meeting, during which you will discuss papers, possibly be called on to provide additional reviews of a couple of papers, and be expected to listen carefully to a lot of discussion that has little to do with you. You also may be asked to act as a referee for a paper that has been conditionally accepted or conditionally accepted with minor changes to verify that the final version meets the requirements. Finally, you may be asked to chair a Technical Papers session at the SIGGRAPH 2021 conference.

What do I get for all the work that I’ll be doing as a committee member?

In material terms, you get a discount when registering for SIGGRAPH 2021. You also receive the recognition of your colleagues, the gratitude of authors, and the sense of satisfaction that comes from knowing you have given something back to the organization that helps disseminate research in graphics.

To whom should I send questions about the papers submission and review process?

Send questions to papersadmin@siggraph.org. Do not send email directly to the Technical Papers Chair.

Why not the Technical Papers Chair directly?

First, the Technical Papers Chair might be unavailable for several days. Second, during parts of the submission and review process, the chair will be buried in email. If you use the contact form, your email will go to the Technical Papers Chair and selected administrators of the papers review process. One of them may be able to answer your question, and they often do so promptly.

If you have a question of extreme delicacy, or a question on which the Technical Papers Chair might be conflicted, and only in this case, send your email to papersadmin@siggraph.org.

I believe that images in a scientific publication fall under the umbrella of the fair use rule. Why do I have to clarify the copyright issues?

Fair use rules do not directly apply to all papers. A publication needs to satisfy certain conditions. See this Wikipedia summary and ACM’s policy on fair use for more information. It is the author’s responsibility to make sure that the submitted paper satisfies the conditions when claiming fair use. And this claim must be clearly stated in the submission form. Authors should email Barbara Ryan at ACM barbara.ryan@hq.acm.org with questions and concerns about fair use and whether a particular image and its use in a paper falls under fair use.

Can I use images in my submission with unclear copyright status and then secure the copyright or replace the images later if the paper is accepted?

No. The reviewers can only judge the paper that is submitted, not a paper that includes material that might be changed after acceptance. Remember: you are declaring that you hold the rights for all materials when you submit your paper, which is why material with unclear copyrights may be rejected.