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Author Guidelines


Preparing a Submission

Format

Please use the ACM Transactions format for your submission. The use of a significantly different format would make it harder in several respects for editors and reviewers to deal with the submission. Although minor deviations are not important at this point, any submission that does not use the standard format will be returned to the authors by the assistant to the editors-in-chief with a request to resubmit it in the standard format.

Templates for LaTeX and Word are supplied and supported by ACM; the format listed for TiiS on these pages is the “Small Standard Format”: https://www.acm.org/publications/authors/submissions.

Note: If you proceed by entering your own text into the sample file called “acmsmall-sample.tex”, please replace “acmtecs” with “acmtiis” in the “\documentclass ...” line, since otherwise an incorrect journal name will appear at various places in your manuscript.

This ACM web pages also include information about how to format references to literature, as well as contact information for technical support.

Parts of Content

In addition to the main text, the manuscript should include the following elements, which ensure proper indexing, classification, retrieval, and dissemination:

  • Descriptive title. Select a title that accurately and clearly tells what the paper is about. Choose title terms as specific as content and emphasis of the paper permit. Avoid special symbols and formulas in titles unless essential to indicate content.
  • Authors’ names and affiliations. Authors’ names should be listed without titles or degrees. The affiliation should show the name of the organization at which the work was conducted. If an author’s current address is different, it should be given in a footnote on the first page. The contact author should be identified with a footnote on the first page.
  • Abstract. The abstract should normally be 150–250 words long and consist of short, direct sentences. It should summarize the objectives of the work, the methods applied, the results, and the conclusions. It should not include citations or mention plans for future work. The title need not be repeated. Because abstracts are extracted and used separately, do not use the first person, do not display mathematics, and do not use citation reference numbers. Try to avoid starting with the words "This paper ...".

  • Content Indicators. Three types of content indicators must be assigned: (1) general terms, (2) subject descriptors, and (3) keywords and phrases. The first two items are selected from the 2012 ACM Computing Classification Scheme. Select as many of these as may be applicable.

    The keywords and phrases are additional English language words that indicate the content of the submission. They should not be synonymous with those already in the classification system: they can be more specific than the subject descriptors, or they may not be covered by the existing system at all. The following guidelines may be helpful.

    • Use important terms from the title; include their synonyms, related words and words of higher or lower generic rank.
    • Use English nouns, or noun-noun and noun-adjective combinations; do not use hyphens unless the hyphenated parts are alwaystreated as a single unit.
    • Use specific terms whose meanings are generally accepted; do not use broad catchall terms (such as "computer", "automatic", "machine", "system", "discussion", "description"); do not use private terms or acronyms that may not be generally known.
    • Do not use negative terms stressing what your paper does not do.
  • Citations. Citations should be provided according to the following guidelines. Use of the ACM Journals/Transactions LaTeX style is encouraged to ensure proper formatting.
  • Electronic appendix (optional). Some types of material are normally included in one or more “electronic appendices”, which will be linked from the ACM Digital Library but not included in the main PDF file in the Digital Library or in the printed journal issue. Such material is likely to be of interest to only a subset of the readers of the article. These types of material include:
    • Extensive examples of materials used in an experiment
    • An explanation of a research method that some readers are likely to be unfamiliar with
    • Presentations of results (in tables, graphics, or text) on a level of detail that is appropriate for readers who are especially interested in the topic.

Leaving such material out of the main manuscript enables authors to make the article more manageable and appealing to most readers. If your manuscript includes such material, please mark it within the main document as one or more electronic appendices, following the examples given in the ACM style files. The appendices will be immediately available to reviewers as part of the main document; they will be detached from the main document in the final typesetting stage. With regard to nonprintable material such as video files, see the remarks below on Supplementary Electronic Material.

Explaining Relevance

If a submission focuses almost exclusively either on intelligent technology or on users’ interaction with such technology (cf. the page on the different possible perspectives), it should also include a brief discussion of the “other” side of the picture: For example, authors who focus on an technological advance can discuss (a) the types of interactive system that can make use of this advance and (b) the likely impact of the advance on the interaction of users with such systems. Similarly, authors who focus on an advance in the understanding or design of interaction can discuss the types of intelligent technology that can be involved in this type of interaction and the implications of their work for the design of such technology. Brief discussions of this sort do not need to present new research results, since their function is to explain the relevance of the article’s main contributions to the general issues addressed by TiiS.

Ensuring the Legibility of Graphics

Reviewers and editors often read manuscripts on a monochrome printout – as do many readers who download articles from the ACM Digital Library. So please print your submission on a monochrome printer and check to make sure that every graphic is clearly legible. Note that even a graphic that looks beautiful and clear on the computer screen may be incomprehensible when printed on paper, in which case it could seriously impede the reviewing process. Each submitted manuscript will be checked by an administrator before it enters the reviewing process, and manuscripts with one or more illegible graphics will be returned to the authors for improvement.

Supplementary Electronic Material

If an article is supplemented with nonprintable electronic material, the ACM Digital Library will offer a link to that material alongside its link to the main article, as is done with printable electronic appendices (described above). For example, authors may provide a video, an animation, or a demonstration system.

If you wish to use this option, please upload each such file as a “supplementary file” when submitting the manuscript (as described in the instructions on the submission site). Indicate in your cover letter that this material is intended for inclusion in the Digital Library, and provide a reference to it in the main article (e.g., “see the video which is available along with this article in the ACM Digital Library”).

Third-Party Material

If your manuscript includes nontextual material that is owned by someone else, please note that, before publication, it will be necessary to provide documentation that the owner has given permission for its use.

ACM has a web page with the details of ACM’s policy regarding third-party material.

Avoiding Inadvertent Violations of ACM's Plagiarism Policy

All manuscripts submitted to TiiS are automatically processed by the “CrossCheck” plagiarism checker, which produces a detailed analysis of any textual overlap with previous publications. Experience has shown that even authors who presumably have no intention to plagiarize sometimes reproduce text in ways which are inconsistent with ACM’s policies on plagiarism. In the case of such errors, the manuscript must be returned to the authors so that the problems can be fixed. Authors are therefore advised to avoid the following mistakes in the first place:

  1. Reproduction of text from your own previously published work without citation

    You are allowed to reproduce text from your own previously published work, provided that the previous work is cited in the present submission. But copying from your own previous work without such citation is not permissible.

  2. Reproduction of text from other authors with citation but without quotation marks

    Even when you clearly cite previous authors whose text is copied, you must make sure to put quotation marks around any passage copied. Admittedly, it may seem reasonable to copy text in cases like this on the grounds that the original authors know better than anyone else how to describe their results or their technology concisely and accurately. But please do include the quotation marks, unless you prefer to paraphrase in your own words what the previous authors said.

  3. Reproduction of text from other authors without citation or quotation marks

    This practice is obviously unacceptable, and it will normally result in the rejection of a submission.

Making Use of Language Services

ACM has partnered with International Science Editing (ISE) to provide language editing services to ACM authors. ISE offers a comprehensive range of services for authors including standard and premium English language editing, as well as illustration and translation services, and also has significant international outreach, especially in China. Editing is available for both Word and LaTeX files. As an ACM author, you will receive a generous discount on ISE editing services.

To take advantage of this partnership, visit http://acm.internationalscienceediting.com/.  (Editing services are at author expense and do not guarantee publication of a manuscript.)

Please note that formatting assistance is provided at no charge to authors by Aptara, as specified on the author style guide page: http://www.acm.org/publications/submissions/.

Submitting a Manuscript

When your manuscript is ready to be submitted:

  • Access the manuscript management system ScholarOne Manuscripts by following the instructions given on a separate page.
  • All further information and instructions will be found in the TiiS Guide, to which context-specific links are provided in the ScholarOne Manuscripts pages.

The reviewing procedure is described on a separate page.

 

Prepare an Accepted Paper for Publication

After your manuscript is accepted and ready to be published, you will prepare your accepted paper for publication as follows. 

Transmitting Accepted Papers

Once a manuscript is accepted, a final version must be submitted to the Editor-in-Chief for transmission to ACM for publication. This submission must be electronic using the ACM Manuscript Central web site. ACM provides for a wide variety of formats for such electronic submissions, including ASCII, LaTeX, Microsoft Word, PS and PDF. Please refer to ACM's Guidelines for Submitting Accepted Articles, which can be viewed on the World Wide Web at http://www.acm.org/pubs/submissions/submission.htm for details on final manuscript formatting and submission procedure. Note that all manuscripts are converted to PDF by ACM for input to its electronic publishing system and database.

Supplemental Online-only Material

Please provide a brief description of your supplementary online-only material (i.e., text and multimedia material) to be published in the Digital Library. A short “readme.txt” file will appear in the DL along with your supplementary material describing its content and whatever requirements there are for using it.

Authors retain liberal rights to material published by the ACM. ACM has introduced a new publishing license agreement, an updated copyright transfer agreement, and a new author-pays option which allows for perpetual open access through the ACM Digital Library. Further details can be found in at authors.acm.org.

Submittal of an algorithm for consideration for publication in ACM Computing Surveys implies that unrestricted use of the algorithm within a computer is permissible.

If you have material owned by a third party, you must secure permission for its use before publication can proceed. If this is the case, please carefully read the third-party material guidelines and:

  1. Obtain written permissions from the copyright holders.
  2. Add the appropriate attributions to the figure captions in your paper (giving credit to the copyright holder).
  3. Include the source of the third-party material in the references.

If you have questions concerning third-party material, please contact Stacey Schick at [email protected].

Availability of Published Articles

If your article is accepted for publication, it will be made available in the ACM Digital Library and subsequently in a printed journal issue.

A large proportion of potential readers have access to the ACM Digital Library via institutional or personal subscriptions. To ensure convenient access even for other readers, you can use ACM’s free Author-izer service to post an unrestricted link to the official ACM version of your published article from either your personal home page or an institutional repository.

Author Gateway

Please be sure to visit the ACM Author Portal for additional important author information.

 

Conflicts of Interest Policy

When Does a Conflict of Interest Exist

If you have a conflict of interest with a submission, you should not be involved in the decision process for that submission in any capacity, as Reviewer, Associate Editor, or Editor-in-Chief.

If you are asked to participate in the reviewing of a submission and have a conflict of interest, please let the requester know and decline to participate. Most conflicts of interest can be recognized with common sense: Would an outsider who knew that you were involved in the reviewing process reasonably be concerned that you might be biased either for or against the submission because of your relationship to the authors or their research.

There is usually a conflict of interest if the submission concerns work ...

    • ... from an institution at which you have recently worked
    • ... by a recent coauthor
    • ... by a family member
    • ... by an advisor or advisee of yours
    • ... in which you have a non-trivial financial stake

“Recent” can be read as “within the last 5 years”. Membership in an author’s Ph.D. committee should be viewed as similar to coauthorship, and the criterion of “recency” applies. But note that there is no time limit associated with the advisor/advisee relationship.

Other circumstances may create a potential conflict, requiring careful thought on a case-to-case basis.

If you are in doubt, please describe the potential conflict to the Associate Editor who requested your participation – or, if you are an Associate Editor, to the editors-in-chief – and ask for guidance.

Conflict-of-Interest Policy for Associate Editors

Associate Editors may publish articles in TiiS. The Editors-in-Chief will choose an Associate Editor with no conflict of interest to handle the submission.

Conflict-of-Interest Policy for Editors-in-Chief

If one of the Editors-in-Chief (EiCs) has a conflict of interest with a submission but is not an author of that submission, the other EiC will assign an Associate Editor to handle the submission. This other EiC will make the final decision. If both EiCs have a conflict of interest with a submission, the same procedure will be applied as for a submission by an EiC (see the following section).

Conflict-of-Interest Policy for a Submission by an Editor-in-Chief

(Note: ACM requires that a policy for this situation exist and be published on the journal’s website.)

The purpose of this policy is to address the conflict of interest that arises when an Editor-in-Chief (EiC) of an ACM journal is an author of a manuscript submitted to that journal.

Reasons for Allowing Submissions by an Editor-in-Chief

ACM does permit an EiC to be an author of an article in the EiC’s journal. Outright prohibition of EiC authorship is considered too severe for at least three reasons: First, it can unduly penalize the EiC’s coauthors. In several computing disciplines, the ACM Transactions is the premier – and sometimes the only – high-quality, archival venue for research publication. A strict prohibition would impact the EiC’s coauthors, especially if they were just starting their research careers. Second, a general prohibition could prevent some high-quality articles from appearing in ACM journals. ACM’s stated mission is to be the publisher of choice. Good work should be evaluated on its merits and not on the basis of authorship. Third, a prohibition could be a disincentive for leading researchers to serve as EiC, especially insofar as this prohibition would affect coauthors, in particular graduate students.

Many ACM conferences do not permit a program chair to submit papers. The three arguments given above apply with some force to ACM conferences as well; but because of the multiyear terms of EiCs, there is a more compelling case for journals than for conferences.

Details of the Policy

The procedure for processing a submission to TiiS with an EiC as an author is as follows:

  1. The EiC will submit the manuscript to an Associate Editor who has been specifically designated for this purpose and explicitly identified in the TiiS website. The designated Associate Editor must have agreed to accept this responsibility and should not be a collaborator of an EiC or from the same organization as an EiC.
  2. The Associate Editor designated in Step 1 (called “Alice” for concreteness) will not process the submission herself, but will hand it to another Associate Editor (“Bob”) whose identity will not be disclosed to the EiCs.
  3. Bob will execute the normal function of an Associate Editor for the submission (see the description of the reviewing procedure), except that that he will also make the final decision, without consulting the EiCs. Bob will report the final decision to Alice, who will in turn convey it to the EiCs.

As an exception, if the EiC’s manuscript is submitted for consideration for a special issue that is being managed by a Guest Editor, the Associate Editors will not be involved in the way described above. Instead, the Guest Editor will make the final decision. The identities of the reviewers of the EiC’s submission will not be disclosed to the EiC.

In order to avoid the possible impression of biased processing, the (implicit or explicit) standards of acceptability must be applied especially rigorously and conservatively to any submission (co)authored by an EiC; if such a submission is marginal in any way, it should be rejected.

Templates

Manuscripts accepted for publication in any ACM publication must be formatted using the ACM authoring template. Submissions must also use the ACM authoring templates. ACM style files will closely approximate the final output, enabling authors to judge the page-length of their published articles.

ACM authoring templates and detailed instructions on formatting can be found at http://www.acm.org/publications/authors/submissions. For both Word and Latex technical support, contact [email protected].

ACM Computing Classification System (CCS)

If your paper has been accepted, please read the HOW TO CLASSIFY WORKS USING ACM'S COMPUTING CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM for instructions on how to classify your document using the CCS and insert the index terms into your LaTeX or Microsoft Word source file. Providing the proper indexing and retrieval information from the CCS provides the reader with quick content reference, facilitating the search for related literature, as well as searches for your work in ACM's Digital Library and on other online resources.

Author Rights

ACM authors have three ways to manage their publication rights:

  • A license granting ACM non-exclusive permission to publish—allowing authors to self-manage all rights to their work by choosing to pay for perpetual open access from the ACM Digital Library.
  • A publishing license agreement granting ACM exclusive publication rights—by granting ACM the right to serve as the exclusive publisher of a work and to manage ongoing rights and permissions associated with the work, including the right to defend it against improper use by third parties. (This license is roughly the equivalent of ACM’s traditional Copyright Transfer Agreement except that the author continues to hold copyright.)
  • ACM's traditional Copyright Transfer Agreement—for authors comfortable with the existing agreement.

Additionally, ACM authors may post all versions of their work, with the exception of the final published "Version of Record", to non-commercial repositories such as ArXiv. See the ACM Author Rights page for additional information.

Learn more, including about posting to pre-print servers and institutional repositories, by visiting the ACM Author Rights page.

Open Access

ACM has made a commitment to become a fully sustainable and Plan S compliant Open Access (OA) scholarly publisher within approximately five years. ACM offers a number of ways to achieve this goal, including Hybrid OA, Gold OA, and the ACM OPEN program.

Most ACM journals, with the following exceptions, are Hybrid OA.  ACM Gold OA journals are:

Click here to view the Article Processing Charges (APCs) to publish your article Open Access.

Additionally, all corresponding authors from an institution participating in ACM OPEN will have their research articles published OA at the time of publication at no cost to the authors.  Click here for a list of participating institutions. To ensure eligibility for the program, corresponding authors from participating institutions must use their institutional email address upon submission.

Language Services

ACM has partnered with International Science Editing (ISE) to provide language editing services to ACM authors. ISE offers a comprehensive range of services for authors including standard and premium English language editing, as well as illustration and translation services, and also has significant outreach in China. Editing is available for both Word and LaTeX files. As an ACM author, you will receive a generous discount on ISE editing services. To take advantage of this partnership, visit the Dedicated ACM Editing Service. (Editing services are at author expense and do not guarantee publication of a manuscript.)

Author-izer Service

Once your manuscript is published, this service allows you to generate and post a link on your home page or institutional repository to your published article. This link will let any visitors to your personal bibliography pages download the definitive version of the articles for free from the ACM DL. These downloads will be recorded as part of your DL usage statistics. A detailed description of the service and instructions for its use may be found at the ACM Author-Izer Service page.

ORCID

Starting in 2021, ACM requires that all authors provide their ORCID at acceptance (and preferably at submission). The requirement for each journal will be function on a rolling basis throughout 2021. To ensure a seamless process, we suggest that you ensure that your co-authors have signed up for an ORCID in advance of submitting. Registering is easy and takes less than five minutes. To register, visit https://orcid.org/register. For any questions, please contact the journal administrator.

ORCID provides a persistent digital identifier that distinguishes you from every other researcher and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, supports automated linkages between you and your professional activities ensuring that your work is recognized.

LaTeX Collaborative Authoring Tool on Overleaf Platform

ACM has partnered with https://www.overleaf.com/, a free cloud-based, authoring tool, to provide an ACM LaTeX authoring template. Authors can easily invite colleagues to collaborate on their document. Among other features, 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. Further information can be found at https://www.acm.org/publications/authors/submissions. The ACM LaTeX template on Overleaf platform is available to all ACM authors https://www.overleaf.com/gallery/tagged/acm-official#.WOuOk2e1taQ.

Kudos Article Sharing Platform

Kudos is a free service that you can use to promote your work more effectively. After your paper has been accepted and uploaded to the ACM Digital Library, you'll receive an invitation from Kudos to create an account and add a plain-language description. The Kudos “Shareable PDF” allows you to generate a PDF to upload to websites, such as your homepage, institutional repository, preprint services, and social media. This PDF contains a link to the full-text version of your article in the ACM DL, adding to download and citation counts.

Author Gateway

Please be sure to visit the ACM Author Portal for additional important author information.

Contact Us

For further assistance and questions regarding the journal editorial review process and paper assignment to an issue, contact the journal administrator ([email protected]).