Technical Papers

How To Submit

Log in to the SIGGRAPH Asia Submission System, select “Make a New Submission tab,” and then select the Technical Papers form. You will be asked for a series of basic information about your submission; to see what you will need to submit, view the Sample Form.

The submission form, along with either a MD5 checksum of the submission or the actual pdf of the submission are due 23:59 UTC/GMT, 5 June 2018. If you wish to submit supplemental material (movies, data, etc) as well, these files (or their MD5 checksums) must also be uploaded by that date and time. If you decide to use the MD5 checksum option, the pdf of the submission and all the files serving as supplemental material must be uploaded by 23:59 UTC/GMT, 6 June 2018, and their MD5 checksum must match what was uploaded the day before to be valid.

General Information

1. Submissions may be rejected without review for a variety of reasons including plagiarism or dual review (papers simultaneously under review for another conference). For more information, please see Submission Policy.
2. The submission form must contain a tentative paper title and the name and contact details of the authors. Creating a submission form with this information will assign your submission a paper-ID. A paper-ID is required for each submission. You will need to include the paper-ID at the top of the first page of your submitted paper. No paper-IDs will be issued after the paper deadline (5 June 2018, 23:59 UTC/GMT). See Timeline tab below.
3. The final form of the files (or at least their MD5 checksums) must be uploaded by the paper deadline (5 June 2018, 23:59 UTC/GMT). The paper cannot be changed after the paper deadline. See Timeline tab below.
4. See Submission Policy and Submission Requirements for information on preparing documents and supplemental materials (including information on anonymity, paper length, resubmissions, etc.). See the Deadlines section of the FAQs tab below for more details about submission deadlines.

Information for Submission of Papers and Electronic Supplemental Materials

1. By the paper deadline (5 June 2018, 23:59 UTC/GMT, see Timeline tab below), you must have uploaded a PDF file of your paper and all supplemental files OR an MD5 checksum of these files, along with the authors names and affiliations. If you upload MD5 checksums, you have until the final file upload deadline (6 June 2018, 23:59 UTC/GMT, see Timeline tab) to upload the files that match these checksums. Uploads of all files will be disabled at some point on 5 June 2018, depending on the server load, after which time it will only be possible to upload MD5 checksums. Please be prepared to upload checksums during this period. If you want to avoid uploading checksums, submit by the paper deadline (5 June 2018, 23:59 UTC/GMT). Papers or materials emailed to the Papers Chair or Papers Advisory committee are not considered to have been submitted; you must use the SIGGRAPH Asia Submission System.

English Review Service

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 in order to meet the submission deadline.

Physical Submission of Supplemental Materials

We strongly encourage electronic submission of videos and other supplementary materials, since they are easier to distribute to reviewers than physical media. See Submission Requirements for details on electronic supplementary materials and their format. However, if you believe reviewers of your paper need to see physical supplementary materials, you may mail or ship six copies, to arrive by (not be postmarked or sent by the paper deadline 5 June 2018, 23:59 UTC/GMT, see Timeline) at this address:

Carrie de Souza
SIGGRAPH Asia Conference Manager
Koelnmesse Pte Ltd
152 Beach Road
#25-05 Gateway East
Singapore 189721
Tel: +65 6500 6726

All complete submissions received by the deadline will be acknowledged by email. For this purpose, a submission is complete if paper-ID has been assigned and a PDF file of the paper and a representative image have been successfully uploaded. Such submissions will be reviewed unless they are withdrawn by the author. For more information about the papers submission and rebuttal process, please refer to the FAQs tab below.

For more information about uploading files for your submission, please see Uploading Files.

Submission Policy

Double Submissions

By submitting a manuscript to the SIGGRAPH Asia Technical Papers program, authors acknowledge that the technical contributions they claim have not been previously published or accepted for publication in another peer-reviewed venue, and that no manuscript substantially similar in content is currently under review, or will be submitted to any peer-reviewed venue during the SIGGRAPH Asia review period. Violations constitute grounds for rejection.

Plagiarism

A submission to the SIGGRAPH Asia Technical Papers program should describe an original work of the authors. Authors must not use ideas or content originating from others without properly crediting their original sources. Note that such sources are not limited to peer-reviewed publications, but also include patents, textbooks, technical reports, theses, unpublished work posted on arXiv, as well as other posts on the World Wide Web. Failure to comply with this requirement will be considered plagiarism and result in rejection.

Prior Art

Authors are expected to cite, discuss differences and novelty, and compare results, if applicable, with respect to relevant existing publications, provided they have been published in a peer-reviewed venue. This also applies to patents, which also undergo a professional reviewing process.

But what about technical reports, and other non peer-reviewed publications, such as technical reports or papers posted on arXiv, which we henceforth refer to as prepublications? With the rapid progress of search engines and the increased perusal of arXiv papers by the scientific community, asking authors to thoroughly compare their work to these prepublications imposes an unreasonable burden: a seemingly relevant report that is incomplete in its disclosure or validation might appear online shortly before the deadline. While peer-reviewed publications are certainly not immune to these shortcomings, they have, at least, been judged sufficiently complete and valid by a group of peers. Consequently, authors are not required to discuss and compare their work with recent prepublications (arXiv, technical reports, theses, etc.), although they must properly cite those that inspired them (see “Plagiarism” above). We nevertheless encourage authors to mention all related works they are aware of as good academic practice dictates. Note that with new works posted on arXiv on a daily basis, it is increasingly likely that reviewers might point out similarities between the submitted work and online reports that have been missed by the authors. In this case, authors of conditionally accepted papers should be prepared to cite these prepublications in their final revision as concurrent work, without the burden of having to detail how their work compares to or differs from these prepublications.

Preservation of Anonymity

The SIGGRAPH Asia review process is 60 percent double-blind (three out of five reviewers do not know the identity of the authors). This anonymity is often regarded as instrumental to the fairness of the review process, so authors are required to take reasonable measures to preserve their anonymity. Specific instructions for preserving anonymity are discussed in the Submission Requirements section. Below, we discuss specific situations where authors have to cite their own publications and how to handle such disclosures in the context of a SIGGRAPH Asia submission.

Public dissemination of submitted papers, whether by posting them online or by delivering them as talks, is strongly discouraged, insofar as it may destroy your anonymity. However, we recognize that PhD students looking for jobs must give job talks. We also recognize that laboratories looking for funding may need to publicize their latest research. Authors should simply use restraint whenever possible: be aware that reviewers may become annoyed if they see blatant or unjustified violations of anonymity.

When citing already published work by the same (or an overlapping) group of authors, the citation should refer to that work in the third person, just as it would refer to any other previously published work by a completely different set of authors. For other relevant work from the same author(s) as the submission, we distinguish between two cases: (A) works that have been submitted for publication elsewhere, but have some relevance to, and/or overlap with the submission; and (B) largely overlapping prepublications that are available online at the time of submission (arXiv, technical report, thesis, etc.).

For case (A), the other work should be cited anonymously, as well as provided as anonymous supplementary material. The authors must convince the reviewers that the current submission is sufficiently different from the other work, which can be done using an anonymous cover letter that outlines the differences.

For case (B), it is not necessary to provide the prepublications as anonymous supplementary materials. It suffices to cite them in the bibliography. The bibliography entry should read “Anonymous” in lieu of the authors’ names, making it clear that the work is by the same authors as the submission. The entry should also be clearly recognizable as a prepublication declaration using a standard tag such as “non-peer-reviewed prepublication by the authors” or the like. Any prepublication the reviewers might discover should correspond to a bibliography entry, which will avoid potential suspicion of plagiarism.

Lobbying Committee Members

It is strictly prohibited to make any attempt to intervene the review process. For example, an author contacting a committee member during the review process and mentioning the authors' own submission is considered as an inappropriate ntervention, even if the author does not explicitly ask for a favor. Committee members will be asked to report such incidents, and subsequently may be marked as conflicted and removed from the review process for that submission. For the most serious interventions, the submission may be rejected without completing the review process.

Submission Requirements

Authors of technical papers should prepare their documents according to the ACM SIGGRAPH publication guidelines. Please pay particular attention to the citation format for prior ACM SIGGRAPH conference papers, as specified in the ACM SIGGRAPH publication guidelines, because the proper format varies depending on the year of publication. Moreover, if you use LaTeX, make sure to change the \documentclass{} command to: \documentclass[acmtog,anonymous,timestamp,review]{acmart} and to add your paper-ID through: \acmSubmissionID{your_paper_ID_here}.

Authors are required to submit fully formatted papers, with graphs, images, and other special areas arranged as intended for final publication, using the ACM SIGGRAPH paper preparation guidelines. Be sure that all pages are numbered and contain your paper’s ID number in the page footer. You should obtain this paper ID by completing the Online Submission Form before finalizing your paper. If your paper is accepted, you will receive instructions for formatting the final version, which will be different because, among other things, the authors’ names and affiliations will be included, and the pages will not be numbered.

Authors must submit their papers electronically. The only allowable format is Adobe PDF. We prefer that authors upload supplemental materials (anything except the paper) electronically, but physical submission is also possible. If there is some reason why electronic submission is impossible for you, please contact us via the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. well before the deadline. See How to Submit for more information. For videos, we strongly encourage QuickTime MPEG-4 or DivX Version 6, and for still images, we strongly encourage JPG or PNG. If you use another format, you are not guaranteed that reviewers will view them. In preparing videos, please choose a reasonable frame size and rate, but be prepared to submit higher-resolution video if a section of your video is selected for the Papers Preview section of the Electronic Theater (see How to Submit). If your supplemental materials amount to more than 100 MB of data, you are not guaranteed that reviewers will download and view them.

Anonymity

Remove any information from your submission materials (paper, video, images, etc.) that identifies you or any of the other authors, or any of your institutions or places of work. In addition to not listing your names and affiliations from the paper, please omit acknowledgements (you will be able to add them back upon acceptance). If you are a well-known author, don’t narrate your video; get someone else to do it. You must reference all relevant work completely, however, including your own and that of the other authors. The detailed policy on how to cite these papers, were they already published, submitted to publication, or online prepublications (arXiv, technical reports, theses, etc.) is described in Submission Policy. Please read it carefully before submitting your work.

Do not include URLs referring to websites that contain vital material for your submission. Such material won’t be considered, due to the fact that reviewers cannot access it without endangering the anonymity of the reviewing process.

Please keep the PDF version anonymous; in particular, note that under some operating systems the “properties” of a PDF file may contain the creator’s name. Also, Version 7 PDF files allow inclusion of a script that will contact the author each time the file is opened. Do not include this script in your PDF file; if we find it, we will reject your paper without review.

For more information, see the Anonymity section of the Submission Policy.

Paper Length

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, but the variation is large. The page length need not be an even number.

Once the Technical Papers submission deadline has passed, it is expected that if your paper is accepted, its length will not change. If you wish to substantially modify the paper during the revision cycle, or if you wish to add any pages to the length of your paper, you must first obtain permission from your primary reviewer. Be aware that primary reviewers will typically deny such requests unless the terms of conditional acceptance of the paper can reasonably be understood to require it.

Companion Videos

Papers may be accompanied by a video that is five minutes or less in duration. In recent years, well over half of the accepted papers were accompanied by some kind of video material. To the extent possible, accepted papers should stand on their own, with the video providing supplementary information or visual confirmation of results. However, it is fine to refer to the video in the paper, in which case the video should be submitted in the public areas of the supplementary materials form, as described below. Such a public video should not be included in a submission unless substantively similar footage can appear in the ACM Digital Library. If your paper is accepted and you cannot comply with this requirement because of copyright or permission problems, your acceptance will be rescinded.

Supplemental Materials

Authors are invited, but not required, to include supplemental materials such as executables and data files so that reviewers can reproduce results in the paper, images, additional videos, related papers, more detailed explanations, derivations, or results. These materials will be viewed only at the discretion of the reviewers, who are only obligated to read your paper itself. These materials should be anonymized, so that they can be made available to all reviewers; materials whose authorship can be readily ascertained will be seen only by members of the Technical Papers Committee. There are three separate areas in the online submission form for uploading supplementary materials:

A) Anonymous supplemental materials that are considered part of the submission, and that you are committing to provide for the ACM Digital Library if your paper is accepted.

B) Anonymous materials that you are submitting to help in the review process but do not plan to submit to the Digital Library.

C) Non-anonymous materials for PC members only, which are not part of the submission.

For instance, in addition to videos, A) may include some code, and a .zip archive containing result images and some text files, such as detailed user-study results or other appendices associated to your submission. B) may include related papers from the same authors currently under review or in press elsewhere, together with a cover letter that outlines the differences between the submission and these other papers. In case of resubmission with reviewer continuity, the cover letter explaining how you took into account previous reviews and listing the improvements in your method should be there, too. If you need to include non-anonymous supplemental materials (C), be aware that they will only be accessible to the Technical Paper Committee members, and please add a cover letter indicating why you are including them. For more information, see Submission Policy.

Resubmissions

If your paper is a revision of a paper that has previously been submitted to a SIGGRAPH or SIGGRAPH Asia conference, we recommend (but do not require) that when you fill out the submission form you identify it as a resubmission, and select the option that allows the previous review materials (reviews, reviewer identities, BBS discussions, etc.) to be made available to the Technical Papers Committee. Please indicate the latest conference that your paper was submitted to, and its paper-ID at the time. If you choose to use this option, your paper may be assigned to some or all of the previous reviewers, and all reviewers will have access to suitably anonymized versions of the review materials of all prior submissions. We encourage you to choose this option if you consider the paper to be derived from the previous version, even if the paper has been substantially rewritten and authors have been added, because it will result in more consistent reviews, and decrease the chance that a new set of reviewers will want completely different changes than those you made in response to the reviews of your earlier submissions. This option also has the added side benefit of reducing the overall burden on the volunteer reviewing community. Note that simply responding to all earlier criticisms will not guarantee acceptance. If you resubmit with reviewer continuity, you should include a cover letter within the anonymized supplementary materials in order to explain the changes you made to the paper and how you improved your work and its exposition since the last review cycle.

Permissions and Copyrights

You must have permission from the owner or copyright holder to use any images or video (or provide rationale for using it w/out permission) that you do not own in your submitted paper or supplementary material [http://www.acm.org/publications/authors/third-party-material]. ACM has a clear policy, and procedures, for handling third-party material. If your submission is accepted, you will be asked to provide a signed rights form, which is required by ACM before your paper can be published. The contact author of each paper will receive an email message from ACM Rights Review containing instructions and a link to the rights form, which is completed online.

Authors of accepted Technical Papers are required to complete the ACM Rights Form prior to publication. They are also required to upload final versions of all public supplementary materials that were originally part of their submission.

Evaluation

The Technical Papers Committee and a set of external reviewers, both consisting of recognized experts, will review submitted papers. Then, at their meeting, the committee will select those papers to be presented at SIGGRAPH Asia and published in a special issue of ACM Transactions on Graphics.

The Technical Papers review process will be conducted by (1) the Technical Papers Chair, who was chosen by the SIGGRAPH Asia Conference Chair and approved by the ACM SIGGRAPH Executive Committee and its Conference Advisory Group; (2) the Technical Papers Advisory Board, consisting of past Technical Papers Chairs and other trusted and experienced advisors, chosen by the SIGGRAPH Asia Technical Papers Chair; and 3) the Technical Papers Committee, chosen by the Technical Papers Chair with the assistance of the members of the Technical Papers Advisory Board, and consisting of about 40 people whose expertise spans the entire field.

The Review Process

1. On the weekend following the submission deadline, the Technical Papers Chair and several others selected by the Technical Papers Chair will conduct the papers sort. During this meeting, they assign each paper to two senior reviewers, called the primary and secondary reviewers, who are members of the Technical Papers Committee. The Technical Papers Chair does not make assignments or review papers. Rather it is the job of the Chair to facilitate the process. Papers that are inappropriate may be rejected during this assignment process, without being sent to any senior reviewers. Papers will normally be rejected at this stage only if they are clearly off-topic for SIGGRAPH Asia, or if they are discovered to have been published previously or to have been submitted simultaneously to another conference or journal. For more details, see Submission Policy.
2. The two assigned senior reviewers may, upon conferring with each other and the Technical Papers Chair, recommend a paper to be rejected without additional review. A paper will normally be rejected at this stage only if it falls into one of the categories listed in phase one, but this fact was not detected during the papers sort. It is possible that a paper may also be rejected at this stage if it solves a problem that is known to be already solved; or if it does not cite (and the authors seem unaware of) important prior work on the same problem and doesn't address how it is different; or if it has no evaluation via proof, experiment, or analysis; or if it is solving a problem sufficiently minor that the senior reviewers do not believe that it belongs in the program; or if it addresses a topic that is clearly outside the purview of SIGGRAPH Asia.
3. Each paper is distributed to three or more additional experts, called tertiary reviewers. Two of them are selected by the primary senior reviewer of that paper, and the third is selected by the secondary senior reviewer. The primary, secondary, and tertiary reviewers all write full reviews. See the Review Form and Reviewer Instructions. Thus, at least five reviews are written for each paper that has not been rejected during phases one and two. The senior reviewers know the identifications of the authors of the papers, but the tertiary reviewers do not. In unusual cases, such as when a tertiary reviewer fails to deliver a review on time, papers may receive only four reviews. However, if a paper receives fewer than four reviews, additional reviewers will be found, possibly from the committee. For more details, see the Review Process section in the FAQs tab below.
4. After all reviews are complete, the review system allows the authors access to the reviews and scores for their papers. Then, authors have until 27 July, 23:59 UTC/GMT, to enter rebuttals if they feel the reviewers have made substantive errors, or to answer specific questions posed by the reviewers. The rebuttal is confined to 1,000 words in length, and must be self-contained. For instance, URLs to additional material are not allowed. The rebuttal period is for addressing factual errors in the reviews, not for providing revised text or new results. Any such novel material will be ignored by the reviewers. For more details, see the Rebuttal Process section of the FAQs.
5. Between the end of the rebuttal period and the committee meeting, the senior reviewers will read the author rebuttals, confer intensively about the paper, and prepare a recommendation for the committee meeting. The three tertiary reviewers will see the author rebuttals and will participate in discussions about the paper. Since the three tertiary reviewers do not know the names of the authors, the authors must maintain anonymity in their rebuttals. In addition, the tertiary reviewers don't know each other's identities, so they too must maintain anonymity during the discussion. The preliminary recommendation agreed on at this stage will be either accept or reject. If an agreement on the recommendation cannot be reached, a third option is to table the paper, for further review and discussion during the final Program Committee meeting.
6. If a paper is tabled, the senior reviewers will select one or more other members of the Technical Papers Committee to write extra reviews of the paper and be prepared to discuss it in detail at the meeting. The extra reviews will be written during the week before the committee meeting. If consensus still cannot be reached, it is even possible that extra reviews will be assigned during the meeting itself. Any extra reviews will be provided to the authors after the meeting.
7. The full Technical Papers Committee meets to finalize acceptance or rejection of each paper. In cases where a consensus on a paper was not reached during the pre-meeting discussion phase, additional committee members may read the paper, and their evaluations will be taken into account in the decision.
   
   Although the senior reviewers of a paper know the identities of its authors, they do not disclose these identities during the meeting. In advance of the paper sort, the papers committee members specify with which paper authors they have conflicts of interest, due to institutional, professional or student/teacher relationships. They leave the room when papers for which they have conflicts are discussed. Papers are judged solely on their merit, as determined by the reviews. Although the acceptance rate of SIGGRAPH papers has remained nearly constant in the range of 15% to 25%, there is no quota for the number of papers that should be accepted by the SIGGRAPH Asia Technical Papers Committee; this number will arise organically from the actions of the committee.

Possible Outcomes for a Paper

Email notifications of the Technical Papers Committee's decisions will be sent following the committee meeting (see Timeline tab below). The notifications will place each paper in one of the following categories:

1. Conditionally accepted for presentation at SIGGRAPH Asia. Conditionally accepted papers undergo a second reviewing process, in which a referee (a member of the Technical Papers Committee) verifies that the final version of the paper is acceptable (i.e. that any required changes have been made, and that other changes made by the authors, perhaps in response to reviewer comments, have not compromised the paper in any way). This second and final stage determines the final acceptance status of all papers. The referees' decisions are final. Papers that do not satisfy the referees in the second stage of reviewing and/or that are not uploaded in final form by the final deadline, together with the original or revised versions of the submitted supplementary material, will be rejected. Accepted papers will appear in the conference proceedings, which will continue to be published as a special issue of ACM Transactions on Graphics. One author of the paper must commit to presenting the paper in person.
2. Rejected from SIGGRAPH Asia. Submissions that were deemed not suitable for the conference, or too flawed or incomplete to be accepted, will be rejected. In some cases, the reviewers have found enough merit in the submission that they encourage the authors to consider resubmitting to either ACM Transactions on Graphics or SIGGRAPH/SIGGRAPH Asia, with reviewer continuity. The review summary includes a set of suggested changes. At the authors' discretion, a revised paper may be submitted to ACM Transactions on Graphics. The senior reviewers will review the revised paper. They may also call upon some of the original SIGGRAPH Asia tertiary reviewers for their expertise.

Notice To Contributors

All contributors to SIGGRAPH Asia Annual Conferences are now required to use ACM's rights management system to grant rights to publish accepted content rather than through the SIGGRAPH Asia Submission System. Essentially, submission tracking, jury review, and acceptance remain the same, but now the rights management is through ACM, the parent organization of SIGGRAPH Asia.

You will be asked to complete an ACM rights management form, which includes permission to record and distribute the audio and video of your recorded presentation through official channels of ACM/SIGGRAPH Asia. For most content types, this will be a Permission and Release form, which allows authors to retain copyright.

More Information on these options (the FAQ is particularly useful)

As a contributor to an ACM-sponsored event, the following expectations apply to you, should your content be accepted for presentation:

• You have the permission to use everything that is in your presentation. This includes securing permission to use third-party material and material providing documentation of that permission to ACM. (More information on the proper use of third-party material in your presentation)
• If you are using copyrighted musical compositions in your presentation, you must secure performing rights licenses.
• You must have the authority to grant ACM the right to distribute your presentation.

Once your contribution is accepted, you will receive a link via email to the appropriate form for your contribution.

Upon Acceptance

Authors of papers conditionally accepted by the committee must prepare an electronic, camera-ready version of their papers in ACM-standard format for the second reviewing process, and then for eventual publication in a special issue of ACM Transactions on Graphics. For detailed instructions for preparation of papers, see ACM SIGGRAPH paper preparation guidelines.

Notification of conditional acceptances and rejections will be sent to authors, along with any extra reviews and possibly a list of required changes (see Timeline tab below). Members of the Technical Papers Committee, typically your primary and secondary reviewers, will be assigned to each paper as referees for the revision cycle.

A few days after notification, any changes to the paper title, list of authors, or 30-word paper summary will be due back to your referee. Changes to the paper title must be approved by your referee. Also, if you wish to add any pages to the length of your paper, you must first obtain permission from your referee. Extensions of more than one page are unlikely to be granted.

The deadlines for the revised version and final version of your paper are listed in the Timeline tab below. During the week between these two dates, the reviewers and authors will communicate via the SIS bulletin board process about the adequacy of the changes in the revisions. Sometimes, changes are not initially considered adequate, or introduce new problems, so further revision may be required. It is recommended to submit the initial revised version sooner than the deadline, in order to provide more time for iterated revisions. It is hoped that all conditionally accepted papers will be accepted by the end of this process, but this is not guaranteed. When writing successive revisions, the reviewers' jobs are easier if you use a different color for the added or revised text in each new version. (But please remember to remove these colors in the final version.) It also helps to describe the changes in the bulletin-board post to which you attach the revision.

One author must attend to present your work at SIGGRAPH Asia 2018 in Tokyo, Japan. This includes participation in the Fast Forward session on the first day of the conference, in addition to the regular presentation of the paper in a Technical Papers sessions.

Session Room Equipment

Here is a complete summary of the resources available for presentation of your paper. Arrangements for equipment outside the standard set-up are the sole responsibility of the paper presenter.

Presenter Recognition

Here is how SIGGRAPH Asia 2018 will support your participation if your work is accepted.

Authorization for Use

Any material that supports a paper's acceptance for publication must be available as part of the final publication (see Submission Requirements). Thus, all material uploaded for review in the “public materials that are considered part of the submission“ section of the submission form, including supplementary text, images, and videos, are subject to the ACM copyright policy, and the required permission forms must be completed upon acceptance. If it subsequently becomes apparent that the necessary permissions cannot be given for publication of material that is substantially similar to that submitted for review, acceptance of the paper may be withdrawn. Upon acceptance, authors must deliver final versions of their papers and their submitted supplementary material, which will be made available to subscribers through the ACM Digital Library via the web page associated with their TOG paper.

Please be aware that ACM has recently updated its copyright policy to give authors the options of retaining copyrights on some materials or to pay fees that enable free access. You can read about the policy here or a more concise summary here. Authors of accepted Technical Papers are required to complete the ACM Copyright Form prior to publication. For every supplemental file originally uploaded as part of your submission, you must upload either copies of the originally submitted material (now in non-anonymized form) or updated versions of this material to the SIGGRAPH Asia Submission System's final-versions page (see Timeline tab for the deadline).

Technical Papers Preview Trailer

A Technical Papers Preview Trailer will be prepared from selected parts of the videos accompanying accepted papers. The preview will appear in the Computer Animation Festival at the conference and may also be used to publicize the Technical Papers program inside and outside the conference, for example on the web. If a section of your video is selected, you may be asked to provide a high-quality rendering of that clip. Therefore, if you submit a video accompanying your paper, please keep your raw data available for that purpose.

Technical Papers Fast Forward

In addition to the material that is part of your publication, you will be asked to provide a short presentation for the Technical Papers Fast Forward. This session is held on the first day of the conference. One of the authors will be allowed less than a minute to motivate attendees to attend their complete paper presentation later in the week.

FAQs

Should I Submit?
Deadlines
Double Submissions
Prior Publications
Supplemental Material
Resubmission
Formatting
Anonymity
Review Process
Rebuttal Process
Presentations
Patents and Confidentiality
Technical Papers Committee
Contacts
Copyrights

Should I Submit?

What types of papers should be submitted to SIGGRAPH Asia?

Submissions should be novel, high-quality research papers on topics related to computer graphics and interactive techniques. We encourage submissions in many research areas: rendering, animation, modeling, imaging, human-computer interaction, scientific visualization, information visualization, computer-aided design, computer vision, audio, robotics, computer games, fabrication, and any other related topic. This list is not exhaustive. As always, excellence of the ideas is the predominant acceptance criterion.

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

The Technical Papers program is the most competitive of these three categories. Technical Papers give you a chance to work out your ideas at greater length and describe them in a citable archive. The Technical Briefs program provides a dynamic forum for new and thought-provoking ideas, techniques, and applications in graphics and especially at the intersections of graphics with audio, image, video and human-computer interaction (HCI). It is ideal for presenting innovative ideas that are well polished, high-impact practical contributions that build on existing research, and cool "tricks" that help users solve challenging problems. Posters provide an opportunity to disseminate ideas and get feedback from colleagues, but do not represent a citable research paper.

If I have previously presented a Brief 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 (Brief, 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 prior art and cite them as such. See Submission Policy for more information on plagiarism and prior art.

Back to FAQs links

Deadlines

Please explain the two Technical Papers deadlines.

There are only two deadlines for the submission 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.

By the Paper Deadline submitters must have completed the following requirements:

• They must have provided all basic information about their submission (title, authors list, authors affiliations, etc)
• They must have /either/ uploaded all the submission materials (the paper, optional video, and optional supplemental materials), /or/uploaded the MD5 checksums of all the submission materials they wish to provide. The MD5 option will be forced upon the submitters in the final hours before the deadline to lighten the webserver load in the final throes of the deadline.

Finally, the Upload Deadline allows submitters to upload their submission materials after the Paper Deadline, provided they match previously uploaded MD5 checksums. 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 by the deadline, you can ignore the MD5 checksum. The system will, however, compute and report the MD5 checksum for any file you upload, once the uploaded file has been completely received by the submissions server. 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.

We have tested the following MD5 calculators:

• Linux: md5sum command
• Windows: FastSum v1.3
• Mac OS/X: "md5" command in Terminal

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.

Can I submit after the deadline?

No. The deadline is absolute.

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

The deadline is absolute. Equipment failures are common, and SIGGRAPH Asia 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 is 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. 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 am using the SIGGRAPH Asia English Review Service, and they did not get back to me soon enough. So, it is SIGGRAPH's fault that my paper is not ready.

The deadline is absolute. The English Review Service makes no guarantees about turnaround, and it is up to you to make contingency plans. English Review Service Deadlines.

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

The deadline is absolute. If your supplemental materials must pass through various hurdles to get here, you must plan in advance how to submit it 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, and I have a receipt to prove that they promised delivery before the deadline, but there was a snowstorm in XYZ, and FedEx/UPS couldn't meet their promise.

If you can provide the receipt (and we will ask for it), then we will accept the materials whenever FedEx/UPS 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 SIGGRAPH Asia Submission System is overloaded?

No. Papers and submission materials emailed to the Technical Papers Chair or other conference representative are not considered to have been submitted; you must use the SIGGRAPH Asia Submission System. Please leave yourself enough time before the deadline to avoid problems.

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Double Submissions

I would like to submit my paper to conference X or journal Y as well as to SIGGRAPH Asia 2018. Is this acceptable?

You must submit to just SIGGRAPH Asia 2018 and await our response before submitting elsewhere (should your work not be accepted by SIGGRAPH Asia 2018). 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 graphics journals, and chairs of other graphics-related conferences, exchanging information. Several double submissions to SIGGRAPH Asia have been found in recent years.

But I want my paper to be in SIGGRAPH Asia 2018. I promise that if it is accepted by SIGGRAPH Asia 2018, I will withdraw it from the other conference or journal.

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

I would like to submit my paper to conference X. Their submission deadline is after SIGGRAPH Asia 2018's Technical Papers committee meeting, but they require abstracts to be submitted before SIGGRAPH Asia 2018'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 Asia paper 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 Asia.

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 Asia. How should we go about that to avoid the perception that it is a dual submission?

Cite the submitted paper in your SIGGRAPH Asia 2018 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 SIGGRAPH Asia 2018 submission. Then when you write the SIGGRAPH Asia 2018 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 Asia 2018 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 Asia 2018 paper. How should I handle this?

We realize that you did not intend to do anything against the SIGGRAPH Asia rules, but now that the workshop rules have changed, you should either withdraw the workshop paper from the proceedings or withdraw your SIGGRAPH Asia 2018 submission.

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Prior Publications

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

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 thesis, 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 cited in your submission. See Submission Policy for more precise instructions.

How do I reference an ACM SIGGRAPH Sketch or Talk (or SIGGRAPH Asia Technical Brief) 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 the abstract, if it appeared in one of the conference publications. 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. 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 Asia submissions can be withdrawn at any time. However, authors should remember that the program chair and the senior reviewers on their paper know who they are, and may have already spent considerable effort reviewing their paper. Withdrawing a paper will not help your reputation with these reviewers. If your paper is conditionally accepted, you will be able to add your new results, subject to approval by the senior reviewers.

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Supplemental Material

What supplemental material can be uploaded with my submission?

Authors are invited, but not required, to include supplemental materials such as related papers, additional images and videos, results of a user study, executables, and data for reproducibility of results, along with 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 other ones 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, together 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 or SIGGRAPH Asia, please see the Resubmission section of the FAQs. 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.

What is the difference between anonymous and non-anonymous supplemental material?

There are separate areas in the online submission form for submitting anonymous and non-anonymous supplemental materials. Materials whose authorship cannot be readily ascertained (even with a search of the web) are anonymous (for example, extra images or videos with results for this paper, interactive viewers, etc.), while all others are non-anonymous (for example, materials with names of authors or institutions, previously published papers, previous technical reports, etc.).

Supplemental materials should be anonymized if possible. Anonymous materials can be made available to all reviewers. Examples include additional images, videos, interactive viewers, data and executables, etc. Non-anonymous supplemental materials will be seen only by members of the Technical Papers Committee.

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Resubmission

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 BBS 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.

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Formatting

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

Yes, please format your paper according to the SIGGRAPH Technical Papers formatting guidelines. Seeing a paper in final format makes it easier for us to compare it to other submissions. If you use LaTeX, remember to change the \documentclass{} command to:
\documentclass[acmtog,anonymous,timestamp,review]{acmart}, and add you paperID with the command: \acmSubmissionID{1527}.

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, 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, and the representative image should be JPEG. Optional images should be in TIFF, JPG, or PNG formats. Optional videos should be in QuickTime, MPEG, or DivX Version 6 formats. Other supplemental materials can be provided in any format (for example, txt, zip, html). However, 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 one or more secondary topic areas from the list of keywords in the online submission form. Include those keywords under the abstract in your paper, along with any others that you feel are appropriate. The final draft of the paper will also need to include a list of Computing Reviews categories.

Where can I find a list of the Computing Reviews categories?

See ACM's Computing Classification System to determine the selection of keywords to include with the final version of your paper.

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 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 early polishing is a good investment of time and energy.

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Anonymity

What should I do to make my submission anonymous?

Remove any information from the paper, video, and supplemental materials that identifies you or 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

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 were to write a paper, he might say in his "related work" section: "Brooks et al. [12] 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. [14] and the interaction techniques described by Wolford [18]." He would NOT say: "The authors, in prior work [12], discussed a system in which molecular visualization ... " The only case in which anonymous references are appropriate are unpublished manuscripts, in which case he might write: "The authors have also developed closely related techniques for molecular manipulation [15], but that work is outside the scope of this paper." Reference 15 would then read: “[15] Anonymous Authors. Molecular manipulations through computer graphics, submitted to CACM.”

If there is any danger that reference [15] might be considered a dual submission, then you should submit it as supplemental material with your SIGGRAPH Asia submission, along with a cover letter (also submitted as supplemental material) briefly explaining the differences between it and your SIGGRAPH Asia submission.

You need to anonymize the cover letter, and the supplemental manuscript for them to be seen by the tertiary reviewers as well. The submission form provides separate areas for submitting supplementary materials intended to go to all reviewers versus supplementary materials intended to go only to the primary and secondary reviewer. Non-anonymized materials that would identify you as the author should go in the second area.

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

Cite it as [16] Anonymous Authors, A grand unified theory of computer graphics, submitted to SIGGRAPH Asia 2018, and submit as non-anonymous supplemental material (accessible only by Technical Papers Committee members) a letter telling us which paper-ID you are referring to.

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 cannot 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 acknowledgements that are appropriate. Keep in mind the additional space that will be required when stating how many pages the paper will require.

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Review Process

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.
• The submission is a dual submission; that is, if the submission is simultaneously under review for any other conference or publication. For more details see the Prior Publication and Double Submissions section of the FAQs.
• The paper is so incomplete or poorly written that review is impossible.
• The paper focuses on advertising of a company's product(s).
• The paper is on a topic clearly outside the scope of SIGGRAPH Asia.
• 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 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. Surprisingly often during the committee meeting there is discussion such as: "This paper got scores of 5, 4, 5, 4.5, and 2, but let me explain the score of 2. The reviewer picked at small details, was angry that his own work had not been properly cited (although when I looked at it, it appeared to have been treated more than fairly), and then wrote a very cursory review of the main contribution of the paper. It seems as if there is something going on here that does not have to do with the quality of the paper and we should discount this score as an outlier."

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

No. Indeed, Y may well be the best qualified reviewer for your work, and if so, we may ask Y to be the senior reviewer.

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

Only the primary and secondary reviewers of a paper know the identity of a submission's authors. This information is used to avoid conflicts of interest when choosing tertiary reviewers. Authors' identities are not discussed amongst reviewers on the BBS, nor at the committee meeting, and so 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. While each committee member has a list of papers, information about the reviewers will not be available to the Technical Papers Committee members. In general, the acceptance rate for papers by committee members has been slightly higher than the acceptance rate for those in the overall submission pool. But the acceptance rate for these same people has also been higher in years when they were not on the committee; they are invited to be on the committee, in part, because of their expertise in the field.

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

Although the acceptance rate of SIGGRAPH Asia papers has remained nearly constant at about 20%, 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 Asia 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. You may show a paper under review to a small number of people, normally one or two, provided that you:

• List their name(s), title(s) (for example, "my PhD student"), and affiliation(s) in the private section of the review form, (question 9, which goes only to the papers committee).
• Clearly instruct them on the rules of confidentiality of the SIGGRAPH Asia review process. THIS IS IMPORTANT: submissions are confidential, and therefore all information related to rejected submissions must be "forgotten" by all who saw them after the review process is complete. 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 your student.

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Rebuttal Process

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 Asia Submission System from 23 July 2018, 23:59 UTC/GMT through 27 July 2018, 23:59 UTC/GMT. Reviews will be available via the SIGGRAPH Asia Submission System at 23 July 2018, 23:59 UTC/GMT. Then authors may upload up to 1,000 words of text (no images, video, or URLs to external pages) in the system before 27 July 2018, 23:59 UTC/GMT. 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 than 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 can also 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 much better how to 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 committee members 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 June and August, we have gotten some really cool new results for our paper. Can I upload those results during the rebuttal period? I'm 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 #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. In recent years, 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 #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 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 through.

Please do not say: "If reviewer #4 had just taken the time to read my paper carefully, he would have realized that our algorithm was rotation invariant." Instead say: "Unfortunately, Section 4 must not have been as clear as we had hoped because Reviewer #4 did not understand that our algorithm was rotation invariant and he was therefore skeptical about the general applicability of our approach. Here is a revised version of the second paragraph in Section 4, which should clear up this confusion."

Remember that your rebuttal gets sent to all the reviewers; you do not want to offend them. In particular, you want the two senior reviewers to come out of the rebuttal process sufficiently enthused about your paper to champion it at the committee meeting, and if the paper is accepted and needs revision, then you want them to feel sufficiently comfortable with you as an author that they are willing to "shepherd" the paper through the revision process.

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 BBS. While 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 does not 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 should improve the fairness of the rebuttal process, and also decrease the pressure on submitters to create new results during the short rebuttal process.

Will we use the bulletin board system (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.

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Presentations

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

There is a presentation, presenters get 15 - 17 minutes for the talk plus 3 - 5 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 Asia 2018, 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 stated that you MUST have permissions for all the images in your paper and the footage on your videotape, CD-ROM, or DVD-ROM 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 substantively 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 that is equivalent to what the reviewers saw at the time of review.

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Patents and Confidentiality

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. Acceptances are finalized in August, at which time the paper's title, abstract, and 30-word summary (written by the authors) may be disclosed publicly in SIGGRAPH Asia communications. Excerpts of the paper's companion video may also be disclosed. The SIGGRAPH Asia Proceedings will be published as Volume 36, Issue #10 of ACM Transactions on Graphics. The publication date of this issue is one week prior to the conference. Please be advised that in order to receive maximum international patent protection on your paper's idea, you will need to file your application prior to that date.

What information about my rejected paper will become publicly available?

No information about rejected papers or papers conditionally accepted for publication in ACM Transactions on Graphics will be made public.

What about patents and confidentiality? Are the two senior reviewers and the three tertiary reviewers under a confidentiality agreement not to 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 Asia 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 Asia 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 Asia publication.

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Technical Papers Committee

Who is on the Technical Papers Committee?

The Technical Papers Committee consists of (1) the Technical Papers Chair, who was chosen by the SIGGRAPH Asia Conference Chair and approved by the ACM SIGGRAPH Executive Committee and its Conference Advisory Group; (2) the Technical Papers Advisory Board, consisting of past Technical Papers Chairs and other trusted and experienced advisors, chosen by the SIGGRAPH 2018 Technical Papers Chair; and (3) the Technical Papers Committee, chosen by the Technical Papers Chair with the assistance of the members of the Technical Papers Advisory Board and consisting of about 40 people whose expertise spans the entire field.

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 use the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., which sends messages to the Chair, the Advisory Board, and selected administrators of 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 would like to participate, send This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 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 have never been chosen. Is there a reason for this?

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 have been in the field long enough to be an effective committee member, or any number of other reasons. The committee composition does change from year to year, though. 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 20 papers. For about 10 papers, you must find two additional reviewers, and for the other 10 you must find one additional reviewer. You must attend a Technical Papers Committee meeting, during which time 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 may also 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 set for it. Finally, you may be asked to chair a Technical Papers session at the SIGGRAPH Asia conference.

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

In material terms, you get a discount when registering for SIGGRAPH Asia 2018. 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.

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Contacts

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

Use the SIGGRAPH Asia 2018 This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Do not send email directly to the Technical Papers Chair.

Why?

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 emails. 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 will often do so surprisingly promptly.

If you have a question of extreme delicacy, or a question on which the Technical Papers Chair or a member of the Advisory Board might be conflicted, and only in this case, then you may use a real email address.

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Copyrights

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 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 contact Deborah Cotton at ACM 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 paper must be submitted in final form. 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. This is the reason why material with unclear copyrights may be rejected.

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ACM Rights Management Form

If your work is accepted for presentation at SIGGRAPH Asia 2018, you must complete the ACM Rights Management Form. The form will be sent to all submitters whose work is accepted.

Note also that your representative image and text may be used for promotional purposes. Several SIGGRAPH Asia 2018 programs will prepare preview videos for pre-conference promotion of accepted content, which may include a portion of the video you submitted for review.

Timeline

All deadlines are 23:59 UTC/GMT.

5 June 2018
Paper Deadline
Basic information about your submission such as contact details of the corresponding authors, paper title, paper length, are required. Additionally, the submitted paper in PDF format and a representative image must be uploaded, along with any video, code and data, and other supplemental material if applicable. Alternatively, MD5 checksums may be uploaded in lieu of any of the files involved in the submission.

6 June 2018
Upload Deadline
If MD5 checksums were submitted by the Paper deadline (as described above), files (that match the checksums) can be submitted until this deadline.

23 July 2018
Reviews Available

27 July 2018
Rebuttals Due

10 - 11 August 2018
Technical Papers Committee meets

13 August 2018
Results Notifications

10 September 2018
Revisions Due
Revisions submitted by authors for final review

17 September 2018
Final version deadline

26 October 2018
Fast Forward material deadline

27 November 2018
Official Publication Date

4 December 2018
Fast Forward Presentation

5 - 7 December 2018
Presentations at conference

*Publications content will be available in the ACM Digital Library one week prior to the conference.

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