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Author Guidelines

The ACM Computing Surveys publishes surveys of and tutorials on areas of computing research or practice. See the Editorial Charter for further details. Contributions should conform to generally accepted practices for scientific papers with respect to organization and style.

Types of Papers

Submissions must be of one of the following types:

  • Long Survey Paper
    • A paper that summarizes and organizes recent research results in a novel way that integrates and adds understanding to work in the field. A survey article assumes a general knowledge of the area; it emphasizes the classification of the existing literature, developing a perspective on the area, and evaluating trends.
  • Short Survey paper
    • Short survey papers are perspective pieces/essays that are well-focused and written by a leader in the field that usually presents a personal point of view critiquing widespread notions pertaining to a field. A perspective piece can be a review of a concept or a few  related concepts.
  • Tutorial Paper 
    • A paper that organises and introduces work in the field. A tutorial paper assumes its audience is inexpert; it emphasizes the basic concepts of the field and provides concrete example that embody these concepts.

Paper Length

Long survey papers should not normally exceed 35 pages, including references,  when formatted using the Surveys style. When justified, additional material may be considered or published in an electronic supplement however in this latter case you will need to go through the manuscript and indicate which pages will form your 35 pages for publication and which pages are for the electronic supplement. Both will be published simultaneously if your manuscript is accepted. Manuscripts of excessive length may be rejected without review. Shorter survey papers should be self-contained and not exceed 15pp in length including references when formatted using the Surveys style. 

ACM Policies

Prior Publication Policy

The papers appearing in ACM journals are normally original contributions that have not been published elsewhere. Widely disseminated conference proceedings and newsletters are a form of publication, although they are usually only semiarchival and often unrefereed. Publication, or republication, of a (perhaps revised) paper that has been widely disseminated is permitted only if the editor judges that (a) the revision contains significant amplification or clarification of the original material or (b) there is a significant additional benefit to be gained from journal publication. In either case, prior appearance should be noted on the title page of the paper.

Other Policies

Manuscript Preparation

Authors are required to prepare and submit their manuscripts electronically. This facilitates both a quicker editorial review process as well as faster and more accurate processing of accepted papers.

Computing Surveys permits electronic submissions for editorial review only in LaTeX, or MS Word format. Use of the ACM Journals/Transactions LaTeX style is encouraged to ensure proper formatting. It includes explicit support for ACM Computing Surveys. ACM also admits other formats for electronic submission of papers, including Microsoft Word.

To ensure proper indexing, classification, retrieval and dissemination, authors must include the following in the manuscript:

  • Descriptive title
  • Author names and affiliations
  • Abstract
  • Content indicators
  • Citations to relevant literature

Guidelines for the preparation of this material follow.

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.

Author Names and Affiliations

Authors' names should be given without titles or degrees along with the name and address of the organization for which the work was carried out. A footnote on the first page should acknowledge funding sources and presentations, if any, of the material at technical meetings (give dates and sponsoring societies). The author's current address should be given in a footnote on the first page.

Abstract

The abstract should be at most 100 words long and consist of short, direct sentences. It should state the objectives of the work, summarize the results, and give the principal conclusions. 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 must follow the guidelines found within the ACM templates information.

Submission for Editorial Review

How to Submit

Regular papers should be submitted electronically to ACM Manuscript Central at: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/csur. This site should also be used to look at the status of submitted papers.

If you do not have an account at ACM Manuscript Central, you will need to create an account before you can log in and submit to Computing Surveys. Address any questions to the Computing Surveys administrator at [email protected].

NOTE: Per journal policy, papers that have been rejected by ACM Computing Surveys are not eligible for resubmission to the journal for 12 months following the rejection date.

Review Process

Papers are assigned to an associate editor who selects referees and oversees the refereeing process. After the refereeing process is complete, the associate editor either rejects the paper or makes a recommendation for acceptance to the Editor-in-Chief, who makes the final decision on acceptance.

As an author you have the option to identify preferred or non-preferred reviewers. Please keep the following conflict of interest guidelines in selecting these reviewers; they are based on the National Science Foundation guidelines. You have a potential conflict of interest if any of the authors has one of the following relationships with a reviewer:

  • Known family relationship as spouse, child, sibling, or parent.
  • Business or professional partnership.
  • Past or present association as thesis advisor or thesis student.
  • Collaboration on a project or on a book, article, report, or paper within the last 48 months.
  • Co-editing of a journal, compendium, or conference proceedings within the last 24 months.
  • Other relationship, such as close personal friendship, that you think might tend to affect the reviewer's judgment or be seen as doing so by a reasonable person familiar with the relationship.

Procedures for Accepted Papers

Transmitting Accepted Papers

Once a manuscript is accepted, the final source files must be submitted electronically through the manuscript submission site. Please refer to ACM's Guidelines for Submitting Accepted Articles.

Supplemental Online-only Material

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.

ORCID Requirements

ACM requires that all accepted journal authors register and provide ACM with valid ORCIDs prior to paper publication. Corresponding authors are responsible for collecting these ORCIDs from co-authors and for providing them to ACM as part of the ACM eRights selection process. For journals using the ScholarOne submission system, the submitting author will be required to provide their own ORCID upon submission. Authors are strongly encouraged, but not required, to include ORCIDs for all authors in their source files.  Please note: ACM only requires you to complete the initial ORCID registration process. However, ACM encourages you to take the additional step to claim ownership of all your published works via the ORCID site.

ORCID provides a persistent digital identifier that distinguishes you from every other researcher through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission and supports automated linkages between you and your professional activities - ensuring that your work receives proper recognition. This requirement will also enable ACM to provide improvements to the normalization process of ACM Digital Library author profile data, aid in the detection of undeclared conflicts of interest and other publications-related misconduct in ACM Publications, assist with the implementation of ACM Open, and offer a host of other researcher benefits to ACM authors and the scientific community.

Before submission, the corresponding author should register for an ORCID.  Your co-authors should also create their individual ORCIDs at that time and add them to their accounts in the manuscript submission system. Otherwise, you will need to enter them manually into the ACM rights system upon paper acceptance and before publication in the ACM Digital Library. Simple instructions for complying with this mandate are provided inside the ACM eRights system.

ORCID information for all authors will appear on the article’s page in the ACM Digital Library. If ORCIDs are included in an article’s source files, they will also be linked in the published output.

The ACM ORCID FAQ should answer many of your questions.

ACM Policies

As a published ACM author, you and your co-authors are subject to all ACM Publications Policies.

ACM Policy on Authorship

The ACM Policy on Authorship and the associated list of Frequently Asked Questions cover the criteria for authorship and for submission, as well as acceptable and unacceptable authorship practices.

ACM Conflict of Interest (COI) Policy

The ACM Conflict of Interest (COI) Policy describes what a COI is, who is responsible for being aware of such conflicts, how to manage COIs, and how to report violations.

ACM Peer Review Policy

ACM recognizes that the quality of a refereed publication rests primarily on the impartial judgment of their volunteer reviewers. Expectations of reviewers and ACM, including key topics such as confidentiality, the use of large language models in the peer review process, and conflicts of interest, can be found in the ACM Peer Review Policy and its associated list of Frequently Asked Questions.

ACM Publications Policy on Research Involving Human Participants and Subjects

All authors conducting research involving human participants and subjects must meet appropriate ethical and legal standards guiding such research. These requirements are detailed in the ACM Publications Policy on Research Involving Human Participants and Subjects.

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 can manage their publication rights in either of the following ways:

  • 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.)

As of January 2023, per decision of the ACM Publications Board, the traditional Copyright Transfer Agreement option is no longer available for ACM authors.  ACM will continue to defend all ACM-published works against improper use when allegations of publication-related misconduct are brought to light.  For more information please refer to this article in The Blue Diamond.

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.

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]).