Facct workflow

FAccT Workflow

Use this as the project-management skill for a FAccT submission. Replace every date with the current official Important Dates page and work backwards from the abstract-registration deadline, which precedes the paper deadline and is a hard gate: miss it and OpenReview will not accept your PDF. FAccT runs a single annual research deadline, and — new for the 2026 edition — a genuine Revise-and-resubmit round sits inside the review cycle, so plan for a possible revision, not just an accept/reject.

FAccT is a conference with no standing editor-in-chief; leadership is the per-edition General Chairs and Program Chair (FAccT 2026: General Chairs Su Lin Blodgett and Zeerak Talat, PC Chair Michael Madaio, verified 2026-07-09). Chairs rotate yearly; re-check the committees page rather than carrying a name forward. Since 1 January 2026 all ACM proceedings are Open Access, so budget for the ACM Open / APC question early rather than at camera-ready.

Milestones (FAccT 2026 calendar as the worked example)

• Venue fit: confirm FAccT over a pure-ML/HCI/law venue and confirm the contribution is fairness/accountability/transparency-first (facct-topic-selection).
• Abstract registration: submit real title, abstract, authors, and focus areas by the abstract deadline (FAccT 2026: 8 January 2026). This gate cannot be reopened.
• Paper submission: upload the anonymized acmart PDF with its endmatter statements (FAccT 2026: 13 January 2026).
• Preliminary reviews + rebuttal: reviews released (FAccT 2026: 20 February 2026); a short rebuttal window for factual corrections, not debate.
• First notification: Accept / Revise / Reject (FAccT 2026: 2 March 2026).
• Revision (if issued): address Area-Chair-prioritized concerns and resubmit by the revision deadline (FAccT 2026: 25 March 2026); re-reviewed before a final decision.
• Camera-ready: Round-1 accepts (FAccT 2026: 24 April 2026); Revise-and-resubmit accepts (FAccT 2026: 11 May 2026).
• Present: every accepted paper — archival or non-archival — is presented at the conference (FAccT 2026: Montréal, June 25-28, 2026).

Backward plan from the paper deadline

Weeks out (heuristic)	Interdisciplinary-responsible-AI milestone
10+	Research/critical question fixed; affected populations and disciplinary lane named
8	Data collected / interviews done / legal-doctrinal analysis drafted; provenance and consent logged
6	Analysis complete; disaggregated results or qualitative codes done; limitations drafted alongside
4	Full draft in the acmart template; endmatter statements drafted (ethics, adverse impacts)
3	Internal mock review by a reader outside your discipline (the mixed-reviewer stress test)
2	Harm/limitations hardened; related-work delta across disciplines sharpened; page budget met
1	Anonymity sweep (strip positionality/acks); Generative AI Usage Statement written; focus areas set
0	Abstract registered by its earlier gate, then paper + endmatter on OpenReview

These offsets are planning heuristics only — anchor every one to the current Important Dates page, never to a previous cycle.

The single-deadline calendar reality

FAccT runs one annual research deadline. As of 2026-07-09 the FAccT 2026 edition has just concluded in Montréal, so the live next target is FAccT 2027 (dates/venue 待核实). Two planning consequences:

• Missing the annual deadline costs roughly a year at FAccT; if the work is time-sensitive, a sibling venue (AIES, a fairness-focused ML workshop, or a CHI/CSCW deadline) or the CRAFT track may have a nearer date — factor that into routing rather than idling.
• A Revise decision keeps you inside the same cycle (revision deadline weeks after notification), not a year later — but this revise-and-resubmit round is new for 2026, so confirm it still exists and re-read its exact timing before relying on it.

Failure modes by stage

• Missing the abstract-registration gate — the single most common fatal error; without a registered abstract and focus areas there is no paper slot at all.
• Leaving endmatter statements to the final night — a rushed Ethical Considerations or Adverse Impacts statement reads as an afterthought to reviewers who take reflexivity seriously.
• Skipping the cross-discipline mock review — forfeits the one chance to hear "a lawyer/social scientist will not accept this framing" from a friend instead of a reviewer.
• Treating a Revise as a guaranteed accept — the re-review is real; budget the short revision window like a deadline.
• Positionality/acknowledgement leak — placing an identity-revealing statement in the anonymous submission is an anonymity violation, not a virtue.

Coordination notes

• Assign one owner for the endmatter statements (ethics, adverse impacts, Generative AI Usage) and another for the anonymity sweep; shared ownership is how both slip.
• Archive the exact submitted PDF and, later, the rebuttal and revision response — the re-review quotes them and the response must map each reviewer concern to a change.

Output format

[Current stage] idea / evidence / writing / registration / submitted / rebuttal / revise / accepted
[Next official deadline] <date and source, or unknown>
[Critical path] <three tasks that determine readiness>
[Risk register] <abstract gate / anonymity / endmatter statements / evidence / revision window / presentation>
[Owner map] <task -> person or role>