Icdm submission

ICDM Submission

Run this audit twice: once when the abstract is registered and once before the full-paper deadline about a week later (2026: abstract May 30, paper June 6, AoE). ICDM runs a single deadline, not KDD-style cycles, so there is no next window this year — the paper you upload in June is the paper that gets reviewed. Reopen the current track call first; Research and Applied now differ on anonymity.

Track and anonymity regime first

• Research Track is triple-blind; the 2026 Applied Track is single-blind; the Blue Sky Track (CCC-sponsored) is a separate visionary lane. Pick the track before formatting, because it decides whether the paper must hide author identity at all.
• One paper, one track: do not submit the same work to Research and Applied at once.
• If the contribution is a deployed system with measured real-world impact, the Applied Track may fit better and its single-blind regime removes the anonymization burden — but confirm the current call's Applied scope before switching.

The triple-blind sweep (Research Track)

ICDM's triple-blind tradition (since 2011) is stricter than double-blind: author and referee identities are hidden, known only to the PC Co-Chairs, and author names are revealed only after acceptance is finalized. Your obligation is to conceal identity throughout the whole paper, not just the title block.

• No author names, affiliations, acknowledgements, funding/grant numbers, or ORCIDs.
• No "in our previous work [X], we..." phrasing that de-anonymizes by self-reference; cite your own prior papers in the third person.
• No identifying system names, internal dataset names, institutional URLs, or repository links that resolve to a named account.
• Scrub figures, plots, PDF metadata, and any embedded file paths.

The 10-page all-inclusive cap

The single hardest ICDM formatting fact: 10 pages in IEEE two-column format, including the bibliography and any appendices. There is no separate reference budget and no separate appendix budget. Over-length papers are rejected without review.

% ICDM IEEE two-column setting (verify against the current track call)
\documentclass[conference]{IEEEtran}
% Everything below counts toward the 10-page cap: body, references, appendix.
% Do NOT shrink margins, fonts, or \baselineskip to reclaim space; IEEE
% proceedings checks and chairs detect a modified template.
% Plan the appendix as a first-class competitor for the same 10 pages as the body.

• Content, references, and appendix together must end by page 10; if it does not fit, cut scope or move detail to an external anonymized repository, never squeeze the template.
• Reference the code/data repository inside the PDF, anonymized: because ICDM traditionally offers no rebuttal, a repository not cited at submission is invisible to reviewers for the whole cycle.

Desk-level and severity table

Trigger	Track affected	Severity	Fixable after deadline?
Over 10 pages (incl. refs + appendix)	Both	Rejected without review	No
Identity leak in body, figure, metadata, or repo	Research	Triple-blind violation	No
Modified IEEE template	Both	Desk-level / chair flag	No
Same paper in Research and Applied	Both	Rejection of both	No
Repository link absent from PDF	Both	Not fatal, but unrepairable without rebuttal	No
Wrong track for the contribution type	Both	Hostile review, mis-fit	Only before deadline

Final-week sequence

1. Freeze the track choice and confirm the anonymity regime it implies.
2. Rebuild the PDF from a clean IEEEtran checkout; measure to the bottom of page 10 with references and appendix included.
3. Run the triple-blind sweep against the list above (Research Track): names, self-cites, system names, metadata, repo account.
4. Export a fresh anonymized repository with no git history and no institutional paths; cite it in the body.
5. Register the abstract early in the week; upload the paper with hours, not minutes, of AoE margin.

Vignette: a paper that lost a page to its own bibliography

A graph-mining team writes a tight 9.5-page body and adds a two-page appendix of proofs, forgetting that at ICDM the references (1.5 pages) and the appendix both live inside the 10-page cap. The compiled PDF is 12 pages — an automatic no-review reject. The fix is not cosmetic: they promote one proof sketch to the body, move the full proof and extra tables to the cited anonymized repository, and trim the related-work prose. The lesson: at ICDM, budget the appendix and references against the body from the first outline, because there is no separate allowance to grow into.

Output format

[ICDM readiness] Ready / Needs fixes / Not ready
[Track x anonymity] Research(triple-blind) | Applied(single-blind) | Blue Sky
[Page check] <= 10 pages incl. refs + appendix: pass / fail
[Anonymity] triple-blind sweep clean / leaks found (Research only)
[Artifact visibility] repo cited in PDF: yes / no
[Fix order] <ordered fixes before the AoE deadline>