Sigir submission

SIGIR Submission

Run this audit before anything is uploaded to a SIGIR OpenReview group. SIGIR is a multi-track venue where the same manuscript can be legal in one track and desk-rejectable in another, so the audit starts with "which track is this PDF for?" and only then checks format. Reopen the current edition's track page — every number below is a 2026-cycle anchor (verified 2026-07-08, exact deadlines 待核实), not a rule.

The two-format trap

SIGIR's full and short formats are not a long and a short version of the same bar. A 4-page short paper is a complete argument about one focused finding; a 9-page full paper is expected to carry a rounded evidence program (multiple collections, ablations, significance tests, efficiency notes). The most common self-inflicted wound is submitting a compressed full paper as a short paper — reviewers see missing evidence, not admirable focus.

Check	Full papers	Short papers
Page budget (2026)	≤ 9 pages, references excluded	≤ 4 pages, references excluded
Appendices	Count inside the budget (2025 wording: everything except references)	Same — no appendix escape hatch
Template	ACM Primary Article Template, LaTeX sigconf / Word Interim	Same
Review	Double-blind, fully anonymized	Double-blind, fully anonymized
OpenReview group	Main conference group	Separate Short Papers Track group
PC duty	One author nominated as PC member per submission	Confirm on the current track page

The appendix rule is the sharpest edge on this table: unlike NeurIPS-style venues, SIGIR gives you no unlimited appendix after the references. Proofs, prompt listings, extra tables — either they fit in the budget or they move to the cited repository.

Anonymization for IR papers specifically

Generic double-blind advice misses the leaks IR papers actually have:

• The system name. If your ranker is already public under the same name (arXiv, a leaderboard, a plugin for Anserini/PyTerrier), the name itself de-anonymizes. Rename for review or argue from the current policy page that preprints are allowed.
• Leaderboard submissions. MS MARCO / TREC-style leaderboards show team names and dates. Do not cite your own leaderboard row in a way that only the submitting team could.
• Proprietary query logs. "Queries sampled from our commercial search engine's logs in country X" can identify the company. Genericize the description, keep the statistics.
• Self-citations in third person; repository links anonymized (e.g., an anonymous.4open.science mirror); PDF metadata stripped.

Policy gates (2026, source: submission-policies page)

• Parallel submission = desk reject, regardless of how the other venue decides.
• Cross-track double submission inside SIGIR is banned — e.g., the dataset you submit as a Resource paper cannot also be the novel contribution of your full paper. Decide which track owns each contribution before the abstract deadline.
• Generative-AI use must be disclosed; AI tools cannot be authors; SIGIR reserves automated compliance checks. Assume your PDF will be machine-screened.
• ACM authorship policy applies: the author list is expected to be stable and human.

Desk-reject triage

Trigger	Severity	Can it be fixed after the deadline?
Over budget (appendix counted in)	Desk reject	No
Wrong track's OpenReview group	Desk reject or forced withdrawal	Usually no
Identity leak (name, log, leaderboard)	Desk reject	No
Parallel submission discovered	Desk reject at any time	No
Same content in two SIGIR tracks	Both at risk	Only by withdrawing one first
Missing PC-member nomination	Chair follow-up / submission incomplete	Sometimes, briefly
No significance testing on close results	Review-stage damage	Only before the deadline

Final-week sequence for a retrieval paper

1. Freeze runs: regenerate every table from versioned run files (TREC-format runs/*.trec) so the PDF, repository, and any leaderboard entry agree.
2. Re-run the significance script last — copy-pasted p-values from stale runs are a classic reviewer catch when the numbers moved.
3. Compress into the page budget by demoting per-query analyses to the repository, not by shrinking floats or tampering with sigconf spacing.
4. Anonymity sweep: PDF metadata, acknowledgments, repo URL, system name, log provenance.
5. Upload to the correct track group, complete the AI-disclosure and PC-nomination fields, and verify the OpenReview abstract matches the PDF abstract.

# Pre-upload checks that catch the silent killers
pdfinfo paper.pdf | grep -iE "author|creator"        # metadata identity leak
grep -inE "acknowledg|our (system|engine|company)" *.tex  # textual leaks
grep -c "documentclass\[sigconf" main.tex             # right ACM class
pdftotext paper.pdf - | grep -icE "p ?[<=] ?0\.05|t-test|significan"  # stats present?

Abstract-deadline gotchas

The abstract deadline (a week before the PDF in recent cycles) is a harder gate than teams expect:

• Title, author list, and track are effectively frozen there; ACM authorship policy makes later author changes painful and cross-track moves are usually impossible.
• The abstract text should be the PDF's abstract, not a placeholder — reviewers bid on it, and a bait-and-switch abstract draws mismatched expertise.
• Conflicts-of-interest declarations and the PC-member nominee belong to this stage; chasing a nominee's consent during PDF week is a self-inflicted crisis.

What this audit does not cover

Evidence quality lives in sigir-experiments; page-budget writing strategy in sigir-writing-style and sigir-supplementary; track choice in sigir-topic-selection. If the paper is a dataset or a replication, stop here and re-route: Resources and Reproducibility have different budgets, different anonymity regimes (Resources is single-anonymous), and different dates.

Output format

[SIGIR readiness] Ready / Needs fixes / Wrong track / Not ready
[Track + group] full / short + OpenReview group id
[Budget check] <pages used>/<budget>, appendix-inside-budget confirmed yes-no
[Anonymity risks] <system name / leaderboard / logs / metadata / links>
[Policy gates] parallel-submission, cross-track, AI-disclosure, PC-nomination status
[Fix order] <ordered blocking fixes>
[Reopen first] <current track page URL to re-verify dates and budgets>