Common Instructions and Policies

Common Instructions and Policies

Archival and Proceedings

The CODS 2026 conference proceedings will be published by ACM International Conference Proceedings Series (ICPS). Accepted papers from the Main Track and Young Researchers’ Symposium will be published in the proceedings. Corresponding authors of the paper need to choose between archival and non-archival types at the time of submission.

ACM has given ICPS conferences the option to cover article processing charges (APCs) for papers published in their proceedings by way of a single payment. The CODS 2026 conference committee has chosen this option, and all papers will therefore be published open access at no cost to authors.

Submission Format

All submissions should be formatted using the ACM sigconf style available here.

Instructions for authors writing in LaTeX

LaTeX submissions should be formatted using the ACM sigconf style. The authors can either download the templates from ACM website or use Overleaf.

  • The LaTeX templates can be found here. On this page, please download acmart-primary.zip (Go to LaTeX Authors and click on the LaTeX version). Once you decompress acmart-primary.zip, you should go to samples and use sample-sigconf.tex as your primary file for editing.
  • The Overleaf template can be found here.

    • Please make sure to change the main document in Overleaf to sample-sigconf.tex
    (go to Overleaf -> Menu -> Main Document and set it to sample-sigconf.tex)

    You should leave the document class as:
    \documentclass[sigconf]{acmart}

    Also, at this stage you do not need to modify the copyright or the conference blocks.

    Page Limits

    Different tracks have their own page limits. Please check the respective track pages.

    Submission Link

    All papers will be submitted to OpenReview under the relevant track using this link https://openreview.net/group?id=ACM.org/IKDD/CODS/2026/Conference

    Additional Instructions

    • Submissions not adhering to the page limit will be rejected without review.
    • Different tracks have their own anonymity policies. Please check track pages for details.
    • No change in either the set of authors or the ordering of authors will be permitted after a paper is submitted for review.

    Sharing and Reproducibility

    To enable reproducibility and data reuse, authors are encouraged to share artifacts including software, algorithms, protocols, code, datasets and other useful materials related to the research.

    Conflicts of Interest (COI) policy

    All authors submitting papers to any track must declare their conflicts of interest in OpenReview. You must declare a reviewer as a conflict of interest when the following associations exist:

    • Employment at the same institution or company, regardless of geography/location, currently or in the last 12 months.
    • Having an open or accepted offer for employment at the same institution or company.
    • Receipt of an honorarium, stipend, or grant from the institution or company within the last 12 months (except where of a modest nature, such as reimbursement of seminar expenses, honorarium for examination of a thesis, and so on).
    • Co-author on book or paper in the last 36 months.
    • Co-principal investigator on a funded grant or research proposal in the last 36 months.
    • Active collaborator on any project.
    • Family relationship or close personal relationship.
    • Graduate advisee/advisor relationship, regardless of time elapsed since graduation.

    We count on authors, PC members, the Organizing Committee, and all participants to adhere to ACM’s Conflict of Interest Policy as well as the ACM’s Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct.

    Dual Submission and Plagiarism Policy

    • Papers need to choose between archival and non-archival types at submission time.
    • Papers that opt for archival type have to report original work that has not been previously published / accepted for publication, or is not being considered for publication in any other forum. Modified / extended versions of Arxiv Preprints can be submitted provided these satisfy this criterion.
    • Papers that opt for non-archival types do not need to report original work. We actively encourage non-archival type submissions that have recently been accepted for publication or under review at top tier venues.
    • Each manuscript should be submitted to a SINGLE track of CODS 2026.
    • All papers that opt for archival type will be subjected to a plagiarism check before reviewing. Please review the ACM Policy on Plagiarism, Misrepresentation and Falsification here. Submissions violating this policy will be rejected without review.

    Double Anonymity Requirement

    CODS 2026 will be using double-anonymous reviewing for all tracks. Please review the instructions below carefully.

    Authors’ names and affiliations must not appear on the title page or anywhere else in the submission. Funding sources must not be acknowledged anywhere in the submission. Research group members, or other colleagues or collaborators, must not be acknowledged anywhere in the submission. The file names of any documents submitted must not identify the authors of the submission. Source file naming must also be done with care, to avoid identifying the authors’ names in the submission’s associated metadata. Only after acceptance at the camera-ready stage should the author list, acknowledgments, and funding sources be added to the paper.

    If a version of a submission already resides on a pre-publication server, such as arXiv, the authors do not need to remove it before submitting to CODS.

    Be careful when referring to related past work, particularly your own, in the paper. Authors must refer to their own past work in the third person. This allows setting the context for your submission, while at the same time preserving anonymity. Do not omit referring to your own past related work because that could reveal your identity by negation. Limit self-references to only the essential ones. Extended versions of the submitted paper (e.g., technical reports or URLs for downloadable versions) must not be referenced. Many peer-reviewed conferences have successfully followed double anonymity for decades to offer more equity for all authors in the reviewing process. Common sense and careful writing can go a long way toward preserving double anonymity without diminishing the quality or impact of a paper. It is the responsibility of the authors to do their very best to preserve double anonymity.

    Papers that do not follow the guidelines here, or otherwise potentially reveal the identity of the authors, are subject to Desk Rejection.

    Penalties for Violations

    • Manuscripts that do not meet the length or formatting instructions or that are simultaneously submitted to multiple venues (including papers with significant overlap) will be rejected without review.
    • Same submission to multiple tracks will result in rejection without review.
    • Failure to disclose all CoIs will result in rejection without review.
    • At the discretion of the PC Chairs and the Steering Committee, egregious violations (including plagiarism and COI) may lead to additional penalties.
    • You are encouraged to contact the PC Chairs if you have questions as to the originality conditions, dual submission, or conflict of interest policy.