Plan the campaign backward from a chosen cycle deadline. ICDT's defining calendar feature is two submission cycles per year, so the first planning act is not "when is the deadline" but "which cycle, and does the Cycle-1 revision option help me?" Everything downstream — abstract registration, the revision window, LIPIcs camera-ready, and the talk at the co-located EDBT/ICDT event — hangs off that choice.
Using ICDT 2027 (Lille) as the concrete snapshot, all AoE:
Cycle 1: abstracts 3 Mar 2026 -> papers 10 Mar 2026 -> notification 1 Jun 2026 (Accept/Revise/Reject)
Cycle 2: abstracts 3 Sep 2026 -> papers 10 Sep 2026 -> notification 1 Dec 2026 (Accept/Reject)
Event: EDBT/ICDT 2027, Lille, France, 6-9 April 2027 (ICDT sessions 6-8 April per the CfP)
As of 2026-07-09, Cycle 1 is decided and Cycle 2 (papers 10 Sep 2026) is the immediate live target. Reconfirm every date against the current databasetheory.org call before you commit — the two cycles do not always both run, and the dates shift per edition.
| Situation | Target | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Proof is complete and polished now | Whichever cycle is nearer | No reason to wait; both publish in the same volume year |
| Main theorem holds but a case or bound may still move | Cycle 1 | The revision option lets referees ask for the fix instead of rejecting |
| Result not yet fully proved | Later cycle / next year | A one-sided bound or a gap invites a reject; finish first |
| Rejected in Cycle 1 (not invited back) | Not Cycle 2 | The cross-cycle rule blocks uninvited resubmission; reroute or wait |
D minus 8-10 weeks : freeze theorem statements; decide ICDT vs PODS (icdt-topic-selection)
D minus 6 weeks : full proofs written; identify what goes in body vs the marked appendix
D minus 3 weeks : draft in lipics-v2021; body within 15 pages excl. refs; appendix holds proofs
D minus 1 week : register the abstract in the chosen cycle (abstract deadline is ~a week before D)
D minus 3 days : anonymity sweep (icdt-submission); self-citations neutralized; metadata scrubbed
D : upload to Microsoft CMT; re-download and read cold
[Awaiting decision] calibrate with icdt-review-process; prepare nothing you cannot support
[If Revise (Cycle 1)] treat the revision window as a deadline: close each named gap, document it,
resubmit within the cycle (icdt-author-response)
[If Accept] LIPIcs camera-ready (icdt-camera-ready): lipics-v2021 final, CCS + keywords +
ORCID, complete proofs, DOI on DROPS; post/refresh the full version (arXiv)
[If Reject] reroute per icdt-topic-selection (PODS / a journal); do not carry into Cycle 2
uninvited
A Cycle-1 "revise" is the highest-leverage moment in the calendar. Budget it like a submission: list every point the referees raised, close the ones about correctness first (a missing case, an unproved lemma), then the ones about clarity, and write a short account of what changed and where. The same referees re-read; an unaddressed correctness point is what turns a revision into a reject.
[Target] ICDT 20NN, Cycle 1 / Cycle 2, paper deadline <date, AoE>
[Cycle rationale] complete-now / revision-hedge / finish-first
[Backward plan] <milestones with dates back from D>
[Post-decision] awaiting / revising / camera-ready / rerouting
[Next skill] icdt-submission | icdt-author-response | icdt-camera-ready | icdt-topic-selection