TACAS Submission

Run this audit before uploading to the TACAS EasyChair site. TACAS is a main conference of ETAPS, publishing in Springer LNCS (gold open access), and — unlike a single-track venue — it has four paper categories whose rules differ in page limit, anonymity, and artifact obligation. Every number below was read from the TACAS 2026 / ETAPS 2026 joint call on 2026-07-09 via search renderings of the etaps.org pages (see resources/official-source-map.md); treat them as a one-cycle snapshot and reopen the live call first. ETAPS deadlines are advertised as firm and not extended.

Step 0 — pick the category (it sets every other rule)

Page limits exclude the bibliography and a clearly marked appendix. Choosing the wrong category is a substantive error, not a label: a research paper submitted as a tool paper will be held to a tool paper's artifact bar, and vice versa. If unsure, run tacas-topic-selection first.

Format and page budget

• Springer LNCS llncs.cls, unmodified. This is the LNCS path, not ACM acmart or IEEE IEEEtran — do not carry a template habit from a sibling venue.
• Page limit for your category (16 or 6), counting all text and figures but not references or an end appendix. Material that does not fit may go in the appendix and/or a supplementary website, with access enabled and license clear.
• Margins, font, and spacing are fixed by llncs.cls; recover space by editing, never by shrinking the template.

The blind sweep — but only where it applies

Anonymity at TACAS is per category. A regular research paper is double-blind; a case-study, regular tool, or tool-demonstration paper is single-blind and names its authors and tool.

For a regular research paper, run the mechanical anonymity pass:

# Research-paper (double-blind) anonymity check on the final PDF and any review artifact
pdfinfo paper.pdf | grep -Ei 'author|creator|producer'
pdftotext paper.pdf - | grep -nEi 'github\.com/[a-z0-9-]+|gitlab|zenodo\.org/record|acknowledg|grant|thanks' | head
grep -rniE 'our (tool|group|lab)|university of|@[a-z0-9.]+\.edu' artifact/ --include='*.md' | head

Omit author names and institutions, cite your own prior work in the third person, drop identifying acknowledgements, and route any supplementary link through an anonymizing host. For a tool or case-study paper, do the opposite: name the tool clearly and make authorship and provenance unambiguous — anonymizing a single-blind tool paper is itself a mistake.

The mandatory-artifact reality (tool and tool-demo papers)

For a regular tool or tool-demonstration paper the artifact is not optional and not post-acceptance: it is submitted shortly after the paper (TACAS 2026: paper 16 Oct 2025, mandatory artifact 30 Oct 2025), evaluated in parallel with the PC, and its outcome feeds the acceptance decision. Plan the packaging before the paper deadline, not after. See tacas-artifact-evaluation.

Desk-risk triage

Final-week order of operations

1. Confirm the category and its page limit; freeze the body early.
2. For a research paper, run the anonymity sweep on the final PDF and any review artifact; for a tool/case-study paper, confirm the tool and authorship are clearly named.
3. For a tool / tool-demo paper, stage the mandatory artifact and its VM packaging on the post-paper deadline.
4. Fill every EasyChair field — category, topics, co-authors, conflicts — a day early.
5. Re-download the uploaded PDF and read it cold to confirm it is the file you meant.

Reverify each cycle

• Page limits per category and the current llncs.cls revision.
• The per-category blind wording and which categories carry a mandatory artifact.
• Exact ETAPS dates, the abstract/full-paper gap, and dual-submission and AI-disclosure rules — all cycle-volatile.

Output format

[TACAS submission status] ready / blocked / needs work
[Category] research / case-study / regular tool / tool-demonstration
[Format] pages used (limit 16/6), llncs.cls compliance
[Blind mode] double-blind (research): clean / leaks: <where>  |  single-blind (other): named correctly? yes/no
[Artifact] mandatory (tool/tool-demo) staged? / voluntary (research/case-study) planned?
[Fix queue] <ordered, with owners and dates before the firm ETAPS cutoff>