Skills Development Preparing Camera-Ready Conference Papers

Preparing Camera-Ready Conference Papers

v20260724
uist-camera-ready
This guide outlines the crucial, multi-stage process of converting a conditionally accepted academic paper into the final, publishable camera-ready version for top-tier conferences. It covers fulfilling rebuttal promises, meeting strict ACM accessibility standards (e.g., alt text for every figure and table), managing the ACM TAPS workflow, and finalizing all technical and logistical assets.
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Overview

UIST Camera-Ready

A UIST acceptance is conditional: the June 27 notification (2026 cycle, verified 2026-07-08) accepts the paper as amended by your rebuttal, and the July 24 camera-ready is where those amendments come due. This phase has three workstreams — the contractual edits, the ACM production pipeline with its accessibility requirements, and conference logistics — and they share four weeks.

Workstream 1: deliver the contract

Reconstruct the promise ledger from your rebuttal (see uist-author-response) and the meta-review or condition list in the notification:

  • Make each promised change where you said you would make it, and keep a diff-notes file mapping promise → location — useful if the process asks anyone to verify conditions, and essential when six co-authors edit in parallel.
  • The growth budget is +10%: one extra page for standard papers, half a page for short papers (2026 numbers). Promised additions get the space first; new camera-ready ambitions get what remains.
  • Do not silently make substantive changes nobody asked for; a camera-ready is a fulfillment step, not a second revision cycle.

Workstream 2: production and accessibility

Camera-ready flows through ACM TAPS (source upload, not just a PDF), and the 2026 guide adds accessible-PDF tagging via APTARA. The author-side accessibility obligations are concrete:

Item 2026 requirement
Alt text Required for every figure, subfigure, and table
Tables Real table markup, not images of tables
Math Source-level math, not equation screenshots
Video Final video figure with captions
PDF tagging Applied in the TAPS/APTARA workflow from your source

Writing alt text for an interface-systems paper is its own small craft: describe the interaction state the figure evidences, not the pixels. "Annotated sequence: a finger drags on the forearm and the cursor traces the same path on the watch, 0.3 s later" beats "screenshot of the system."

Alt-text pass over the figure inventory:
  [ ] every \includegraphics has \Description{...}
  [ ] every subfigure has its own description
  [ ] tables described (what varies across rows/columns, the takeaway)
  [ ] teaser figure description states the core interaction
  [ ] no description says "image of" / "figure showing" boilerplate

Workstream 3: de-anonymize and finalize assets

  • Restore authors, affiliations, acknowledgements, and grant numbers; flip the acmart options from the review/anonymous configuration to the final one per the current guide.
  • Reverse the third-person self-citation contortions where they now read oddly — but only where the meaning improves.
  • Restore real repository and project-page URLs, and make them live before the proceedings do (see uist-artifact-evaluation for what should be at the other end).
  • Produce the final video figure: captioned, de-anonymized, credits added; check the current guide for any preview-video obligation (待核实 for 2026).
  • Complete ACM e-rights before TAPS will process; the open-access terms applying to UIST 2026 authors were not verifiable at check time (待核实) — read the e-rights form, not folklore.

TAPS realities

TAPS consumes source (LaTeX or Word), not a hand-tuned PDF, which surprises teams whose submission compiled through local hacks:

  • Custom macros, non-standard packages, and manual float surgery that survived review can fail TAPS validation; budget one full rebuild-from-clean-template day.
  • Figures need production-quality originals (vector where possible); the screenshot that looked fine at review DPI may not at publication.
  • The \Description{} commands are part of the source, so the alt-text pass happens in LaTeX, not in a PDF editor afterward.
  • Validate early: upload a candidate build the week the system opens rather than on the deadline, because TAPS error messages arrive on production timelines, not chat timelines.
  • Keep the review PDF and the camera-ready in the same repository with a tagged divergence point; the "which version did we promise that in" question recurs for years.

Four-week schedule (notification June 27 → deadline July 24, 2026)

Week Deliverable
1 Promise ledger reconstructed; edits assigned; e-rights initiated; registration/visa checks started
2 All contractual edits merged; +10% budget reconciled; figure originals collected
3 Alt-text pass; TAPS candidate upload; validation errors cleared
4 Final video captioned and uploaded; last TAPS build verified; buffer only

Conference logistics start now

  • Registration and the presenting author: confirm the current in-person requirement wording (待核实 for 2026) as soon as notification lands — visas for a US venue (Detroit, November 2-5, 2026) can take longer than the camera-ready window.
  • UIST talks are short and demo-culture shaped: build the talk around the live or recorded demonstration, not around related-work slides.
  • Plan the hallway demo: papers whose systems can be demonstrated at the conference compound their impact; shipping hardware to a venue takes lead time (and consider a Demos-track submission for the same system where the rules allow).

Output format

[Contract status] promises delivered <k>/<n>; open items with owners
[Page budget] final length vs +10% allowance
[TAPS status] source uploaded / validation errors / complete
[Accessibility] alt-text pass done? tables/math as markup? video captioned?
[Logistics] e-rights · registration · visa · demo shipping — each with a date
Info
Category Development
Name uist-camera-ready
Version v20260724
Size 5.87KB
Updated At 2026-07-29
Language