FOCS Camera-Ready

Acceptance at FOCS creates two publication duties with different owners of truth: a proceedings version, produced to IEEE specifications and published via IEEE Xplore and the IEEE Computer Society Digital Library, and a public full version with complete proofs that the CFP expects on arXiv, ECCC, or an equivalent open host by the camera-ready deadline (2026 CFP, checked 2026-07-08; the 2026 camera-ready date and format instructions were not public at check time — the acceptance packet is the controlling source, 待核实). This skill sequences both.

The two deliverables

Treat the full version as the primary deliverable and the proceedings file as its formatted excerpt — that ordering produces consistent documents; the reverse ordering produces a proofless PDF and an orphaned preprint.

De-anonymization, done completely

Reversing double-blind is more than restoring the author block:

• Author names, affiliations, emails, ORCIDs in the packet's required format and order (author-order changes after acceptance need chair approval).
• Acknowledgements and grant numbers restored — check funder mandates now, since some require specific contract-number phrasing and open-access handling of the accepted version.
• Self-citations rewritten out of the third person where it now reads absurdly ("Chen et al. [7] — the present authors — showed…" becomes "In earlier work [7] we showed…").
• The "full version" pointer made concrete: replace "the full version" with the actual arXiv/ECCC identifier on the first page.

Consistency audit before the deadline

The one camera-ready failure that follows a theory paper forever is divergence between the proceedings version and the full version. Run the statement-freeze check across the two sources one last time:

# same extractor as focs-reproducibility; both sources, post-edits
./extract_statements.sh proceedings-src/ fullversion-src/
# hashes must match: no theorem statement may differ between the
# document people cite and the document people check
# then verify the cross-pointers resolve:
grep -o 'arXiv:[0-9v.]*' proceedings-src/*.tex   # correct ID, correct version

If reviewer comments prompted real changes (a repaired lemma, a weakened claim), apply them to both documents and record them in the full version's changelog ("v3, camera-ready: Lemma 6.2 hypothesis corrected following committee comments"). Improvements beyond reviewer comments are safe when they strengthen exposition; new results belong in the journal version, not in a camera-ready that no longer matches what was refereed.

The November talk and the awards file

• Talk: every accepted FOCS paper gets a program slot in New York (November 8–11, 2026); whether the 2026 program runs single-track or parallel sessions was unannounced at check time (待核实). Build the talk from the ten-page window's narrative — problem, obstacle, one real idea — not from the section structure; twenty minutes fits one idea.
• Registration and attendance duties for accepted papers (who must register, in-person requirements): 待核实 in the acceptance packet; budget as if required.
• Awards: the PC designates Best Paper and the Machtey Award for best student paper from the accepted pool — recent Machtey citations (2024: the Ising-perceptron capacity paper; papers with all-student author teams) show the profile. If your author team's student status matters, confirm the packet's eligibility declaration is filled accurately; misdeclared status is unfixable after the program is printed.

Working with IEEE production

Expect the production pipeline of an IEEE Computer Society proceedings — specific class files, a compliance-checking step, and an electronic copyright form — with the 2026 specifics (template, page allowance, upload system) defined only by the acceptance packet (待核实). Two habits that prevent the classic failures: run the packet's compliance checks on day one rather than deadline day, because font-embedding and figure-format errors take iterations to clear; and keep the proceedings source a generated projection of your canonical source (a documented set of cut points and \iffull switches), never a hand-forked copy — hand forks are how the proceedings version acquires the typo the full version already fixed.

Endgame sequence

1. Acceptance week: read the packet twice; diary the camera-ready date; file the IEEE form early (copyright questions take days, not hours).
2. Week 1: apply reviewer-prompted fixes to the canonical source; regenerate both documents from it.
3. Week 2: de-anonymization pass; funder-compliance check; consistency audit above; co-author sign-off on the exact PDFs.
4. Submission: upload proceedings files; post/refresh the full version so the identifier printed in the proceedings resolves today, not at the conference.
5. Before travel: talk rehearsed against a mixed-TCS audience; slides carry the arXiv/ECCC ID on the final frame.