SODA Workflow

The 2027 anchor calendar, checked 2026-07-08 (SIAM SODA27/ALENEX27/SOSA27 pages via search renderings; siam.org blocked direct fetches): papers due July 9, 2026 (AoE) on soda27.hotcrp.com; reviews to authors by September 1; responses due September 4; decisions October 2026; conference January 24-27, 2027, Philadelphia, co-located with ALENEX (papers due July 20, 2026) and SOSA (papers due August 6, 2026). SODA appoints a new PC every cycle under joint SIAM/ACM SIGACT sponsorship — every date here is a 2027-cycle snapshot, void for any other year until re-checked.

SODA's seat in the theory year

Theory groups plan around three rotating deadlines, and SODA's is the summer one:

Sitting in SODA's seat, the planning consequences are:

• A result finished in spring has a natural July home at SODA; pushing to the November STOC deadline buys four months you may not need and delays the talk by five.
• A SODA rejection lands in October — about a month before STOC's deadline. That is enough time for presentation surgery and review-driven repairs, not for new mathematics. Decide within a week of the decision.
• A result that misses July 9 waits four months (STOC), nine months (FOCS), or twelve (next SODA). Theory culture never punishes a year's delay; it always punishes a broken lemma. When in doubt, wait.
• January is also ITCS season: a conceptual paper rejected from SODA often fits ITCS's early-September deadline pattern (2027 dates: 待核实).

Backward plan to July 9

The classic failure is proving through June: theorem-finishing scheduled inside the writing window converts both into deadline-night work.

If the deadline is this week

This pack's anchor deadline (July 9, 2026) sits in early July — so a reader in the first week of July 2026 is not planning, but triaging. Honest triage:

The one thing not to do in deadline week: broaden claims to justify the rush. Reviewers arrive in August with time you did not have.

The quiet phases and their jobs

• July-August (refereeing): do not idle. Maintain the claims ledger, pre-draft the two predictable rebuttal paragraphs, post/refresh the arXiv version, and decide whether an ALENEX (July 20) or SOSA (August 6) companion is real.
• September 1-4 (rebuttal): the three-day sprint; all-hands availability arranged in advance (soda-author-response).
• September-October (PC deliberation): silence is structural, not informative. Prepare both branches: camera-ready plan and re-route plan.
• October-January (accepted branch): condensation, SIAM forms, arXiv sync, talk build (soda-camera-ready); registration logistics for Philadelphia.

Owner discipline for a group submission

Every deadline on this page needs exactly one named owner, decided in June:

• Deadline owner — watches the SIAM page for changes, does the final upload, holds the HotCRP credentials, converts AoE to local time correctly.
• Ledger owner — maintains the claims ledger from soda-reproducibility through submission and into rebuttal week.
• Rebuttal owner — pre-books the September 1-4 window across all coauthor calendars in July, when calendars are still empty.
• Satellite owner — if an ALENEX or SOSA companion exists, it gets its own three owners; shared ownership across sibling submissions is how one deadline eats another.

Multi-paper and satellite choreography

Decision tree for a group with theory + implementation results in June 2026:
1. Theory result stands alone?            -> SODA by July 9
2. Implementation contribution disjoint?  -> ALENEX by July 20 (AE follows)
3. Simplification of a known result?      -> SOSA by August 6
4. Same claims in two of the above?       -> pick one; overlap risks both
Each paper needs its own contribution sentence that mentions no sibling.

One calendar per paper, one owner per deadline. Shared-author papers at SODA and a satellite also share the January trip — one registration decision, one talk rehearsal block, and no scheduling collision (satellites run January 24-26, inside the SODA window).

Output format

[Cycle verdict] Submit July 9 / hold for STOC / re-route
[Backward plan] <checkpoint dates with owners, from today>
[Quiet-phase tasks] <ledger, rebuttal prep, arXiv, satellite decisions>
[Contingency] <October rejection branch: repair-for-STOC or wait>
[Satellite calendar] <ALENEX/SOSA/ITCS deadlines in play, if any>