brycewang-stanford CSCW Submission
A CSCW submission enters a journal pipeline, and as of the 2026-07-08 check the pipeline itself is in transition: the May 14, 2025 PCS deadline was the last fixed cutoff, and papers for CSCW 2027 and beyond flow through the rolling pathway on Manuscript Central (mc.manuscriptcentral.com/pacmhci) with no deadline at all. The first audit item is therefore not the paper — it is the pathway.
Pathway confirmation (do this first)
- Open https://cscw.acm.org/rolling.html and confirm the live submission venue, account requirements, and any transitional instructions.
- If the manuscript is a revision from the final fixed cycle, it stays in the system and decision vocabulary of that cycle — do not migrate it yourself.
- Record what you verified and when; this venue's lore goes stale in months, and colleagues will hand you confident PCS-era instructions that no longer apply.
Manuscript checks
- Template: single-column ACM submission template, per the 2026-cycle CFP. Confirm the rolling pathway names the same template before reformatting anything.
- Length: no formal cap, but compute the word count (excluding references and appendices). Under ~5,000 or over ~12,000 words invites added scrutiny, and length disproportionate to contribution is itself a desk-rejection ground — the venue's most distinctive gate. Prepare the one-sentence length defense.
- Ethics visibility: IRB/ethics status, consent posture per data source, and sensitive-data handling stated in the methods section, not implied.
- Internal completeness: the paper must stand without the supplement
(
cscw-supplementarypackages the rest).
Anonymization: two layers, not one
CSCW review is anonymous, and this venue has a second layer most conferences lack.
Layer 1 — authors: names, affiliations, institution and city references, and identifying grant information removed; self-citations in third person; metadata scrubbed from PDF and supplement files; acknowledgements withheld until acceptance.
Layer 2 — the studied setting: when the paper studies a specific team, organization, or online community, details that identify the setting can also identify the authors (a lab's known field site, a company only insiders could study, a community the authors visibly moderate). Audit for:
- Named partner organizations or communities whose association with the author team is public.
- Screenshots, quoted posts, or platform slugs that reverse-search to a community linked to the authors' prior publications.
- Deployment details ("our university's makerspace") that geolocate the team.
Where masking the setting would gut the contribution, mask asymmetrically: keep analytic detail, coarsen ownership detail.
Desk-risk triage
| Risk | Mechanism | Standing |
|---|---|---|
| Length incommensurate with contribution | Editor/chairs screening | Explicit desk-reject ground in the 2026-cycle CFP |
| Author identity visible | Anonymity policy | Removal or rejection |
| Setting-based deanonymization | Same policy, subtler leak | Reviewer-reported; damages trust for R&R |
| Wrong-pathway upload | Platform transition confusion | Delay measured in weeks — expensive with no deadline pressure to excuse it |
| Missing ethics account | Reviewer expectation, journal norms | Rarely desk-level, reliably decision-level |
| Concurrent submission elsewhere | Standard ACM/journal policy | Verify current wording on the live CFP before certifying |
Final pre-upload sequence
1. Pathway verified on cscw.acm.org (date recorded): platform = ______
2. Word count: ______ (defense sentence written if outside 5,000-12,000)
3. Layer-1 anonymity sweep: text, references, PDF metadata, supplement — pass
4. Layer-2 setting sweep: partner names, screenshots, reverse-searchable
quotes — pass
5. Ethics statement present and specific — pass
6. Supplement inventory matches in-text references (cscw-supplementary) — pass
7. Metadata fields on the platform (title, abstract, authors held privately by
the system, conflicts) match the PDF exactly
8. Confirmation email/receipt archived with a timestamp
Everything above dated 2026-07-08 describes a venue mid-migration. Before any real upload, re-verify the pathway, template, and policy wording on the live pages — this skill's job is to tell you what to verify, not to spare you the verifying.