brycewang-stanford HRI Submission
Run this audit before uploading to PCS (Precision Conference Solutions), HRI's submission
portal. HRI full papers are highly selective, double-blind, and reviewed by a track-specific
subcommittee, so the submission mechanics — track choice, the two-step deadline, anonymization
across the PDF and the video — decide whether the paper is even reviewed. Every number below was
read from the HRI 2026 full-papers call on 2026-07-09 (see resources/official-source-map.md);
treat it as a one-cycle snapshot and reopen the live call first.
The two-step deadline
HRI separates abstract registration from paper submission, and both are AoE:
- Abstract deadline (HRI 2026: 22 September 2025) — required for every full paper, about a week early. It locks title, authors, and the track, and drives reviewer/AC assignment. Miss it and the system will not accept the PDF later.
- Paper deadline (HRI 2026: 30 September 2025) — upload the anonymized PDF, supplement, and video.
Register the real title and abstract and the right track — the abstract and track drive who reviews you, and a mismatch weakens your subcommittee fit before anyone reads the paper.
Choose the correct track
Full papers enter exactly one of five tracks, each a distinct contribution type reviewed by its
own subcommittee: User Studies · Technical · Design · Theory and Methods · Systems (User Studies
is typically largest and may be split). Pick by your primary contribution, not your topic;
reproducibility studies go to User Studies. A design paper judged as a user study (or vice
versa) is marked down for a study it never claimed. See hri-topic-selection for the routing.
Format and page budget
- ACM Primary Article Template (
acmart) in anonymous review mode. The exact class options and template revision for the current cycle are 待核实 — a secondary rendering also referenced "IEEE Proceedings specifications," consistent with the ACM/IEEE dual sponsorship; confirm the current author kit before compiling. - Page budget: up to 8 pages, including figures, excluding references. Over-length (excluding references) is a stated desk-reject ground.
- Margins, fonts, and spacing are fixed by the template; recover space by editorial compression, not template tampering (a formatting alteration is itself a desk-reject risk).
Double-blind sweep (PDF and video)
HRI review is double-blind, and every aspect of the submission must be anonymized — including the video and data, the leak surface authors most often forget:
# PDF metadata and identity leaks
pdfinfo paper.pdf | grep -Ei 'author|creator|producer'
pdftotext paper.pdf - | grep -nEi 'our (lab|group|university)|@[a-z0-9.]*\.edu|acknowledg|grant #' | head
# Supplement / artifact archive
unzip -l supplement.zip | grep -Ei '/home/|/Users/|\.git/|\.DS_Store' | head
# Video: check container metadata for author/tool/location tags
ffprobe -hide_banner video.mp4 2>&1 | grep -Ei 'title|author|comment|location' | head
HRI-specific leaks to hunt manually: faces and voices in the video, lab logos or a
recognizable robot/lab space on screen, an institution name in an IRB statement, a
first-person self-citation, a personal-domain data link, and named acknowledgments/grants. Blur or
mute the video and use an anonymizing archive view before upload (see hri-supplementary,
hri-reproducibility).
Human-participants acknowledgment
By submitting you accept ACM's Policy on Research Involving Human Participants and Subjects:
- State IRB/ethics approval (anonymized) or a documented exemption; report informed consent; justify and debrief any deception (common with Wizard-of-Oz or staged failures).
- A study with participants but no ethics statement is a scored weakness and a policy exposure (see
hri-experiments).
Desk-risk triage
| Finding at audit time | Severity | Real fix |
|---|---|---|
| Body over 8 pages (excl. refs) | Desk-reject-grade | Cut or move to supplement; references do not absorb body text |
| Template altered (margins/font) | Desk-reject risk | Recompile clean acmart, recover space editorially |
| Identity leak in PDF, video, data, or archive | Anonymity violation | Re-anonymize and re-host; blur/mute the video |
| Abstract/track not registered by the earlier date | No submission slot exists | Nothing fixes this post-AoE — calendar it now |
| Wrong track for the contribution | Weak subcommittee fit | Re-declare track at abstract time; write to the contribution type |
| Participants but no IRB/consent statement | Ethics exposure + scored down | Add the (anonymized) ethics + consent statement |
| No video for an embodied-interaction study | Read as a gap | Produce an anonymized video figure |
Final-week order of operations
- Freeze the study and results early; only the writing should churn near the deadline.
- Register the abstract, authors, and track well before the abstract cutoff.
- Produce and anonymize the video and supplement; host any archive behind an anonymizing view.
- Run the mechanical anonymity checks on the final PDF, video, data, and archive — not drafts.
- Fill every PCS field (track, subject areas, conflicts for every coauthor's institution and recent collaborators) a day early; late conflicts are the classic midnight failure.
- Re-download the uploaded PDF and re-open the uploaded video cold to confirm they are the files you meant and that the video plays.
Reverify each cycle
- The abstract/paper two-step and its dates; the exact
acmartclass options and template revision. - The track list and how User Studies is split; the page budget.
- Video length/format/size limits; any generative-AI use/disclosure policy (待核实).
Output format
[HRI submission status] ready / blocked / needs work
[Abstract+track] title/authors/track locked by the earlier deadline? yes/no · track: <one of five>
[Format] pages (body incl. figures / refs) · acmart anonymous compliance
[Anonymity] PDF/video/data/archive clean / leaks: <where>
[Ethics] IRB/consent statement present (anonymized)?
[Video] anonymized video figure present + playable?
[Fix queue] <ordered, with owners and dates before the AoE cutoff>