brycewang-stanford SIGIR Workflow
SIGIR is an annual single-cycle venue with a distinctive rhythm: recent editions put the full-paper deadline in mid-January (2025: abstract Jan 16, paper Jan 23; 2026 trackers reported Jan 15/22 — exact dates 待核实 on the current Key Dates page), notification in early spring, camera-ready in late April (Apr 29, 2026 verified for Resources/LRE), and the conference in July (2026: July 20-24, Melbourne). Secondary tracks stagger a few weeks behind the full-paper dates. Plan backward from the dates you verify, and treat every date in this file as a pattern anchor, not a promise.
SIGIR is a conference run by ACM SIGIR (the special interest group): there is no standing editor-in-chief — program leadership rotates per edition — and no journal-style APC; costs arrive as registration and travel, with ACM Open status determining any publication-fee exposure per institution (待核实).
The annual shape
| Phase (pattern) | Months (recent cycles) | Owner's job |
|---|---|---|
| Track decision + scoping | Aug-Oct | Pick full/short/resource/repro target; freeze claim |
| Evidence build | Oct-Dec | Collections, baselines, runs, ablations |
| Writing + audits | Dec-Jan | Style, related-work, submission audits |
| Abstract → paper deadlines | mid-Jan | Metadata frozen a week early; PDF last |
| Review window | Feb-Mar | Response prep if a channel opens; next-venue scouting |
| Notification → camera-ready | Mar-Apr | TAPS pipeline, artifacts public |
| Conference | Jul | Presentation, community work |
Backward plan from the paper deadline
| Weeks out | Milestone for a ranking/retrieval paper |
|---|---|
| 10+ | Claim frozen; collection lineup chosen against the claim's scope |
| 8 | Baselines reproduced at current strength, tuning protocol logged |
| 6 | Main results stable across seeds; ablation matrix running |
| 4 | Full draft in sigconf; significance script wired to run files |
| 3 | Internal mock review by an evaluation-minded reader |
| 2 | Repository mirror anonymized; PAPER_MAP written |
| 1 | Submission audit (sigir-submission); PC nominee confirmed; buffer |
| 0 | Abstract by its deadline, PDF by its deadline, both AoE |
The two-stage deadline is a real gate: the abstract registers title, authors, and track, and late abstracts close the door regardless of PDF readiness. Freeze the author list before the abstract — ACM authorship policy makes later changes painful.
Multi-track coordination
Groups often have several irons: a full paper, a short paper from a side finding, a resource from the data work. SIGIR's cross-track double-submission ban makes this a planning problem, not just an ethics one:
- Assign each contribution to exactly one track before the abstract deadline.
- Stagger risk: if the full paper is rejected, which parts return as a short paper or resource paper next cycle? Write the modular repo accordingly.
- The Resources track's own calendar (2026: abstract Feb 5, notify Apr 2, camera Apr 29) runs weeks behind full papers — a rejected-dataset-chapter salvage plan is sometimes executable in the same year. Verify each cycle.
The fallback calendar
IR has a dense venue ring, so a SIGIR reject waits weeks, not a year:
Typical resubmission ring (verify each venue's current dates):
SIGIR (Jan deadline, Jul conf)
-> CIKM (~May/Jun deadline, Nov conf) broader IR+KM+DB scope
-> SIGIR-AP (~Jul deadline, Dec conf) regional; has advertised an R&R route
-> WSDM (~Aug deadline, Feb/Mar conf) web search + data mining angle
-> ECIR (~Sep/Oct deadline, Mar/Apr conf) European IR, full+repro tracks
-> back to SIGIR (Jan)
Journal exits: TOIS / TOIS-adjacent for work that outgrew 9 pages.
Each hop costs a re-framing pass, not just a re-upload: CIKM wants the knowledge/ data-management angle sharpened, WSDM the web/user-data angle, ECIR welcomes reproducibility framing. Budget one week per hop for venue-fit revision.
Ownership map
Deadline collapses at SIGIR are usually ownership failures, not effort failures. Assign by name, once, in the scoping phase:
| Deliverable | Single owner's duty |
|---|---|
| Run files + significance script | One person regenerates every table end-to-end |
| Baseline tuning log | Proves symmetry claims during review |
| Anonymization sweep | Names, logs, leaderboards, metadata, repo history |
| OpenReview metadata + PC nominee | Abstract-deadline gate; nominee agreed in advance |
| Camera-ready/TAPS | Starts the week of notification, not the week of the deadline |
Shared ownership of the anonymization sweep is the classic failure: everyone assumes someone else checked the PDF metadata.
Failure modes by phase
- Claim still moving at week 6 → the collection lineup no longer matches the claim; scope-narrow now rather than during reviews.
- Baselines start in week 4 → tuning symmetry becomes unprovable; this is the most-cited fatal review at this venue.
- Anonymization at week 0 → leaderboard rows, repo history, and system names
leak under deadline pressure (see
sigir-submission). - Response window opens and nobody owns run files → coordinate-based replies become impossible; archive the exact submitted PDF + runs at upload time.
- Camera-ready collides with teaching/travel in April → TAPS proofs get rubber-stamped; schedule the proof check like a review, not a formality.
Output format
[Current phase] scoping / evidence / writing / submitted / responding / camera-ready
[Verified dates] <each from the live Key Dates page, with URL + check date>
[Backward plan] next three milestones with owners
[Track map] contribution -> track, cross-track conflicts: none / <list>
[Fallback route] <next two venues with verified deadlines>
[Risk register] <top risk from the failure-mode list>