thedixitjain USENIX Security Camera-Ready
Acceptance at USENIX Security starts a short, condition-laden runway: in the '26 cycles, final papers were due about six weeks after notification (Cycle 1: notified Dec 4, 2025, finals Jan 15, 2026; Cycle 2: notified May 14, 2026, finals Jun 11, 2026), and during that same window the mandatory artifact-availability check had to pass. The camera-ready is therefore not a formatting chore — part of the acceptance itself is still pending.
What is actually conditional
Under the '26 Open Science policy, acceptance is conditional on the artifact evaluation committee verifying, before finals are due, that the artifacts named in the paper's Open Science appendix are genuinely available — or that the appendix carries a justified explanation for withholding them. Plan the runway backwards from that:
| Week after notification | Camera-ready lane | Artifact lane |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ingest decision + shepherd requests | Move artifacts from anonymous mirror to permanent home |
| 2–3 | Apply required edits; shepherd sign-off | Submit availability materials; respond to AE contact |
| 4 | De-anonymize; final template pass | Availability verified (Phase-1 complete) |
| 5–6 | Upload finals + metadata; presenter forms | Decide on optional Phase-2 (Functional / Reproduced) |
De-anonymization done in the right order
Restore identity everywhere it was stripped, and keep the pieces consistent:
- Author block and affiliations, matching the HotCRP metadata exactly — the proceedings entry is generated from what USENIX has on file.
- Acknowledgements and funding, which double-blind rules forced out of the submission.
- Self-citations rewritten back to natural first-person where that reads better.
- Artifact URLs: replace every anonymized mirror with the permanent, named location. A camera-ready pointing at a dead anonymous repository is the classic post-acceptance defect at this venue, because reviewers checked the anonymous one and nobody rechecks the swap.
The two named appendices — "Ethical Considerations" and "Open Science" — remain in the final paper, updated: disclosure timelines that were "in progress" at submission should state their current status (vendor response, CVE assignment, patch release).
Mechanical pass before upload
# Final-paper checks
pdftotext final.pdf - | grep -nEi 'anonym|under submission|double.blind' | head
pdftotext final.pdf - | grep -noE 'https?://[^ ]+' | sort -u > urls.txt
while read -r n url; do curl -sIL --max-time 10 "${url#*:}" -o /dev/null \
-w "%{http_code} ${url}\n"; done < <(tr ':' ' ' < urls.txt | head -40)
pdffonts final.pdf | awk 'NR>2 && $4!="yes"' # any non-embedded font lines = fix
Follow the current "Instructions for Presenters and Authors of Accepted Papers" page for the cycle — title formatting, copyright/consent forms, and slide or poster requirements are set there, not in the CFP.
Publication model: open access, no author fee
USENIX publishes Security proceedings open access; papers (and later, talk recordings) are freely available on usenix.org. There is no article charge. The author-side obligations run through the conference instead: presentation at the symposium in Baltimore (Aug 12–14, 2026 for the '26 program) per the current presenter instructions. Registration mechanics, speaker-registration rules, and any remote-presentation allowance are per-year decisions — 待核实 against the instructions page for your cycle before booking anything.
Cycle-1 authors get a bonus decision: finals are locked ~7 months before the symposium, so plan whether to post an extended version (arXiv or tech report) in the gap, and make the proceedings version state clearly which version is canonical.
Badge and visibility follow-through
- Optional Phase-2 artifact evaluation (Functional / Results Reproduced badges) happens after finals are due — the camera-ready must not overstate badge status it does not yet hold.
- Distinguished Paper Awards and the Internet Defense Prize are selected from the final program; nothing to do except have the final PDF be the strongest version.
- Add the paper's usenix.org proceedings URL to the artifact README once live, so artifact users land on the canonical version.
Reverify each cycle
- Final-paper deadline for your cycle and the shepherd-approval interaction.
- Whether Phase-1 availability verification remains a condition of acceptance.
- Presenter/registration requirements and any remote option (待核实 for '27).
- Formatting and form requirements on the current instructions page.
Output format
[Runway] notification → finals dates; days remaining
[Conditions open] shepherd sign-off / Phase-1 availability / forms
[De-anonymization] identity restored + artifact URLs swapped and re-tested
[Appendices] Ethical Considerations + Open Science updated to current status
[Presentation] presenter, registration status, travel constraints
Source: brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills → USENIX-Security-Skills/skills/usenixsec-camera-ready/SKILL.md