ACM FAccT 2022 Call For Papers
ACM FAccT 2022 Call For Papers
ACM FAccT solicits work from a wide variety of disciplines, including computer science, statistics, law, social sciences, the humanities, and policy, and multidisciplinary scholarships on fairness, accountability and transparency in computational systems (broadly construed). We welcome contributions that consider dimensions beyond individual decisions, including equity and justice in systems, policy, and human rights.
Questions? Visit https://facctconference.org/index.html, or contact the Program Co-chairs: program-chairs@facctconference.org. And stay tuned for updates by following @facctconference on Twitter or joining the FACCT-ANNOUNCE listserv.
We welcome submissions in the following areas:
Algorithm Development e.g. Fairness; Interpretable and explainable models; Causality; Data collection and curation.
Data and Algorithm Evaluation e.g. Metrics; Audits; Evaluations, both quantitative and qualitative.
Applications e.g. Natural Language Processing; Computer vision; Health;Information retrieval; Recommender systems; Programming languages; Databases.
Human Factors e.g. Human-computer interaction; Humans-in-the-loop; Information visualization; UX design; Community or participatory-research design
Privacy and Security e.g. Formal approaches; Privacy-preserving models; Usable privacy and security
Law e.g. Data protection; Non-discrimination; Fair Procedures; Human Rights; Oversight mechanisms
Policy e.g. Organizational governance; Codes of ethics; models from historically marginalized perspectives
Historical and Cultural Critiques e.g. Interrogating foundational concepts; Bridging critical concepts across fields; Historical perspectives on FAccT issues
Philosophy e.g. Philosophical foundations of machine learning; values in scientific inquiry; social epistemology; moral, legal and political philosophy of data and AI.
Social Sciences e.g. Algorithms and computing in organizations and institutions, including education; Social and cultural shaping of algorithmic phenomena; algorithmic impacts on social phenomena.
Review process
Each paper will be reviewed by two or more members of the program committee. Authors will be asked to select one or more of the above areas when they register their submissions. Papers will be matched to reviewers with appropriate expertise based on these designations and the paper abstract.
Evaluation criteria will be the usual scholarly criteria of the chosen area(s) of the paper, including:
Relevance to conference topic: fairness, accountability, and transparency in sociotechnical systems;
Quality of submission: correctness, clarity, comprehensiveness, and depth of exposition, including contextualizing the work in the relevant field(s);
Novelty: Novelty of approach, methodology, perspective, domain considered, etc.; and
Potential for impact: potential to influence academic disciplines, public discourse, or real world systems.
Area chairs will oversee the reviewing process for papers within their area. Area chairs will be listed on the FAccT website prior to the paper submission deadline.
Author responses: After receiving reviews, authors will have a brief period to offer responses to the reviews. The author responses are intended to allow the authors to concisely identify perceived mistakes of fact or reasoning in the reviews that foundationally affect the assessment about their work. Authors are not required or expected to submit a response. Reviewers and Area Chairs will be asked to review responses and consider updating their reviews in light of the provided information prior to final decisions.
Research ethics and social impact
On submission, authors may be asked to prepare an optional, brief explanation of how their work aligns with the ACM ethics guidelines and what, if any, ethical challenges they faced in their work. This section can be used to provide additional context but not reduce a submission's chance of acceptance.
FAccT is an ACM conference and as such, we will review papers in alignment with the ACM ethics guidelines. Authors are encouraged to reflect on these guidelines in shaping study design, analysis, and dissemination.
Papers that (1) describe experiments with users and/or deployed systems (e.g., websites or apps), or (2) rely on sensitive user data (e.g., social network information), must follow basic precepts of ethical research and subscribe to community norms. These include: compliance with applicable laws, respect for privacy, secure storage of sensitive data, voluntary and informed consent when appropriate, avoiding deceptive practices when not essential, beneficence (maximizing the benefits to an individual or to society while minimizing harm to the individual), risk mitigation, and post-hoc disclosure of audits. When appropriate, authors are encouraged to include a subsection describing these issues.
Note that submitting research for approval by each author’s institutional ethics review body (IRB) may be necessary in some cases, but by itself may not be sufficient. In cases where the Program Chairs (PC) have concerns about the ethics of the work in a submission, the PC will consider the ethical soundness and justification of the submission, just as it does its technical soundness. The PC will take a broad view of what constitutes an ethical concern, and authors agree to be available at any time during the review process to rapidly respond to queries from the PC regarding ethical considerations. Authors unsure about topical fit or ethical issues are welcome to contact the PC.
Submission Format and Guidelines
Authors are required to pre-register their papers through the submission site by submitting a tentative title and abstract and specifying their submission area(s) by November 19, 2021. This process will enable the Program Chairs to better anticipate the submission load and to make necessary adjustments to the program committee.
Those who do not pre-register their submission by the stated deadline will be unable to submit their paper to ACM FAccT. Authors will be able to make changes to their titles and abstracts up until the full paper submission deadline, however the preliminary title and abstract should be representative of the submitted work. Submissions that have “placeholder” titles and abstracts (e.g., “TBA”) or none at all at the abstract submission deadline may be deleted.
ACM FAccT 2022 is using the submission site https://facct2021.hotcrp.com/. Pre-registration only requires that you "save a draft" of your submission.
Final submissions will be due on December 3, 2021.
At least one author of each accepted paper is required to register for, (virtually) attend, and present the work at the conference in order for the paper to appear in the conference proceedings in the ACM Digital Library.
Length and Formatting
Submitted papers must be 8-10 pages (including all figures and tables), plus unlimited pages for references . This typically corresponds to about 8,000 words for the main content. Optionally, authors can upload supplementary materials (e.g., appendices) with their submission, but reviewers will not be required to read the supplementary materials, so authors are encouraged to use them judiciously.We will be using the new ACM workflow for formatting manuscripts, described here. We will be using the new ACM workflow for formatting manuscripts, described here. Options and templates are available for both Word and LaTeX users.
Papers that are neither in ACM format nor follow the simplified formatting rules, or papers exceeding the specified page length, may be rejected without review.
Preparation for review
ACM FAccT uses a mutually anonymous review process. Authors must omit their names and affiliations from submissions, and avoid obvious identifying statements. For instance, citations to the authors' own prior work should be made in the third-person. Submissions that do not comply with this policy will be rejected without review.
ACM FAccT maintains confidentiality of submitted material. Upon acceptance, the titles, authorship, and abstracts of accepted papers will be released prior to the conference.
Archival and Non-archival Submissions
ACM FAccT 2022 offers authors the choice of archival and non-archival paper submissions:
Archival papers will appear in the published proceedings of the conference, if they are accepted.
Non-archival papers will only appear as abstracts in the proceedings, if they are accepted.
In previous years, most authors used the archival option. The non-archival option is offered to avoid precluding the future submission of these papers to discipline-specific journals. Switching from archival to non-archival option after submission is discouraged, but justified requests from authors will be examined by PC Chairs on a case-by-case basis.
Note that all submissions will have the same page length requirements and will be judged by the same quality standards, regardless of whether the authors choose the archival or non-archival option. Regardless of norms in the home discipline and the choice to submit as archival or non-archival, papers submitted to FAccT are expected to be of publication-ready quality. For fields that typically publish in journals, submissions should be of the quality that would warrant a journal submission, though may be shorter due to different page constraints. Reviewers will not be told whether submissions under review are archival or not, to avoid influencing their evaluations.
Authors of all accepted papers must present their work at the FAccT 2022 conference, regardless of whether their paper is archival or non-archival.
Dual Submission Policy
You may not submit papers that are identical, or substantially similar to versions that are currently under review at another conference, have been previously published, or have been accepted for publication. Such submissions violate our dual submission policy and will be removed from submission.
There are three main exceptions to this rule:
Technical reports and pre-prints: ACM FAccT welcomes submission of work that is already available without peer reviewing as a technical report (e.g., in SSRN, arXiv, or similar). In this case, the authors should not cite the report, so as to preserve anonymity.
Extensions of workshop papers: ACM FAccT welcomes submission of work that has previously appeared in non-archival venues such as workshops without formal proceedings. These works may be submitted as-is or in an extended form. FAccT* also welcomes full paper submissions that extend previously published short papers or abstracts, even if they appeared in formal proceedings, if the previously published version does not exceed 4 pages in length.
Conference-length (8-10 pages) versions of papers that are already under review at a journal, but which have not yet been published in that journal: In such cases, authors must select the non-archival option for the FAccT submission. Authors are also responsible for ensuring that submitting to FAccT would not be in violation of the relevant journal's submission policies.
Program Co-Chairs
Please contact program-chairs@facctconference.org for any questions.
Frederik Zuiderveen Borgesius, iHub
Kristian Lum, Twitter
Michael Kearns,University of Pennsylvania
Angela Xiao Wu, NYU