skip to main content
Advanced Search

PODS Track

Author Guidelines

How to Submit

New submissions will be considered twice a year, according to the following deadlines: 

  • Abstract deadline: May 31, 2024 (Cycle 1)
  • Submission deadline: June 7, 2024 (Cycle 1)
  • Abstract deadline: December 2, 2024 (Cycle 2)
  • Submission deadline: December  9, 2024 (Cycle 2)

These deadlines may change from year to year. The accepted papers from each of the two cycles will appear in separate issues of the journal.

All papers that have been accepted for publication will be invited to be presented at the PODS 2025 conference. Current submission instructions can be found here: https://2025.sigmod.org/calls_papers_pods_research.shtml

Length, File Type, and Formatting 

Length and Format for Submitted Papers

All submitted research papers must be

  • formatted using the acmart LaTex class, with the option

            \documentclass[acmsmall,review,anonymous]{acmart}

  • have up to 15 pages of body, plus unlimited space for bibliography and appendix.

Please do not modify font size or margins. Use of a different format (e.g., smaller fonts or a larger text block) is grounds for summary rejection.  We strongly encourage use of author-year citations, since that is the citation format required by PACMMOD for final versions of accepted papers. 

Latex templates for the manuscripts can be found at: https://www.acm.org/publications/authors/submissions

  • Each research paper is to be submitted as a single PDF file. Submitted papers must print without difficulty on a variety of printers, using Adobe Acrobat Reader. It is the responsibility of the authors to ensure that their submitted PDF file will print easily on simple default configurations.

Please see the following link for detailed submission instructions: https://2025.sigmod.org/calls_papers_pods_research.shtml

Length and Format for Revised Papers

For all papers, authors are allowed one extra page to help address reviewer comments in the revised version. Therefore, the length of revised papers can be up to 17 pages (+ unlimited number of pages for the bibliography and appendix). In addition, a cover letter describing the changes should be submitted as well.

Further instructions will be communicated directly to the authors by the PODS Managing Editor and/or the PODS Information Director.

Length and Format for Camera-Ready Papers

Camera-ready papers are to be formatted in the same PACMMOD format as the submitted versions. All camera-ready papers are limited to 18 pages for the main content, an unlimited number of pages for the bibliography, and a 6 page appendix. Camera-ready papers should not include any new content beyond the accepted submission version of the manuscript.

Instructions as to how to submit the camera-ready papers will be communicated directly to the authors by ACM and Sheridan Communications.

Merit-based Acceptance

There is no a priori limit on the number of accepted papers. As such, paper selection is strongly based on the individual contribution of papers and less so on the number of papers ranked higher in the reviewing tool. The reviewers, alongside the Associate editors and Managing editor of the PODS track, will judge the work based on originality, quality, clarity of presentation, relevance to the field, and technical depth.

Anonymity Requirements

Submissions to the PODS track of PACMMOD papers go through a double anonymous review process. This means that submissions must adhere to at least the following:

  • Authors' names and affiliations must not appear on the title page or elsewhere in the submission.
  • References to the authors’ own related work should be in the third person.
  • Funding sources must not be acknowledged anywhere in the submission.
  • Research group members, or other colleagues or collaborators, must not be acknowledged anywhere in the submission.
  • The paper’s file name must not identify the authors of the submission.
  • Source file naming must also be done with care, to avoid identifying the authors' names in the submission's associated metadata. For example, if your name is Jane Smith and you submit a PDF file generated from a .dvi file called Jane-Smith.dvi, your authorship could be inferred by looking into the PDF file
  • No links to submitted papers or extended versions thereof in public repositories are allowed.

All reviewers who review the submission will not know the identity of the authors. The Managing and associate editors responsible for handling the submission know the identity of the authors.

ACM Policy on Authorship states that venues must continue to allow authors to deposit their manuscripts on arXiv, other non-commercial and legally mandated repositories, their personal home page, or institutional repository.  As such, authors should feel free to disseminate their ideas or draft versions of their paper as they normally would. For instance, authors may post drafts of their papers on the web or give talks on their research ideas. Consequently, we expect reviewers to make reasonable efforts not to discover authors' identities, and no preferential treatment will be given to authors who have refrained from uploading their submitted manuscript to pre-publication servers and other online forums.

You must also use care in referring to related past work, particularly your own, in the paper. For example, if you are Jane Smith, the following text gives away the authorship of the submitted paper:

In our previous work [1, 2], we presented two algorithms for ... In this paper, we build on that work by ...

Bibliography

[1] Jane Smith, "A Simple Algorithm for ...," Proceedings of ACM SIGMOD 1997, pp. 1 - 10. 

[2] Jane Smith, "A More Complicated Algorithm for ...," Proceedings of ACM SIGMOD 1998, pp. 34 - 44.

The solution is to reference one's past work in the third person. This allows setting the context for your submission, while at the same time preserving anonymity:

In previous work [1, 2], algorithms were presented for ... In this paper, we build on that work by ...

Bibliography

[1] Jane Smith, "A Simple Algorithm for ...," Proceedings of ACM SIGMOD 1997, pp. 1 - 10.

[2] Jane Smith, "A More Complicated Algorithm for ...," Proceedings of ACM SIGMOD 1998, pp. 34 - 44.

Despite the anonymity requirements, you should still include all relevant work of your own in the references, using the above style; omitting them could potentially reveal your identity by negation. However, self-references should be limited to the essential ones. 

It is the responsibility of authors to do their very best to preserve anonymity. Papers that do not follow the guidelines here, or otherwise potentially reveal the identity of the authors, are subject to immediate rejection.

Duplicate Submissions and Novelty Requirement

Following the ACM guidelines, a research paper submitted to PACMMOD cannot be under review for any other publishing forum or presentation venue, including conferences, workshops, and journals, during the time it is being considered for publication at PACMMOD. Furthermore, after you submit a research paper to PACMMOD, you must await the response from PACMMOD and only re-submit elsewhere if your paper is rejected—or withdrawn at your request—from PACMMOD. This restriction applies not only to identical papers but also to papers with a substantial overlap in scientific content and results.

To enforce this requirement, the high-level metadata of submissions (title, abstract, list of authors), may be shared with the Program Chairs / Editors of other conferences and journals.

Every submitted research paper must present substantial novel research not described in any prior publication. In this context, a prior publication is (a) a paper of five pages or more, presented, or accepted for presentation, at a refereed conference or workshop with proceedings; or (b) an article published, or accepted for publication, in a refereed journal. If a submission has overlap with a prior publication, the submission must cite the prior publication (respecting the double anonymity requirement), and clearly indicate which parts of the work appeared in prior publications and which parts are novel to the current submission.

Any violation of the policy will trigger an investigation and appropriate penalties per ACM-wide policy on Penalties for Publication Violations. 

Inclusion and Diversity in Writing

We value Diversity and Inclusion in our community and professions. Both are important in our writing as well. Diversity of representation in writing is a simple but visible avenue to celebrate and ultimately help improve our community's diversity. Be mindful in your writing of not using language or examples that further the marginalization, stereotyping, or erasure of any group of people, especially historically marginalized and/or under-represented groups (URGs) in computing. Be vigilant and guard against unintentionally exclusionary examples. Please visit this page for many examples of both exclusionary writing to avoid and inclusive writing that celebrates diversity to consider adopting: https://dbdni.github.io/pages/inclusivewriting.html.

Authors are further encouraged to follow the tips and guidelines provided at: https://dbdni.github.io/#materials. 

Reviewers will be empowered to monitor and demand changes if such issues arise. Going further, also consider actively raising the representation of URGs in writing. Please see https://www.acm.org/diversity-inclusion/words-matter for inclusive alternatives for some of the terms commonly used in the computing profession.

Conflicts of Interest

During submission of a research paper, the submission site will request information about conflicts of interest of the paper’s authors with program committee (PC) members. It is the full responsibility of all authors of a paper to identify all and only their potential conflict-of-interest PC members, according to the definition below. Papers with incorrect or incomplete conflict of interest information as of the submission closing time are subject to immediate rejection.

A paper author has a conflict of interest with a PC member when, and only when, one or more of the following conditions holds:

  • The PC member is a co-author of the paper.
  • The PC member has been a co-worker in the same company or university within the past ten years.
  • The PC member has been a collaborator within the past ten years. Collaborations are indicated by prior co-authorships, shared grant funding, and close research relationships, even if those have not yet resulted in common publications. Publications (typically with a large set of authors) that fall outside the traditional sense of research collaborations (e.g., “The Seattle Report on Database Research”, “ Diversity and Inclusion Activities in Database Conferences: A 2021 Report”, etc.) do not in themselves constitute a COI.
  • The PC member is or was the author's primary thesis advisor, no matter how long ago.
  • The author is or was the PC member's primary thesis advisor, no matter how long ago.
  • The PC member is a relative or close personal friend of the author.

To identify any potentially spurious conflicts, PC members may be asked to confirm declared conflicts with submitting authors.

ORCID Requirements

ACM requires that all accepted journal authors register and provide ACM with valid ORCIDs prior to paper publication. Corresponding authors are responsible for collecting these ORCIDs from co-authors and for providing them to ACM as part of the ACM eRights selection process. For journals using the ScholarOne submission system, the submitting author will be required to provide their own ORCID upon submission. Authors are strongly encouraged, but not required, to include ORCIDs for all authors in their source files.  Please note: ACM only requires you to complete the initial ORCID registration process. However, ACM encourages you to take the additional step to claim ownership of all your published works via the ORCID site.

ORCID provides a persistent digital identifier that distinguishes you from every other researcher through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission and supports automated linkages between you and your professional activities - ensuring that your work receives proper recognition. This requirement will also enable ACM to provide improvements to the normalization process of ACM Digital Library author profile data, aid in the detection of undeclared conflicts of interest and other publications-related misconduct in ACM Publications, assist with the implementation of ACM Open, and offer a host of other researcher benefits to ACM authors and the scientific community.

Before submission, the corresponding author should register for an ORCID.  Your co-authors should also create their individual ORCIDs at that time and add them to their accounts in the manuscript submission system. Otherwise, you will need to enter them manually into the ACM rights system upon paper acceptance and before publication in the ACM Digital Library. Simple instructions for complying with this mandate are provided inside the ACM eRights system.

ORCID information for all authors will appear on the article’s page in the ACM Digital Library. If ORCIDs are included in an article’s source files, they will also be linked in the published output.

The ACM ORCID FAQ should answer many of your questions.

ACM Policies

ACM Publications Policy on Research Involving Human Participants and Subjects

As a published ACM author, you and your co-authors are subject to all ACM Publications Policies, including ACM's new Publications Policy on Research Involving Human Participants and Subjects.

ACM Conflict of Interest (COI) Policy

The ACM Conflict of Interest (COI) Policy describes what a COI is, who is responsible for being aware of such conflicts, how to manage COIs, and how to report violations.

ACM Peer Review Policy

ACM recognizes that the quality of a refereed publication rests primarily on the impartial judgment of their volunteer reviewers. Expectations of reviewers and ACM can be found in the Reviewer section of the Policy on Roles and Responsibilities in ACM Publishing page.

Templates

Manuscripts accepted for publication in any ACM publication must be formatted using the ACM authoring template. Submissions must also use the ACM authoring templates. ACM style files will closely approximate the final output, enabling authors to judge the page-length of their published articles.

ACM authoring templates and detailed instructions on formatting can be found at http://www.acm.org/publications/authors/submissions. For Latex technical support, contact [email protected].

ACM Computing Classification System (CCS)

If your paper has been accepted, please read the HOW TO CLASSIFY WORKS USING ACM'S COMPUTING CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM for instructions on how to classify your document using the CCS and insert the index terms into your LaTeX or Microsoft Word source file. Providing the proper indexing and retrieval information from the CCS provides the reader with quick content reference, facilitating the search for related literature, as well as searches for your work in ACM's Digital Library and on other online resources.

Author Rights

ACM authors can manage their publication rights in either of the following ways:

  • A license granting ACM non-exclusive permission to publish—allowing authors to self-manage all rights to their work by choosing to pay for perpetual open access from the ACM Digital Library.
  • A publishing license agreement granting ACM exclusive publication rights—by granting ACM the right to serve as the exclusive publisher of a work and to manage ongoing rights and permissions associated with the work, including the right to defend it against improper use by third parties. (This license is roughly the equivalent of ACM’s traditional Copyright Transfer Agreement except that the author continues to hold copyright.)

As of January 2023, per decision of the ACM Publications Board, the traditional Copyright Transfer Agreement option is no longer available for ACM authors.  ACM will continue to defend all ACM-published works against improper use when allegations of publication-related misconduct are brought to light.  For more information please refer to this article in The Blue Diamond.

Additionally, ACM authors may post all versions of their work, with the exception of the final published "Version of Record", to non-commercial repositories such as ArXiv. See the ACM Author Rights page for additional information.

Learn more, including about posting to pre-print servers and institutional repositories, by visiting the ACM Author Rights page.

Open Access

ACM has made a commitment to become a fully sustainable and Plan S compliant Open Access (OA) scholarly publisher within approximately five years. ACM offers a number of ways to achieve this goal, including Hybrid OA, Gold OA, and the ACM OPEN program.

Most ACM journals, with the following exceptions, are Hybrid OA.  ACM Gold OA journals are:

Click here to view the Article Processing Charges (APCs) to publish your article Open Access.

Additionally, all corresponding authors from an institution participating in ACM OPEN will have their research articles published OA at the time of publication at no cost to the authors.  Click here for a list of participating institutions. To ensure eligibility for the program, corresponding authors from participating institutions must use their institutional email address upon submission.

Language Services

ACM has partnered with International Science Editing (ISE) to provide language editing services to ACM authors. ISE offers a comprehensive range of services for authors including standard and premium English language editing, as well as illustration and translation services, and also has significant outreach in China. Editing is available for both Word and LaTeX files. As an ACM author, you will receive a generous discount on ISE editing services. To take advantage of this partnership, visit the Dedicated ACM Editing Service. (Editing services are at author expense and do not guarantee publication of a manuscript.)

Author-izer Service

Once your manuscript is published, this service allows you to generate and post a link on your home page or institutional repository to your published article. This link will let any visitors to your personal bibliography pages download the definitive version of the articles for free from the ACM DL. These downloads will be recorded as part of your DL usage statistics. A detailed description of the service and instructions for its use may be found at the ACM Author-Izer Service page.

LaTeX Collaborative Authoring Tool on Overleaf Platform

ACM has partnered with https://www.overleaf.com/, a free cloud-based, authoring tool, to provide an ACM LaTeX authoring template. Authors can easily invite colleagues to collaborate on their document. Among other features, the platform automatically compiles the document while an author writes, so the author can see what the finished file will look like in real time. Further information can be found at https://www.acm.org/publications/authors/submissions. The ACM LaTeX template on Overleaf platform is available to all ACM authors https://www.overleaf.com/gallery/tagged/acm-official#.WOuOk2e1taQ.

Kudos Article Sharing Platform

Kudos is a free service that you can use to promote your work more effectively. After your paper has been accepted and uploaded to the ACM Digital Library, you'll receive an invitation from Kudos to create an account and add a plain-language description. The Kudos “Shareable PDF” allows you to generate a PDF to upload to websites, such as your homepage, institutional repository, preprint services, and social media. This PDF contains a link to the full-text version of your article in the ACM DL, adding to download and citation counts.

Author Gateway

Please be sure to visit the ACM Author Portal for additional important author information.

Contact Us

For further assistance and questions regarding the journal editorial review process and paper assignment to an issue, contact the journal administrator ([email protected]).

Reviewer Guidelines

The editorial board manages all submissions to the PODS Track of PACMMOD.

  • The PODS Managing Editor's primary role is to assign submissions to appropriate members of the Reviewing Board and ensure that the reviewing processes run smoothly.  The PODS Managing Editor also ensures that each submission is assigned an Associate Editor.
  • The primary role of PODS Associate Editors is to ensure the quality of reviewing and assist in the decision-making process.
  • All PODS Editorial Board members (Managing Editor, Associate Editors and Reviewer Board member) are responsible for the review quality and reviews of individual submissions, and for participating in the discussions.

The PODS track of PACMMOD follows a two phase review process. Papers that do not conform to the submission requirements (e.g., violation of  double anonymity requirement, text formatting) will receive a desk-reject and will not be reviewed. The Managing Editor and Associate Editors also may desk-reject submissions that are found to be out of scope and hence will not be reviewed. An early notification will be sent to the authors within two weeks from the submission deadline.

The remaining papers will go through a two-phase reviewing process. After the first phase, if there is already a consensus on rejecting a paper, the paper will be rejected and the authors will receive an early-reject notification. The remaining papers will receive a second round of reviews, as outlined below:

  • Conflict-of-interest check and Associate Editor and reviewer assignment
  • Review period and Review quality check ~ 7.5 weeks
  • Authors feedback ~ 3 days
  • Reviewer discussion ~ 9 days
  • Notification (accept subject to revisions; reject)
  • Revised paper submission (including cover letter) ~ 2 weeks
  • Second round of reviews of revised papers  ~ 7 days
  • Managing Editors’ final recommendation (reject, accept) 

Each submission will receive at least three reviews. At the discretion of the Managing and Associate Editors, additional reviewers may be assigned.

Before the discussion phase starts between reviewers and decisions are made, authors will have an opportunity to read the reviews and submit optional brief feedback. The sole purpose of the author feedback is to clarify misunderstandings and factual errors through pointers to specific text in the submitted paper.  If no factual errors exist in the reviews, author feedback is not needed.

Some authors will be invited to submit a revised version of their paper. Authors will have approximately two weeks  to implement the revision items. The revision process is intended to be a constructive partnership between reviewers and authors. To this end, reviewers will be instructed to request revisions only in constructive scenarios with specific requests. In turn, authors bear the responsibility of attempting to meet those requests within the stated time frame, or of withdrawing the paper from submission.  Revisions will not be requested to address lack of technical depth or novelty or where the revised paper will address a substantially different problem from the original. In certain cases, rejected papers may be encouraged to "resubmit".

One extra content page is allowed after the first review to accommodate the requested revision items. The revised submission should include a cover letter to summarize how the authors have addressed the requested revisions. Authors are expected to highlight parts of their revised manuscripts that are edited in a different color to ease their identification by the reviewers.

Review Board

  • Mahmoud Abo-Khamis, Relational AI, USA
  • Omri Ben-Eliezer, Technion, Israel
  • Pierre Bourhis, University of Lille, France
  • Sara Cohen, The Hebrew University, Israel
  • Wolfgang Gatterbauer, Northeastern University, USA
  • Batya Kenig, Technion, Israel
  • Bas Ketsman, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
  • Benny Kimelfeld, Technion, Israel
  • Feifei Li, Alibaba Cloud, USA
  • Peter Lindner, EPFL, Switzerland
  • Mikaël Monet, University of Lille, France
  • Giuseppe Persiano, Università di Salerno, Italy
  • Andreas Pieris, University of Edinburgh and University of Cyprus, UK
  • Cristian Riveros, PUC Chile, Chile
  • Sebastian Skritek, TU Wien, Austria
  • Szymon Toruńczyk, University of Warsaw, Poland
  • Nikolaos Tziavelis, Northeastern University, USA
  • Brecht Vandevoort, University in Hasselt, Belgium
  • Zhewei Wei, Renmin University of China, China
  • Jef Wijsen, University of Mons, Belgium
  • David Woodruff, Carnegie Mellon University, USA