PapersSIGCSE Virtual 2026

Papers describe an educational research project, classroom experience, teaching technique, curricular initiative, or pedagogical tool in the computing content domain. All papers submitted to the SIGCSE Virtual should be original work that complies with the ACM authorship policies. SIGCSE Virtual considers papers in three distinct tracks, each with its own unique expectations. See further details below.

Paper Tracks

Please ensure that you submit your paper to the correct paper track by reading the Reviewing Guidelines. Papers will be reviewed for the track they are submitted to and will not be moved between tracks. Any submissions made to more than one track will be desk-rejected from both tracks.

Position and Curricula Initiative

The primary purpose of Position and Curricula Initiative (PCI) papers is to present a coherent argument about a computing education topic, including, but not limited to, curriculum or program design, practical and social issues facing computing educators, and critiques of existing practices. PCI papers should substantiate their claims using evidence in the form of thorough literature reviews, analysis of secondary data collected by others, or another appropriate rhetorical approach. PCI contributions should be motivated by prior literature and should highlight the novelty of the presented work. However, in contrast to Computing Education Research (CER) papers, PCI papers need not present original data or adhere to typical rigorous qualitative or quantitative research methods. Moreover, PCI papers differ from Experience Report and Tools (ERT) papers in that they do not necessarily report on individual experiences, programs, or tools, but rather they may focus on broader concerns of the community.

Computing Education Research

The primary purpose of Computing Education Research (CER) papers is to advance what is known about the teaching and learning of computing. CER papers are reviewed relative to the clarity of the research questions posed, the relevance of the work in light of prior literature and theory, the soundness of the methods to address the questions posed, and the overall contribution. Both qualitative and quantitative research are welcomed, as are replication studies and papers that present null or negative results.

Experience Reports and Tools

The primary purpose of Experience Reports and Tools (ERT) papers is observational in nature, and ERT papers should carefully describe the development and use of a computing education approach or tool, the context of its use, including the formative data collected, and provide a rich reflection on what did or didn’t work, and why. ERT contributions should be motivated by prior literature and should highlight the novelty of the experience or tool presented. ERT papers differ from CER papers in that they frame their contributions to enable adoption by other practitioners, rather than focusing on the generalizability or transferability of findings or threats to validity.

Additional Information

Papers submitted to all tracks should address at least one computing content topic. Authors will be asked to select between 3 and 7 topics from this list at the time of submission. Papers deemed outside the conference scope by the program chairs will be desk-rejected without review.

Authors submitting work to SIGCSE Virtual 2026 are responsible for complying with all applicable conference authorship policies and those articulated by ACM. If you have questions about any of these policies, please contact program@virtual2026.sigcse.org for clarification prior to submission.

ACM has committed to collecting ORCiD IDs from all published authors (https://authors.acm.org/author-resources/orcid-faqs). All authors on each submission must have an ORCiD ID (https://orcid.org/register) in order to complete the submission process. Please ensure you have your ORCiD ID before submitting your work.

Abstracts

All papers must have a plain-text abstract of up to 250 words. Abstracts should not contain subheadings or citations. The abstract should be submitted in EasyChair along with paper metadata, and the same text should be included in the PDF version of the full paper at the appropriate location.

Page limits

CER and ERT papers are limited to a maximum of 6 pages of body content (including all titles, author information, abstract, main text, tables and illustrations, acknowledgements, and supplemental material). One additional page may be included which contains only references. If included, appendix materials MUST NOT be present on the optional references page.

PCI papers are limited to a maximum of 3 pages of body content, and may include an optional additional page for references.

Templates

SIGCSE Virtual is NOT participating in the new ACM TAPS workflow, template, and production system.

All paper submissions must be in English and formatted using the 2-column ACM SIG Conference Proceedings format and US letter size pages (8.5x11 inch or 215.9 x 279.4mm).

Here is an annotated PDF example that has some notes/tips and shows the required sections.

MS Word Authors: Please use the interim Word template provided by ACM.

LaTeX Authors:

• Overleaf provides a suitable two-column sig conference proceedings template.
• Please do not use the anonymous document class option, as counter-intuitive as that sounds. We’d like to ensure that author blocks appear in the submission, and that option removes them.
• Other LaTeX users may alternatively use the ACM Primary template, adding the “sigconf” format option in the documentclass to obtain the 2-column format. (ACM has recently changed the ACM template and we have not yet had a chance to verify that the new version works correctly.)
• NOTE: The default LaTeX template text shows appendix materials following the references. SIGCSE Virtual does not permit appendices on the optional page allotted for references. Authors must include all relevant content within the 6 body pages of the paper. References are the ONLY thing that can be added on page 7.
• Accessibility: SIGCSE Virtual authors are strongly encouraged to prepare submissions using these templates in such a manner that the content is widely accessible to potential reviewers, track chairs, and readers. Please see these resources for preparing an accessible submission.

Requirements

Requirements for Double Anonymous Review Process: At the time of submission all entries must include blank space for all anonymous author information (or anonymized author name, institution, location, and email address), followed by an abstract, keywords, CCS Concepts, placeholders for the ACM Reference Format and copyright blocks, and references. For anonymized submissions, all blank space necessary for all author information must be reserved under the Title, or fully anonymized text can take its place (e.g. 4 lines containing Author1, Author1Institution, Author1Location, anon1@university.edu. In addition, please leave enough blank space for what you intend to include for Acknowledgements but do not include the text, especially names and granting agencies and grant numbers. Acknowledgements are expected to be part of the body content, not of the optional reference page.

Other requirements: Please provide a separate block for each author, including name, email, institution, location, and country, even if authors share an institution.

Desk Rejects: Papers that do not adhere to page limits or formatting requirements will be desk rejected without review.

Double Anonymized Review

Authors must submit ONLY an anonymized version of the paper. The goal of the anonymized version is to, as much as possible, provide the author(s) of the paper with an unbiased review. The anonymized version must have ALL mentions of the authors removed (including author’s names and affiliation plus identifying information within the body of the paper such as websites or related publications). However, authors are reminded to leave sufficient space in the submitted manuscripts to accommodate author information either at the beginning or end of the paper. LaTeX/Overleaf users are welcome to use the anonymous option, but are reminded that sufficient room must exist in the 6 body pages to include all author blocks when that option is removed. Authors may choose to use placeholder text in the author information block, but we encourage authors to use obviously anonymized placeholders like “Author 1”, “Affiliation 1”, etc.

Self-citations need not be removed if they are worded so that the reviewer doesn’t know if the writer is citing themselves. That is, instead of writing “We reported on our first experiment in 2017 in a previous paper [1]”, the writer might write “In 2017, an initial experiment was done in this area as reported in [1].

As per ACM guidelines, authors may distribute a preprint of their work on ArXiv.org. However, to ensure the anonymity of the process, we ask that you not publish your work until after you receive the accept/reject notice. If particular aspects of your paper require earlier distribution of the preprint, please consider changing the title and abstract so that reviewers do not inadvertently discover your identity.

Submissions to the papers track are reviewed with the dual-anonymous review process. The reviewers and meta-reviewers (i.e. associate program chairs or APCs) are unaware of the author identities, and reviewers and APCs are anonymous to each other and to the authors.

The reviewing process includes a discussion phase after initial reviews have been posted. During this time, the reviewers and APC can examine all reviews and privately discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the work in an anonymous manner through EasyChair. Following discussion, the APC shall draft a meta-review that holistically captures the group position on the paper, incorporating views raised in the reviews and during the discussion phase.

The SIGCSE Virtual review process does not have a rebuttal period for authors to respond to comments, and all acceptance decisions are final.

ACM Policies

By submitting your article to an ACM Publication, you are hereby acknowledging that you and your co-authors are subject to all ACM Publications Policies, including ACM’s Publications Policy on Research Involving Human Participants and Subjects. Alleged violations of this policy or any ACM Publications Policy will be investigated by ACM and may result in a full retraction of your paper, in addition to other potential penalties, as per ACM Publications Policy.

ORCiD IDs

ACM has made a commitment to collect ORCiD IDs from all published authors (https://authors.acm.org/author-resources/orcid-faqs). All authors on each submission must have an ORCiD ID (https://orcid.org/register) in order to complete the submission process. Please make sure to get your ORCiD ID in advance of submitting your work. (If EasyChair does not request the ORCiD ID for your coauthors, you do not need to find a way to enter one.)

Accepted Papers

Final camera-ready papers are due by the posted due date. As part of final paper submission, authors will need to prepare and record a 15-minute video of the paper presentation. Please follow the following recommendations and upload the video based on the directions that will be sent to authors. Authors are asked to upload both a plain video without captions and, if possible, another one with captions including scripts as indicated below. If captions need to added to a recording, the program committee will contact each author to check before publishing it on the conference streaming site.

Recording Recommendations

To record one or more presenters - Use a single stationary camera. - Use Picture-in-Picture to display both presenter and slide content. More than 3/4 of the final image should be occupied by the presentation and less than 1/4 by the camera feed. The final image can vary slightly based on slide content. - Upload the recorded videos based on the direction that sent by the program committee. - Label the recording file by title slide with date, time, and session information from the program.

File Format Recommendations

• Convert each recording to an MPEG-4 video format (.mp4 or .m4v) optimized for streaming. Use the video codec H.264 and the audio codec AAC+ or AAC MPEG4 PART 10 or AVC.
• Place the ACM logo at the opening of the video. ACM logos can be found in ACM style guide at the link: http://identitystandards.acm.org/styleguide/

Accessibility Recommendations

• Color: Use a color scheme with good contrast and avoid using colors as the only way to convey information.
• Text: Use large font sizes, such as 36-point or larger for title slides and 24-point or larger for main body texts. Avoid small text.
• Visuals: Avoid animations and visual effects that could trigger an adverse reaction, such as flashing lights, loud sounds, or repetitive alarms.
• Audio: Provide a closed caption file that captures the audio content of your presentation.
• Transcripts: Provide a text version of the speech and non-speech audio information. Descriptive transcripts are required for videos to be accessible to people who are visually and hearing impaired.

Additional Information

Authors will receive more detailed instructions about conference presentations before the conference. During the presentation time slot that will be announced in the program, authors should prepare and give a short description of the major points in the paper (90 seconds to 2 minutes). The audience will be directed to watch the pre-recorded videos before the session so that questions and answers (Q&A) can start right away. Questions and answers will be moderated by the session chair. To help out with the discussions and audience engagement, authors should include discussions with highlighted remarks by including PowerPoint slides with 5 questions attendees may wish to ask. This way, if the attendees are do not fell comfortable asking their own questions, authors can start the Q&A session by answering some or all of the pre-selected sample questions.