To make the best use of reviewer time, submissions that clearly fall under any of the criteria below will be desk-rejected without full review. A desk rejection means that a submission does not meet the submission requirements; it is not a judgment of the quality or merit of the work.
Format and Length
- Submissions must use the correct template: the single-column ACM Primary Article Template for review (e.g.,
\documentclass[manuscript, review, anonymous]{acmart}). Use of different templates or formats will result in desk rejection. - Full papers must not exceed 16 pages (including anonymized acknowledgements) and short papers must not exceed 8 pages in single-column format, excluding references and appendices.
- Papers that tamper with formatting rules (e.g., margins, font size, line spacing) to save on page count will be desk-rejected.
- Submissions that are clearly incomplete research papers (e.g., abstracts, work-in-progress, manuscripts with placeholder text, entire theses, and extensive journal articles) will be desk-rejected.
Anonymization
- Your submission must be anonymized. Papers that violate the anonymization policy, including within IRB declarations, video figures, supplementary materials, or external links to datasets, code repositories, project pages, etc., will be desk-rejected.
- Videos must not reveal the author identities (e.g., faces, voices, institutional logos). Where an author must appear as the wearer or operator of a device, their face should be blurred. When in doubt, contact the Program Chairs at [email protected] before the deadline.
- Authors’ own prior work must be cited in the third person.
Originality and Concurrent Submissions
- Your submission must be original. Material previously published in archival venues will be desk-rejected unless it has been significantly revised (roughly, more than 25% new content), following the ACM Policy on Prior Publication and Simultaneous Submissions.
- Your submission cannot be under concurrent review elsewhere. If you make multiple submissions to AHs 2027, they must be distinct from each other.
- If you have concurrent submissions that are closely related (i.e., based on the same study, artifact, or dataset), you must include an anonymized version of that submission in the concurrent submissions field. Failure to do so will result in desk rejection.
- Submissions that clearly violate ACM publication policies (e.g., plagiarism, fabrication or falsification of data) will be desk-rejected.
- Non-archival venues, such as workshops, posters, demos, and non-archival domestic symposia, do not count as prior publication. However, such work must still be cited in an anonymized manner.
Scope
- Submissions with no clear connection to the physical, cognitive, or perceptual augmentation of humans, or to the social and ethical issues it raises, will be desk-rejected. Scope is judged by the paper’s contribution to human augmentation, not by its technical domain. Interdisciplinary submissions are strongly welcomed, and borderline cases will be sent for review.
Research Ethics and Reviewability
- Research involving human participants must report its ethics review status (e.g., IRB approval) or explain why review was not required in the authors’ research environment. Submissions with no such information will be desk-rejected.
- Studies that may pose physical risks to participants (e.g., electrical stimulation such as EMS, TMS, or tDCS; exoskeletons; invasive devices etc.) must describe the safety measures taken.
- Papers that are clearly not situated in relevant literature, or that have grossly insufficient methodological details or data to allow evaluation of the proposed contributions, may be desk-rejected.
- Your paper must be stand-alone. Heavy reliance on appendices and/or supplementary materials can be grounds for desk rejection.
Other
- All authors must be listed by the submission deadline; there are no exceptions. Submissions with incomplete required form data will be desk-rejected.
- Submissions must be written in English.
Published November 13, 2026
