ACL 2010
July 11-16

Instructions for Preparing Camera-Ready Papers

ACL 2010 Style Files

ACL 2010 Copyright Transfer Form

Instructions for Camera-Ready Copy

The camera-ready copy of the accepted paper should follow the requirements in the above style file. These instructions are for authors of papers accepted by the main conference and workshops as oral or poster papers. Some general guidelines and a quick check list for publication requirements that conform to the specifications are provided here. Camera-ready copies that fail to meet these instructions may be returned for re-submission.

General Guidelines

Long papers may consist of up to 8 pages of content (excluding references), and short papers may consist of up to 4 pages of content (excluding references). As an experiment this year, main conference authors may use up to 1 extra page to address the concerns and suggestions of the reviewers, expanding the page limits up to 9 pages or 5 pages for full papers and short papers, respectively. Both long and short papers may include any additional number of pages consisting solely of references. 

Both long and short paper submissions should follow the two-column format of ACL 2010 proceedings.

We strongly recommend the use of ACL LaTeX style files or Microsoft Word Style files tailored for this year's conference.

All submissions must conform to the official ACL 2010 style guidelines and they must be electronic in PDF.

It is very important to specify A4 paper size. The page limit has to be strictly observed. DO NOT include page numbers. They will be generated when compiling the proceedings. All camera-ready manuscripts should look like the sample PDF file, which also contains detailed formatting requirements.

Camera-Ready Copy Submission Due

Quick Check List for Camera-Ready Papers

1. Paper format: PDF.
2. Non-English characters: embed all fonts when generating the PDF file.
3. Paper size: A4 (210 x 297 millimeters or 8.3 x 11.7 inches).
4. Margins: as specified in style file. (L/R/T/D: 2.5 cm)
5. Number of columns: two (main text).
6. Title
   • Length: DO NOT exceed the left & right margins. Fold a long title into multiple lines if necessary.
   • Capitalization: DO NOT FULLY CAPITALIZE THE TITLE LIKE THIS.
7. Names of Authors:
   • Capitalization: AUTHOR NAMES SHOULD NOT INCLUDE FULLY CAPITALIZED PARTS.
   • Order: First Name First
   • Consistency: Same as registered to the submission page; same spelling style in all accepted papers.
   • to avoid generating multiple author index entries for authors with more than one accepted paper
8. Number of pages: 8 (text)+any (refs) for full paper and 4 (text) + any refs for short papers.
9. Page numbers and running headers: DO NOT supply.
10. Non-English terms: supply transliteration or translation or both as appropriate as possible.
11. Font sizes, types, styles and line spacing: as specified in style file.
12. Tables, Figures, Equations, Images: make small details clearly visible and add captions to each.
13. Color Curves and Marks: be sure that they are clear and distinguishable when printed in black-and-white
14. References: sort in ascending order and do not miss required information.
15. Grammar: check common spelling and grammatical mistakes carefuly.

Some important instructions are explained further in the following sections.
See also the style file for other details.

Title and Author Names Registered to the Submission System

When author names are registered to the electronical submission system (and provided in the final camera-ready copy), they should not be formatted in all capitals (e.g., use "Schlangen" not "SCHLANGEN"). Furthermore, the first name should be given first (i.e., use "Alfred V. Aho" instead of "Aho, Alfred V." or "Aho, A. V.").

Do not format title and section headings in all capitals as well except for proper names (such as "BLEU") that are conventionally in all capitals.

Title and Author Names for Camera-Ready Copy

The title, author names and addresses in the final camera-ready copy should be completely identical to those entered to the electronical paper submission website in order to maintain the consistency of author information among all publications of the conference, including proceedings, CDROM, program book, and so on. Furthermore, authors with two or more accepted papers should use exactly the same style of spelling for their names in all the final camera-ready copies. Otherwise, they will have two or more author index entries but none of them will point to all their papers.

When and where do I send my final camera-ready paper?

The deadline for long and short papers are May 12 (was changed from May 16), 2010 (GMT-8). You may upload your paper via the START Conference Manager: https://www.softconf.com/acl2010/papers/.

Please double check that all meta-data (author names, affiliations, paper title, etc) are entered into the system correctly and exactly as they appear on the paper, especially if they contain non-ASCII characters.

How should the final copy differ from the original submission?

The paper should be improved to address the comments of the reviewers, and in any other way that you see fit. The final version should, of course, not be anonymous:

• Include the authors' names and affiliations under the title
• De-anonymize references to your own work
• Add acknowledgments where appropriate

How long can it be?

Long papers may consist of up to 8 pages of content (excluding references), and short papers may consist of up to 4 pages of content (excluding references). As an experiment this year, main conference authors may use up to 1 extra page to address the concerns and suggestions of the reviewers, expanding the page limits up to 9 pages or 5 pages for full papers and short papers, respectively. Both long and short papers may include any additional number of pages consisting solely of references. 

What is the format for the camera-ready copy?

The file must be in Portable Document Format (PDF) on A4 paper (210 x 297 millimeters or 8.3 x 11.7 inches).

If you are using LaTeX, please create the PDF file with pdflatex. This ensures use of the proper Type 1 fonts and also takes advantage of other PDF features. (If you can't use pdflatex for some reason, use latex, and then turn the resulting dvi file into pdf with dvips -Ppdf (do not use dvips -Pps). If A4 output is not the default for your installation of dvips, add -t a4 to specify the output format. See here for a comparison of latex vs. pdflatex.)

How do I ensure that my file is correctly formatted?

Please check the paper size by viewing your document in Acrobat Reader. The bottom of the window should show the size as "8.3 x 11.7 in" or "210 x 297 mm" or "A4." If you are using pdflatex to create the pdf, A4 should be the default. If it's not, you can change it as described here. If you are using latex / dvips, see above.

If your paper uses Asian fonts, please ensure that they are encoded/embedded in the PDF file so that they can be displayed by non-Asian versions of the PDF reader. (Asian versions ship with a larger set of default fonts.) See Adobe's discussion of this issue, which unfortunately does not discuss LaTeX. Suggested diagnostics and solutions are welcomed.

What if my paper includes graphics?

Remember that you are providing a camera-ready copy. Thus, artwork and photos should be included directly in the paper in their final positions. Resolution for raster images should be at least 160 dpi. Avoid GIF or JPEG images that are low resolution or highly compressed. If images contain screen gradients, do not use screen values below 20%.

Your paper must look good both when printed (A4 / 8.3" x 11.7" size, black-and-white) and when viewed onscreen as PDF (zoomable to any size, color okay). Thus, you may want to use color high-resolution graphics, allowing onscreen readers to zoom in on a graph and study it. However, please check that the same graph or photograph is legible when printed on a black-and-white printer. For example, different lines in a graph should not be distinguished only by color, although they can also be distinguished by color.

A good test is to print the paper on your own black-and-white laser printer, and to view it in a PDF viewer at different resolutions.

Don't go overboard on resolution; keep file sizes manageable. Note that vector graphics (e.g., encapsulated PostScript) look good at any scale and take up little space (unless you are plotting many thousands of data points).

How about copyright?

When you submit the paper, you will be asked to sign electronically (via the START Conference Manager) or physically the ACL Copyright Transfer Agreement on behalf of all authors. Authors retain many rights under this agreement. If the agreement is not signed or not signed properly, your paper may not be included to the proceedings and other media. Authors who cannot make the copyright transfer, as indicated by the exceptional cases of the above Copyright Transfer Agreement, should acquire an authorized "License to Publish" or any equivalent forms (*) from their institutes or employers, and forward the license to the PC chairs at program[at]acl2010.org as soon as possible. (Authors of workshop papers, if requested, should send the license to their respective workshop PC chairs, not the main conference PC chairs.) In case of any problem with copyright transfer, please contact the publications chairs as soon as possible.

Before signing this form, please confirm with your co-authors (and, if applicable, your and their employers) that they authorize you to sign on their behalf.

What if my paper's title or author list has changed?

Then please edit those metadata fields when you upload the camera-ready version, so that they will appear correctly in the table of contents, author index, conference schedule, etc. The program chairs and publication chairs should also be notified of such changes.

My question isn't answered here ...?

Please email the publications chairs Jing-Shin Chang (jshin[at]csie.ncnu.edu.tw) and Philipp Koehn(pkoehn[at]inf.ed.ac.uk) or to the Publication Committee (publications[at]acl2010.org). We will update this page as new issues arise.