Prepare Camera Ready

Prepare Camera-Ready

Walk an accepted paper through the camera-ready pipeline. The rules are tribal knowledge split across two big rails (ACM: eRights → ORCID → rights/DOI block → TAPS; IEEE: PDF eXpress → file naming → eCF → registration) plus the OpenReview-direct rail used by ML venues, and they change every cycle. This skill turns the venue profile into an ordered checklist, walks each form and upload with the user, and lints the final source for the mistakes that delay or block publication — but the user does every irreversible click.

When to use

• "My paper was accepted at SIGSPATIAL / ICDE / NeurIPS — what now?"
• "Help me with the camera-ready / final version."
• "What is this eRights email / TAPS link / PDF eXpress conference ID / eCF?"
• "Do all my coauthors really need ORCIDs?" / "Where does the DOI block go?"
• "How many pages do I get for the camera-ready?" / "How do I de-anonymize?"
• After write-rebuttal succeeds; before make-slides / talk prep.

Inputs

1. The acceptance email (ask the user to paste the camera-ready instructions from it — they override everything else).
2. The venue profile: venues/conferences/<venue>-<year>.yml (schema in venues/schema.yml; family files supply rail defaults). If missing, create one with parse-cfp first.
3. The final .tex source (the file with \documentclass) once editing starts; a compiled .log/.pdf next to it enables the page-count check.

Process

1. Resolve the rail and generate the checklist. Find the profile, ask which track the paper was accepted to (camera-ready deadlines and page limits differ per track), then run:

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   python3 scripts/camera_ready_checklist.py venues/conferences/<venue>-<year>.yml --track "<track>"
   

   It merges the family profile, resolves the rail (acm-taps, ieee-pdfexpress, openreview-direct, or other), and prints the ordered steps, the venue-specific requirements, the deadline, and the extra-page rule. --json for machine-readable output.

2. Re-verify against live sources — mandatory. Camera-ready instructions are issued per acceptance cycle and venues change rails (FAccT left TAPS). Before the user acts on anything: read the acceptance email's instructions, fetch the venue's camera-ready page, and re-check the profile's cfp_url. Confirm at minimum: the camera-ready deadline and timezone, the page limit and any +page allowance, the rail, and where final files are collected (often NOT the review system — ICDE 2026 explicitly says "do NOT upload camera-ready to CMT"). Update the profile YAML if anything differs, and say so.

3. Walk the rail step by step. Work through the checklist with the user, using the detailed walkthrough for their rail:

   Rail	Walkthrough	Key gates
   acm-taps	references/acm-taps-rail.md	eRights email (corresponding author, check spam), ORCID for ALL authors, rights/DOI block in the preamble, SOURCE zip to TAPS, PDF+HTML proofs — budget weeks
   ieee-pdfexpress	references/ieee-pdfexpress-rail.md	PDF eXpress conference ID, Xplore validation certificate, file naming (e.g. PID<n>.pdf), eCF with EXACT title/author match (cannot be redone), registration/no-show
   openreview-direct	rail steps in the checklist output + the venue profile	current-year .sty with [final], +1 page cap, OpenReview camera-ready task
   anything else	venue's own instructions	generic checklist printed by the script; verify everything live

4. De-anonymize and apply the +page rules (blind venues). Do this BEFORE any rights form — eRights/eCF need the exact final author list and title. Work through references/deanonymize-and-extra-pages.md: restore authors/affiliations/ORCIDs, acknowledgments and funding, real artifact links, PDF metadata; then fit the paper to the camera-ready page budget (never assume an allowance — the reference lists the known rules per family).

5. Lint the final source. After edits, run:

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   python3 scripts/check_camera_ready.py final.tex \
       --venue venues/conferences/<venue>-<year>.yml --track "<track>"
   

   It follows \input/\include and reports file:line findings: leftover review/anonymous/submission options, "Anonymous Author" placeholders, anonymous.4open.science links, missing author block, line numbers/todos — plus per rail: ACM rights/DOI block presence and placeholder DOI/ISBN values, CCS concepts and \keywords; IEEE page-number suppression and copyright-notice reminder; NeurIPS-style current-year .sty with [final]. Flags: --json, --strict, --no-inputs. Exit codes: 0 clean, 1 errors, 2 usage. Fix and re-run until PASS.

6. Close out the manual gates. The lint cannot see forms or portals. Confirm with the user, one by one: rights form completed (by the corresponding author, exact title/author match), validation certificate received (IEEE), files uploaded to the right collection site under the right name, proofs approved (ACM TAPS), author registration done before the registration deadline, and a presenting author committed (no-show = removal from the proceedings at IEEE and many ACM venues).

Output

• An ordered, venue-specific camera-ready checklist with deadline, rail, extra-page rule, and re-verification warnings (step 1).
• Concrete edits to the final source (rights block, de-anonymization, metadata) applied with the user's approval.
• A lint report (PASS / PASS-WITH-WARNINGS / FAIL with file:line) plus the list of remaining manual gates and their dates.

Worked example

A paper accepted at an ACM/TAPS venue, still in its submission state: it carries [review,anonymous], the acmart placeholder DOI/ISBN, an "Anonymous Author(s)" block, and an anonymous.4open.science link, with no rights block or CCS concepts yet. Linting the source against the venue profile:

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python3 scripts/check_camera_ready.py paper.tex \
    --venue venues/conferences/sigspatial-2026.yml --track Research

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ERROR final/submission-mode-option       paper.tex:1   documentclass still carries [review] — camera-ready must drop submission/review-mode options
ERROR final/submission-mode-option       paper.tex:1   documentclass still carries [anonymous] — ...
ERROR final/anonymous-placeholder        paper.tex:7   anonymization placeholder still present: '\author{Anonymous'
ERROR final/anonymized-link              paper.tex:10  anonymized artifact link still present: 'anonymous.4open.science' — swap in the real repository URL
ERROR acm/rights-block-missing                     -   \acmConference (or \acmJournal) not found — part of the eRights rights/DOI block
ERROR acm/placeholder-rights-value       paper.tex:4  \acmDOI{10.1145/nnnnnnn.nnnnnnn} looks like the acmart template placeholder — replace it with YOUR eRights value
ERROR acm/ccs-concepts-missing                     -   CCS concepts missing (CCSXML block + \ccsdesc) — generate them at https://dl.acm.org/ccs; TAPS requires them
ERROR acm/keywords-missing                         -   \keywords{...} missing — mandatory in ACM camera-ready
WARN  final/review-artifact              paper.tex:3   review-time artifact still present: '\linenumbers'

verdict: FAIL (rail=acm-taps, errors=8, warnings=1)
reminder: a clean lint covers the SOURCE only — rights forms, PDF eXpress, eCF, and registration remain manual steps.

How to present this: lead with the ERRORs as an ordered fix-list — drop [review,anonymous], restore the real author block, swap the anonymous.4open.science URL, paste the rights/DOI block and CCS/keywords from the completed eRights form — each with its file:line and the one-line edit; then the \linenumbers WARN as a judgment call. Note the order: the rights-block and CCS errors cannot clear until the eRights form is done, so the form is the gating dependency, not the source edit. Re-run the linter after each fix until it PASSes, and remind the user the lint never sees the form, the TAPS upload, or the proofs.

Adapt to your discipline

The rails here are ACM/IEEE/ML-conference specific. For other fields, add your publisher's rail to the venue family files (e.g. Springer LNCS source upload, Elsevier/Wiley journal production systems) — the checklist script reads whatever camera_ready.requirements the profile provides.

Guardrails

• Never complete eRights, eCF, TAPS, PDF eXpress, or any portal on the user's behalf, and never upload anything anywhere. Prepare, explain, lint — the user clicks.
• Rights forms are one-shot in practice (eCF cannot be redone; eRights metadata overrides the source). Triple-check title and author list/order with the user BEFORE they submit a form.
• Never guess deadlines, conference IDs, ISBN/price strings, or DOI values — they come from the acceptance email, the live venue page, or the completed rights form. Profiles are a starting point, never ground truth (step 2 is not optional).
• Page budgets: never assume a camera-ready extra-page allowance that is not stated by the venue for this year.
• New or changed citations during camera-ready edits go through verify-citations before they enter the .bib.
• Quote at most the flagged line of the user's paper in reports; never reproduce paper text at length, and never bundle paper content into the repo.