Conference – Author Guidelines

ISMAR Conference Papers

We welcome conference paper submissions from 4-8 pages excluding references. Paper quality versus length will be assessed according to a contribution-per-page judgment. All submissions will be accepted or rejected as conference papers or poster papers*.

All accepted papers will be orally presented at the ISMAR conference.
All accepted papers will have the opportunity to be presented as a demo/poster.
All accepted papers will be archived in the IEEE Xplore digital library.

*Note that the poster submission track will run in parallel to the paper submission track and there will not be a poster submission deadline after the conference paper notifications. The conference paper track cooperates with the poster track and may accept conference paper submissions as posters based on their level of contribution; see details below.

Conference papers are also eligible for one of a number of best paper awards. ISMAR has an established reputation of awarding prizes to papers with future high impact (http://arnetminer.org/bestpaper).

Before Submission:

Previously published or submitted work. Conference paper submissions must not have been previously published. A manuscript is considered to have been previously published if it has appeared in a peer-reviewed or non-reviewed periodical or proceedings that is permanently available in print or electronic form to non-attendees, regardless of the language of that publication. A paper identical or substantially similar in content (in its entirety or in part) to one submitted to ISMAR should not be simultaneously under consideration for another conference or journal during any part of the ISMAR review process, from the submission deadline until notifications of decisions are emailed to authors. In some situations a submission may build upon prior work. In order to fully explain the relationship between the submitted paper and prior work, authors are asked to provide the related papers as well as a non-anonymous letter of explanation that highlights the significant changes or advances; these materials will only be seen by the primary reviewer.

Double-blind process. ISMAR uses a DOUBLE-BLIND review process. This means that both the authors and the reviewers must remain anonymous to each other. Submissions (including citations and optional videos) must not contain information that identifies the authors, their institutions, funding sources, or their places of work. Relevant previous work by the authors must be cited in the third person to preserve anonymity. Authors that have questions/issues around the double-blind submission policy should contact the conference program chairs.

Completeness. The submission must include all information necessary to evaluate the paper and must not ask reviewers to go to web sites or other external information sources, since that might circumvent page and media format limits, and may jeopardize the anonymity of the reviewers. Such external sites will not be accessed during the review process.

Videos. Authors are encouraged to submit videos to aid the program committee in reviewing their submissions. Videos must be submitted according to the instructions at the submission website. Videos submitted with papers will automatically be considered for possible inclusion in the video proceedings (video submissions may also be made independently, as described in the separate Call for Videos). When submitted as supporting material, videos must be free of any identifying information prior to reviewing as per the double-blind submission policy. If accepted for the video proceedings, a revised version of the materials will be requested. Videos should not be longer than five minutes, and the total size of all submitted materials (including the PDF document) must be under 50MB; but 100MB can be granted if requested by authors. Authors submitting a video should also include a text file describing the codec used to encode the video. Videos should be playable with standard software on PCs, Macs, and Linux machines. If the reviewers cannot play the video, it may reduce the chances of the submission being accepted.

Review Duties for Authors. Due to the increasing numbers of submissions to ISMAR, we rely on a large number of reviewers who are willing to provide expert opinions. To expand the reviewing pool and promote community integrity, the senior author/principal investigator will be required to register to review up to three papers through PCS at the time of submission. Additionally, senior authors are encouraged to ask experienced junior authors to register in PCS to review papers and mentor them in the review process.

Ethics and Responsibility. All submissions describing research experiments with human participants must follow the appropriate ethical guidelines as imposed by your affiliation, and authors are required to secure and report their approval by the relevant ethics commission, if applicable. An approval by any ethical review board needs to be indicated via the submission system.

Submission Process:

All materials will be submitted electronically through the Precision Conference website at: PCS

If you already have an account with that system, please use that account to submit your materials. Otherwise, create a new account. As part of the submission you will have to choose a topic area. Please go here for a detailed list of submission topic areas.

After Submission:

After your submission, the ISMAR program committee will process the new submission and resubmitted papers from the journal track. Also, the ISMAR conference paper track works closely with the poster track and may decide to accept papers submitted to the conference track as posters depending on the merit of their contribution. Thus, the following sections explain these three tracks independently.

Review Process for new submissions to the conference paper track:

The following items outline the review process for contributions submitted to the conference paper track.

Initially, the ISMAR program committee will scan each submission to verify compliance with ISMAR policies and formatting requirements.
Each submission will be assigned to one primary review coordinator (referred to as the Primary), who manages the review process and communicates with the authors.
The Primary will review the paper initially and may suggest to desk reject a paper that is exceptionally uncompetitive or in violation of ISMAR policies; the ISMAR program chairs will make the final decision on desk rejection of the paper.
ISMAR employs a two-tier reviewing process. Each submission will be reviewed by one member of the program committee (the Secondary, not the Primary) and two external reviewers. Each reviewer will be asked to submit a written assessment along with an initial recommendation. The recommendation can be either accept, conditional accept as a paper, or reject.
After the reviews have been submitted, the Primary will check the review quality and coordinate any updates with the reviewers.
Initial recommendation: The primary will ask the reviewers to agree on one recommendation (accept, conditional accept as a paper, or reject). If there is no consensual decision between Primary, Secondary and external reviewers, the Primary and Secondary will discuss a recommendation and if inconclusive, an additional review can be requested from another ISMAR program committee member.
After the discussion phase, the primary will write a meta review that states the initial recommendation. The final decision of the ISMAR program committee will rely on this meta review.
The ISMAR program committee will decide, based on the recommendation, if a paper is accepted, conditionally accepted or rejected.
In the case the paper is accepted or conditionally accepted, a shepherd will be assigned to the paper who assists the authors in preparing the final paper and who verifies that the authors comply with all conditions (if applicable).
In the case the paper will be rejected, continue to read the poster review details.

Handling of rejected papers and recommendations as posters:

In the case a conference paper submission will be rejected, the ISMAR program committee will coordinate with the poster track and its committee to conditionally accept a paper as a poster. The submissions will be handled as follows:

The Primary will be asked to recommend the paper for the poster track or to reject it (from both conference paper and poster tracks). The program committee will consider this recommendation and make the final decision.
If the paper has a recommendation for the poster track, the poster chairs and committee will receive all the reviews and the meta review generated during the conference paper review process. The poster chairs may also decide to discuss questions with the Primary.
Based on this information, the poster track committee will either conditionally accept the paper as a poster, or reject the contribution.
In the case the contribution is accepted as a poster, a shepherd will be assigned to the paper, who assists the authors in preparing a poster contribution.

Note that the poster and conference paper review processes run in parallel. Thus, the deadlines do not afford Authors the option to re-submit a rejected conference submission to the poster track. A paper conference submission can be redirected and conditionally accepted as a poster depending on the scientific/engineering level of the contribution. Thus, double-submission to both tracks (conference paper and poster track) is unnecessary and may pose a violation of the ISMAR dual-submission policy.

Review Process for resubmitted journal track papers:

The authors of an unaccepted journal paper can decide to maintain review continuity. In this case, the authors need to submit all reviews from the journal track, the rebuttal (if applicable), and the journal track paper id during the submission process; authors are also advised to submit a new cover letter describing any changes made to the paper before re-submission. We also advise the authors to submit the original journal submission as supplementary material. If the authors do not provide this requested information, the conference paper submission will be treated as a new submission to the conference paper track and be processed accordingly (see description above). In the case the authors decide to maintain reviewer continuity, the submission will be handled as follows:

The ISMAR program committee will assign a primary review coordinator (Primary) to the paper and an additional program committee member (Secondary).
The Primary will initially check the paper to check if it meets all ISMAR policies and may recommend a desk rejection if the paper does not meet the ISMAR policies.
A submission whose content and contribution has changed significantly in comparison to the original journal submission will be treated as a new submission, with new external reviews solicited.
The Primary and Secondary will obtain all information from the meta review, the reviews, and the rebuttal and discuss the paper. Primary and Secondary will be asked to agree on an initial recommendation (accept, conditionally accept, reject). If the Primary and Secondary cannot find consensus, the program committee will assign an additional reviewer for an additional recommendation (accept or reject).
The Primary will compile a new meta-review for this paper. The program chairs will base their final decision (accept, conditionally accept, reject) on this meta review and the initial recommendation.
In the case the paper will be accepted or conditionally accepted, a shepherd will be assigned to the paper who will assist the authors in preparing the final paper and who will verify that the authors comply with all conditions (if applicable).
In the case the paper is rejected, see the poster review details above.

Plagiarism Check. Submissions will be checked for plagiarism using IEEE Crosscheck. Detection of significant plagiarism will lead to rejection. For more information about definitions of plagiarism and IEEE policies in this area, please see the IEEE plagiarism FAQ and the IEEE Publication Services and Products Board Operations Manual.

Camera-ready and Preparing for the Conference:

Camera-ready paper. Upload the final version to: https://new.precisionconference.com/ismar

Use the “Final Submission Form” to provide your final version and any supplementary material, such as video files. In the preparation of the final submission, follow the camera-ready instructions. Ensure that you are using the correct formatting and submit the IEEE copyright form. Otherwise, your contribution might not be included in the proceedings.

Registration. At least one author must register for the conference and present the work. If no author is fully registered by the camera-ready submission deadline, the accepted work will be withdrawn from publication.

Conference presentation. All accepted papers must be orally presented at the conference.

Best paper awards: The program committee will create a list of the best paper candidates based on their review score and the recommendation of the Primary reviewer.

There is no set size limit for this list; all submitted papers are potentially qualified to compete for a Best Paper Award. The program chairs then forward this list to an awards committee, which assesses papers (along with accompanying meta review, external reviews and discussion) separately from the program committee.

Do not hesitate to contact us for any further information.

ISMAR 2021 Science & Technology Conference Papers Chairs

Writing a Good ISMAR Paper:

A good ISMAR submission will result in both a respectable document for the proceedings and a good conference talk. As an author, you should ask yourself the following questions while writing your paper. Submissions that do not provide good answers to these questions are unlikely to be accepted.

What problem are you addressing?

The most common motivation for publishing a paper is to present a solution to a problem. When doing so, try to state all your constraints and assumptions. This is an area where it can be invaluable to have someone who is not intimately familiar with your work read the paper. Include a crisp description of the problem in the abstract and try to suggest it in the title. Note that the program chairs depend almost completely on the abstract and title when they determine which program committee member to assign to the paper.

ISMAR papers often focus on a certain aspect of Mixed and Augmented Reality systems. The following list includes some example topics, but does not represent an exhaustive list of all topics. We welcome any new idea beyond the usual range of areas.

Interaction Methods: Does the paper propose a novel interaction method? Does it present different use cases and applications for it? Can it demonstrate that the method performs better than other known ones?
User Interface & Human Factors: Does the paper describe how Mixed and Augmented Reality is improving a user interface design, human task performance or perception?
Tracking and Pose Estimation: Does the paper describe a novel method that is more robust in difficult conditions (lighting, outdoor, fast motion)? Is it a new, clever combination of different sensors? Does it provide more information for use in interaction and rendering?
Rendering and Visualization: Does the paper describe a novel, improved method for realistic integration of virtual graphics into a mixed scene? Is it faster or more accurate than known methods? Does it present a novel way of presenting information about the real world?
Displays and Input Devices: Does the paper describe a novel display (e.g., visual or aural)? Does it describe a novel input device that provides different input modalities, is easier to use and deploy or more precise?
Applications: Is the paper proposing a new application of Mixed and Augmented Reality in a specific domain? Are you providing a new understanding of usage patterns and social behavior of a deployed AR application? Mind that an application has a use case in a target domain; it is not just an implementation of software.

What were the previous approaches?

What are the relevant published works in your problem area? What deficiencies in their approaches are you trying to overcome? How does the new approach differ from previously published results? Don’t expect the reviewers to know this information without telling them in the paper, as they are unlikely to remember the precise details of all the relevant literature. Make specific comparisons between your work and that described in the references; don’t just compile a list of vaguely related papers. What are the limitations of your work and is the future work still to be addressed?

How well did you address your stated problem?

Based on your problem statement, what did you accomplish? You are responsible for arguing that the problem is sufficiently addressed. Include pictures, statistics, or whatever is required to make your case. If you find this part of the paper difficult to write, perhaps the work is not yet finished and the paper should be deferred until next year. (And, perhaps, submitted as a poster this year).

The following describes some typical evaluation methods for different kinds of papers. This list is not exhaustive, but provides some hints as to what can help to present your contribution.

Interaction Methods: Did you measure how usable the method or system is? What is the performance of users (e.g. completion time, error rate, learning curve) compared to a previous interface developed for a similar task?
User Interface & Human Factors: Is the improvement or effect described well supported through evaluations? Was the experimental design appropriate to your solution? Were sample size, statistical evaluation, and presentation and conclusions appropriate? Were sample sizes diverse and representative of all intended users?
Tracking and Pose Estimation: What opportunity does the method contribute to the mixed/augmented reality domain? How does it compare to known state-of-the-art systems? Can your system maintain competitive robustness/reliability? Can it deal with difficult input including light conditions, fast motion, occlusions? How fast is it and on which hardware? It is also a good idea to use a standard data set to make the results comparable to other publications, or make your test data sets available for other authors.
Rendering and Visualization: Is the output quality of your system superior to previous methods? Is it faster or capable to operate at real-time rates? What hardware and sensors does it require? For visualization, what use cases does it cover? What amount or complexity of data can it deal with?
Displays and Input Devices: What are the performance specifications of the display? For example, for a visual display does it work in indoor/outdoor, strong light conditions, what is the field of view, and is it multi-user capable? What is the hardware/software required to recreate it? What are the specifications of the input device? Can it be used in a mobile setting?
Applications: How did you design the application, what constraints from the application domain are essential? Was the system tested by end users that are representative of the intended population in the application domain? Did it affect a relevant factor, i.e. performance, safety? Did it create opportunities to improve the work methods?

What does this work contribute to the field?

What are your new ideas or results? If you don’t have at least one new idea, you don’t have a publishable paper. Can your results be applied anywhere outside of your project? If not, the paper is probably too special-purpose for ISMAR. On the other hand, beware of trying to write a paper with too large a scope.

Is the paper complete?

The question that generates a large amount of discussion within the program committee to determine whether a paper is complete. If the paper presents an algorithm or technique, an experienced practitioner in the field should be able to implement it using the paper and its references. If the paper claims to present a faster or more efficient way of implementing an established technique, it must contain enough detail to replicate the experiment on competing implementations. When you quote numbers, be sure that they are not misleading—state clearly whether they were measured, simulated, or derived, and how you did the measurements, simulations, or derivations. For example, CPU time measurements are meaningless unless the reader is told the machine and configuration on which they were obtained.

Does the paper present too much information?

Many large, poorly written papers contain a good paper trying to get out. It is the author’s responsibility, not the reviewer’s, to discover this paper and turn it into the submission. If you have addressed a single, practical problem, don’t try to generalize it for the purposes of publication. If you have a formal theory or elaborate architecture, don’t include all the vagaries of the implementation unless they are critical to the utility of the theory. Don’t include the contents of your user’s manual; instead, describe the model or functionality achieved. You should assume your audience has a working knowledge of user-interface development and access to the major journals in computer science, electrical engineering, and psychology. A short conference paper can only present a few concise ideas well.

Can this paper be presented well?

While ISMAR papers are judged primarily as technical papers, some consideration is given to how suitable the topic is for a conference presentation. Think of how you would present your ideas, and how big the audience is likely to be. Papers that have a small number of concisely stated new ideas and that are visually interesting tend to appeal to a large audience and be easy to present. As recent conferences clearly show, these criteria do not eliminate papers that have taxonomies or strong theoretical content, or appeal to a specialized audience, if they contain significant new ideas.

Should a video also be included?

A video can be very helpful for communicating technical results, especially when the paper discusses an interaction technique. However, do not try to save space in the paper by putting essential information into the video. The paper must stand on its own.

Is the paper accessible?

All information, including information in figures, charts, tables, etc., should be available to readers who consume it in different ways. For example: some of us cannot see color, some use high contrast displays, and some listen to the content instead of seeing it. CHI 2021 has useful information on making a paper accessible.

Is the paper using gender neutral language?

Use “he” when referring to men or boys. Use “she” when referring to women or girls. Avoid phrases such as “he/she” or “he or she” when a gender is not clearly known. Instead use “they” as a gender neutral pronoun. When referencing a profession, use the gender neutral form. For example use fire fighter, police officer, or worker instead of fireman, policeman, or workman. See this excerpt of the Chicago Style for more information about gender-neutral pronouns.

Further Examples:

You can also find the full list of papers previously published at ISMAR in the IEEE Digital Library (IEEE Xplore). Furthermore, the ismar.net website lists past best paper awards, which are good examples of great ISMAR papers. Note that the ISMAR proceedings from previous years include TVCG journal publications and conference proceedings. Since the separation of the conference track and journal track is new in 2021, we advise focusing on previous conference track proceedings when searching for ISMAR example papers.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs):

Is ISMAR a visual tracking-only conference?

No. While ISMAR has helped to bring to the world key works on real time 3D tracking using vision methods (and we want to keep that happening), Mixed and Augmented Reality are concepts that go far beyond only tracking in 3D! At ISMAR 2021 we are highlighting the interest in work that goes beyond tracking. Issues on usefulness of AR, learning, training, therapy, rehabilitation, virtual analytics, entertainment, context, behaviour and object recognition together with other wearable sensors using computer vision, sensor networks and new types of onboard and external sensing technologies become very relevant to augment our world. VR papers will also be considered regardless of their relevance to AR/MR.

Document History:

This document was adapted by the 2021 Journal Paper Chairs: Daisuke Iwai, Denis Kalkofen, Guillaume Moreau, and Tabitha Peck as well as the 2021 Conference Paper Chairs: Maud Marchal, Anne-Helene Olivier, Rafael Radkowski, Jonathan Ventura, and Lily Wang. The document was obtained from Shimin Hu and Stefanie Zollmann, Wolfgang Broll, Holger Regenbrecht, and J. Edward Swan II, who inherited it from Wolfgang Broll, Hideo Saito, and J. Edward Swan II, based on Walterio Mayol, Christian Sandor, and Rob Lindeman, based on significant materials created by Ron Azuma on how to write a successful ISMAR paper and how to be a successful Program Chair, also based on the 2011 UIST Author Guidelines edited by Maneesh Agrawala and Scott Klemmer (using material provided by Saul Greenberg), who inherited it from François Guimbretière, who inherited it from Michel Beaudouin Lafon, who inherited it from Ravin Balakrishnan and Chia Shen, who inherited it from Ken Hinckley and Pierre Wellner, who inherited it from Dan Olsen, who inherited it from Steve Feiner, who inherited it from Joe Konstan, who inherited it from Michel Beaudouin Lafon, who inherited it from Ari Rapkin, who inherited it from Beth Mynatt, who inherited it from George Robertson, who inherited it from Marc H. Brown, who inherited it from George Robertson, who got lots of help on it from Steve Feiner, Brad Myers, Jock Mackinlay, Mark Green, Randy Pausch, Pierre Wellner, and Beth Mynatt.