Author Guidelines
This document covers the requirements and policies for papers submitted to ACM VRST 2026. For information on the topics of interest and submission deadlines, please see the Call for Papers.
The sections below include details useful throughout the entire submission process, from preparing the paper through the final publication. Please read this document in its entirety to help prepare submissions for VRST 2026.
Submission Guidelines
Format
Paper submissions must be anonymous for a double-blind review process (see below for more details).
All submissions should be prepared using the Word or LaTeX templates from the official ACM Master article template packages and TAPS (see https://www.acm.org/publications/taps/word-template-workflow).
For LaTeX authors, submissions should be made using the double-column format using sample-sigconf-authordraft.tex with \documentclass[sigconf,review,anonymous]{acmart}.
For Word submissions, please use the linked single-column template.
Authors should prepare their materials using numbered citations and references. See the TAPS webpage for guidance on how content length corresponds to the page limits for the final version.
Submission Lengths
- LaTeX: 4 to 9 pages, double column, excluding references.
- Word: approx. 8,000 words including space for figures, tables, etc.
The length of a paper should be commensurate with its contribution.
Submission Language
All paper submissions must be in English.
Abstract Submission
Note that a paper abstract must be uploaded seven days prior to the actual paper submission deadline. This facilitates the process of assigning reviewers, as the review process operates on a very tight schedule.
Contribution Types
We invite many types of research contributions, including interactive systems. However, evaluating systems that are built using existing techniques can be difficult. For example, a system can be built using a known machine-learning technique but it can enable entirely new functionality. In this case, reviewers will need to judge the novelty of the new functionality that the system enables without penalizing the work for leveraging an existing technique.
For reference, here’s a paper about evaluating interactive systems that reviewers and authors should both be familiar with: James Fogarty (2017): Code and Contribution in Interactive Systems Research
We further accept studies that replicate known findings systematically to confirm or contradict previously found results.
Reproduction Research
We welcome reproduction research papers that make substantial contributions to the reproducibility and reliability of prior XR research. Submissions should go beyond a mere repetition of an existing study and instead provide clear scientific value, for example through comprehensive or partial replications, replication with extensions to new conditions, updated hardware or participant populations, or critical methodological analyses of reproducibility. Reviewers will evaluate these papers with an explicit awareness of the goals and challenges of reproduction research, placing emphasis on methodological rigor, transparency, and the contribution to strengthening the XR knowledge base, rather than on novelty in the traditional sense.
Anonymity Guidelines
For initial paper submissions, authors are asked to remove all author and institution information and remove any clues that would directly identify any of the authors (such as the name of the data collecting institution, ethical board/IRB institution names, or acknowledgments). Please anonymize all PDF files. Note that PDF creator programs may automatically include author information in the file metadata. Citations of the authors’ own published work (including online) must be in the third person, in a manner that is not traceable to the identity of the authors. For example, the wording “in [3], Mountain and River proposed…” is acceptable, whereas “in [3], we proposed…” is not. Here, reference [3] is listed explicitly as “Mountain, A. and River, A., Detecting Mountains and Rivers, In Proc. XYZ ’16, 721-741.” We welcome authors to extend their own existing non- or semi-archivable, as well as not-yet-peer-reviewed publications, such as extended abstracts. To avoid accusations of (self)plagiarism in these cases, we ask the authors to upload their work in a special field in PCS. These works can only be viewed by the submission coordinator.
Please note that failure to comply with any of the above requirements and guidelines will result in an automatic desk rejection of the paper!
Supplementary Materials
Authors must not include appendices in the main paper submission. Any additional material (e.g., extended methods, proofs, additional figures, videos, or datasets) should be submitted as separate supplementary material.
Submissions may be (optionally) accompanied by additional materials such as images, videos, or electronic documents. These materials do not form a part of the official submission. They will be viewed only at the discretion of the reviewers. All content should be in a portable format that is unlikely to require the user to download additional programs. For example, you may prefer PDF or HTML for documents, PNG or JPEG for images, and QuickTime or MPEG for videos. The total file size for supplementary materials should not exceed a total of 50MB. To the extent possible, accepted papers should stand on their own, with the additional material providing supplementary information or confirmation of results. It is, however, appropriate to refer to video footage in the paper.
Supplementary materials are intended to provide supporting information only and must not contain essential content required for evaluating the main contribution of the paper. Reviewers are not required to consult supplementary materials when making their decision.
While there is no strict page limit for supplementary materials, authors are expected to keep them concise and relevant. All supplementary materials must be anonymized in accordance with the double-blind review policy.
Previously Published or Submitted Work
Dual/Double Submissions
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 are 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 VRST should not be simultaneously under consideration for another conference or journal during any part of the VRST review process, from the submission deadline until notifications of decisions are emailed to authors.
Authors’ published prior work
In some cases, a submission may build on the authors’ prior work. To fully explain the relationship between the submitted paper and prior work, authors must provide the related publications (including papers, posters, workshops, and work-in-progress publications) as well as a letter of explanation that highlights the significant changes or advances. These documents will only be visible to the 1AC.
The authors’ prior/related work is currently under review
In some situations, a submission may be built upon authors’ prior work that is currently under review (e.g., a submission presenting a new data set is under review that the current submission builds upon) or has a contribution closely related to another submission under review (e.g., two submissions presenting the same concept but applied to different use cases). If such prior/related work has not yet been published, authors must provide these anonymized works, including an anonymized letter outlining the relation to the VRST submission. This also applies to related submissions being under review at this year’s VRST conference. These works should be made available to all reviewers.
Ethics and Responsibility
All submissions describing research experiments with human participants must follow the appropriate ethical guidelines required by the authors’ institution(s), and authors are required to secure and report their approval by the relevant ethics committee prior to collecting data. An approval by any ethical review board, if required by your institution, needs to be indicated via the submission system. Authors will be required to submit the name of the ethical review board, approved protocol title and number, and the date that ethical approval was obtained prior to running human participants. Authors must be able to provide proof of ethical approval upon request.
If the authors’ institution does not have a formal ethics review board, authors must explicitly state this and provide a detailed ethics statement describing how the study adhered to internationally accepted ethical standards (e.g., informed consent procedures, risk mitigation, and data protection practices). Additional documentation may be requested at the discretion of the program chairs.
Incorrect reporting of ethical approval will result in desk rejection.
Presentation at the Conference
All accepted submissions must be presented orally at the conference. An in-person presentation is expected, and online presentations will not be guaranteed. Requests for online presentations due to exceptional cases must be made at least one month before the conference.
At least one author of each accepted paper must register for the conference, and present their work in person at the conference. As the conference is in-person only, there will not be any opportunity to present remotely. Besides, it’s just so much better to meet your fellow XR enthusiasts in person!
Review Duties for Authors
The increasing number of submissions makes us all dependent on a large number of good reviewers who are willing to provide constructive feedback and engage with authors on their work. Every paper needs three quality reviews including 2AC’s review. To expand the reviewing pool and to promote quality reviews, for each submitted paper, each senior author will be required to register to review at least one paper through PCS at the time of submission – although more would obviously be welcome. Additionally, senior authors are encouraged to ask experienced junior authors to register in PCS to review papers, and then to mentor the experienced junior authors during the review process.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
When designing and presenting user evaluations, please consider the following: User evaluations using non-representative or homogeneous participant populations can introduce biases in the results and conclusions. We recommend that researchers strive to use samples that are representative of the population for which the technology is being designed. If representative samples are not possible to collect, we recommend that the limitations of the population studied should be discussed within the paper and care must be taken when making claims about the findings. We recommend that participant demographic information should be reported for user evaluations so that future researchers understand the results based on the population studied.
Accessibility
We ask authors to try to be as inclusive as possible when preparing a submission. For instance, please provide alt-text for figures and tables and make supplemental videos accessible with subtitles to enable us to facilitate accessible reviewing. We recommend that authors read the SIGCHI Accessibility Guide for Authors, as well as the SIGCHI Guide for Videos (especially the section “What accessibility considerations should I pay attention to when recording my video?”), which describes the process of accessible video creation and captioning. If authors have difficulties with making their submissions accessible, they are encouraged to contact the VRST 2026 Accessibility Chairs by emailing accessibility2026@vrst.acm.org.
Contact
- Kazuyuki Fujita, Tohoku University, Japan
- Tham Piumsomboon, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
- Kangsoo Kim, University of Calgary, Canada
- Takefumi Hiraki, University of Tsukuba, Japan / Cluster Metaverse Lab, Japan
Document History:
This document was prepared by the VRST 2026 Program Chairs, drawing on author guidelines from previous VRST conferences and from ISMAR 2026.