--- name: stoc-workflow description: Use when planning a STOC (ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing) project calendar — backward planning to the early-November deadline, the STOC/FOCS alternating two-deadline year that theory groups schedule around, full-version and camera-ready milestones, and the June TheoryFest endpoint. --- # STOC Workflow STOC is a conference with per-edition leadership, not a journal: SIGACT appoints a fresh program committee and chair every year (STOC 2026: PC chair Artur Czumaj; verified 2026-07-08 via the CFP), there is no standing editor, and publication costs ride on conference registration rather than author fees. Anchor timeline, 2026 cycle: submissions November 4, 2025 (4:59pm EST); notification by February 1, 2026; camera-ready and public full version March 31, 2026 (AoE); conference June 22–26, 2026, Salt Lake City, inside a five/six-day TheoryFest program. Every date below is that cycle's snapshot — reopen `acm-stoc.org` for the live year before acting on any of them. ## The two-beat theory year The field's real planning unit is not one deadline but the STOC/FOCS pair: STOC submissions close in early November for a June conference; FOCS closes in early April for a fall conference (FOCS 2026: deadline April 1, 2026, 21:00 UTC; conference November 8–11, 2026, New York — verified 2026-07-08). The same community, largely overlapping reviewer pools, near-identical scope. Strategic consequences: | Situation in late October | Sound play | |---|---| | Result complete, writing strong | Submit to STOC | | Proof complete, writing weak | Submit only if the overview can be made honest in time; a rushed overview at a no-rebuttal venue is unrecoverable | | One lemma still open | Hold for FOCS in April; five months closes lemmas | | STOC rejection arrives Feb 1 | Two months to repair for FOCS — enough for presentation surgery, rarely enough for new mathematics | | Result claimed by concurrent preprint | Post to arXiv immediately for priority, then decide venue calmly | A result that misses both beats simply waits; nothing in theory culture penalizes a strong paper for arriving one cycle later, but plenty penalizes a broken proof for arriving on time. ## Backward plan to a November deadline - **T−16 weeks:** the mathematical result exists in believed-complete form. Everything after this is verification and writing; theorem-proving scheduled inside the writing window is the classic failure. - **T−12 weeks:** full proofs written out (full-version draft), not just notes. Writing proofs *is* verification at this venue; gaps surface only under the discipline of complete prose. - **T−8 weeks:** internal verification pass — each theorem checked by a coauthor who did not draft its proof (`stoc-reproducibility`'s workflow). - **T−6 weeks:** extract the extended abstract from the full version: choose the twelve-page story, write the technical overview (`stoc-writing-style`). - **T−3 weeks:** hostile-read by a colleague outside the sub-area; their confusion map drives the final overview rewrite. - **T−1 week:** literature re-sweep (arXiv/ECCC), objection-ledger check (`stoc-author-response`), anonymity sweep and HotCRP dry run (`stoc-submission`). If opting into a pre-submission feedback experiment (2026: full paper due ~3 days early), the paper must be done here. - **T:** upload with hours to spare; the deadline is a US-Eastern wall-clock time, not AoE, and this catches Europeans annually. ## Between submission and decision (Nov–Feb) - Post or refresh the arXiv/ECCC version if the cycle's double-blind rules permit (待核实 — check the live CFP's stance on preprints during review). - Keep a corrections file: any bug or improvement found post-submission goes in it, dated. If a chair-mediated query arrives, answers come from this file; if acceptance arrives, it becomes the camera-ready worklist. - Do not silently rewrite the posted preprint mid-review in ways that diverge from the submitted PDF; reviewers may be reading both. ## From acceptance to Salt Lake City (Feb–Jun) 1. Triage the corrections file into camera-ready fixes vs. full-version-only improvements (`stoc-camera-ready`). 2. Hit both March 31 deliverables: the ACM proceedings version and the public full version with complete proofs — the CFP treats the second as an expectation of acceptance, not a courtesy. 3. Prepare the TheoryFest talk: one theorem, one technique, one open problem; rehearse to the announced slot length. Poster/workshop add-ons follow the program announcement (待核实 per cycle). 4. Confirm registration and attendance obligations from the acceptance email (待核实; not stated in the CFP excerpts verified for this pack). ## The cycle at a glance (2026 snapshot) ```text 2025-11-01 optional LLM-feedback upload (experiment; 3 days early) 2025-11-04 STOC deadline, 4:59pm EST 2026-02-01 decisions out (at the latest) 2026-02..03 accepted: corrections triage, ACM reformat, talk draft rejected: repair memo -> FOCS decision point 2026-03-31 camera-ready (AoE) + full version live on arXiv/ECCC 2026-04-01 FOCS 2026 deadline, 21:00 UTC (the other beat) 2026-06-22 STOC / TheoryFest week opens, Salt Lake City 2026-11-08 FOCS 2026 conference, New York ``` Print the equivalent table for the live year from the current CFPs before using it; both venues move their dates by days-to-weeks between cycles. ## Ownership map for multi-author teams Name one owner each for: proof verification, the twelve-page story, the literature sweep, anonymity/format compliance, and the full-version release. The two that slip when shared are verification ("I thought you checked Lemma 5") and the full version ("the arXiv update can wait") — both are reputation-priced at this venue. ## Cycle-volatility warnings - Deadlines, the guaranteed-read window, double-blind details, and any feedback experiments are re-set annually in the CFP; the TheoryFest format itself evolves (待核实 whether future editions keep the expanded-week structure). - FOCS mechanics are set independently by the IEEE TCMF side; never infer one venue's rules from the other's. ## Output format ```text [Current stage] proving / verifying / writing / submitted / decided / camera-ready [Beat decision] STOC / FOCS / hold one cycle [Backward plan] [Corrections file] empty / entries pending [Owner map] ```