Author Information

`acmart` Format

ACM commissioned the construction of a Master Article Template that consolidates all previous ACM journal and proceedings formats (including SIGPLAN’s legacy sigplanconf format) and is designed to enable a uniform production workflow for authors and publishers. The acmart format includes a number of sub-formats, two of which are relevant to SIGPLAN authors:

acmsmall sub-format: a one-column format used by papers published as an issue of PACM on Programming Languages (PACMPL)
sigplan sub-format: a two-column format used by papers published as traditional SIGPLAN proceedings

ACM provides technical support for authors working with the acmart format. General comments and problems about the acmart format may be communicated through the SIGPLAN Information Director.

LaTeX class, bibliography style, and template files

For LaTeX users, the acmart package includes the following essential files for an author:

class file (acmart.cls)
bibliography style file (ACM-Reference-Format.bst)

The acmart format is available from ACM’s Master Article Template page and from CTAN (and is distributed with most popular TeX distributions). The package documentation provides a detailed description of all features. The acmart format is maintained in a GitHub repository.

Please use the following LaTeX commands:

PACMPL journal issues: \documentclass[acmsmall,screen]{acmart}. Authors can choose either author-year citations, with \citestyle{acmauthoryear}, or numeric citations, with \citestyle{acmnumeric}.
SIGPLAN proceedings: \documentclass[sigplan,screen]{acmart}.

The review option is strongly encouraged, but not required, for submissions. (The review option will add line numbers, which make it easier for reviewers to reference specific parts of the paper in their comments, but should have absolutely no other effect on the typesetting.)

The screen option adds colors to hyperlinks and cross references.

The ACM Publishing System (TAPS) maintains a list of accepted LaTeX packages that are compatible with TAPS production processing of your LaTeX source files. Please note that for the successful conversion of your article to HTML, the use of LaTeX packages must be restricted to the list.

Microsoft Word

The acmart format is not supported by Microsoft Word, as of March 2020.

Republication Policy

Please review SIGPLAN’s republication policy.

ACM Author Rights

Writing

If you would like some advice on how to write submissions, here are some suggestions by

Derek Dreyer: How to Write Papers So People Can Read Them
Simon Peyton Jones: How to write a good research paper, give a good research talk, and write a good grant proposal
Donald E. Knuth, Tracy Larrabee and Paul M. Roberts: Mathematical Writing
Mary-Claire van Leunen and Richard Lipton: How to Have Your Abstract Rejected
William Pugh: Advice to Authors of Extended Abstracts
Mark Wegman: What it’s like to be a POPL referee; or how to write an extended abstract so that it is more likely to be accepted
P. R. Halmos: How to Write Mathematics
Joel E. Cohen: To A Young Scientist

Third-Party Material

Third-party material requires to be acknowledged at two places:

The paper needs to provide attribution. For figures, add a credit line at the end of the caption (ideally containing year, creator, copyright holder, license, source URL).
The publishing-rights agreement needs to list all third-party materials.

See ACM Instructions for Including Third-Party Material and ACM Guidance for Authors on Fair Use for more details.

Additional Support

Are you a student needing additional support to present your paper at the conference? The SIGPLAN Professional Activities Committee (PAC) can help you.