STOC 2027 Introduces New Submission Rules for the AI Era

Summary

STOC 2027, the 59th ACM Symposium on the Theory of Computing, is testing new submission and review policies in response to rapid advances in generative AI and concerns about a flood of AI-generated papers. The conference will end anonymous submissions: every listed author must be human and responsible for the paper, and each author may appear on no more than five submissions. Papers must be submitted to arXiv before the November 2 deadline, with the conference PDF identical to the arXiv version. Authors must also provide a 20-to-30-minute video explaining the work, its context, and its novelty relative to prior research; it is due one to two weeks after the paper deadline, must be presented by at least one listed author, and will supplement rather than replace the written paper as the primary review object. Authors may use LLMs and other generative tools, but substantive use must be disclosed; minor editing of the authors’ own text is exempt. Program committee members and external reviewers may use LLMs only if authors consent during submission, while human reviewers retain responsibility for reviews and decisions. The post’s author supports clearer responsibility and transparency but questions mandatory consent, worries that video evaluation could disadvantage non-native English speakers, and notes that the rules may affect students, preliminary submissions, and the future role of conferences in theory research.