Inspired by the broad agenda of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), ACM COMPASS is an international forum for the presentation and publication of original research that supports the growth of sustainable societies worldwide, from a broad array of disciplines including computer and information sciences, social sciences, environmental sciences, and engineering.
The ACM COMPASS community has a particular commitment to approaches and research that address the challenges faced by under-represented and marginalized communities, and explicitly promotes multi-disciplinary and cross-disciplinary research and practice that address key challenges for sustainable societies including, but not limited to, equity, health, education, poverty, accessibility, conservation, climate change, energy, infrastructure and economic growth. We also welcome research on the ethics of technology, especially from a critical perspective, that explores limitations and concerns with technology-led solutions for sustainable societies. To ensure strong research contributions, papers will be reviewed based on paper tracks corresponding to the research areas they draw upon. We also encourage deployment experiences and practitioners’ reports on the above topics of relevance. Authors will be able to indicate whether their submission should be evaluated as a Research paper or a Deployment Experiences and Practitioner report under their chosen track.
Any questions not answered here can be sent to pc@compass.acm.org
Important Dates
First Round Submissions
29 October, 2021: Full paper submission (new papers; deadline postponed due to server outage)20 December, 2021: Author notification (accept, reject, or revise & resubmit)17 January, 2022: Accepted paper camera-ready files due
Second Round Submissions
2 March 2022: Full paper submission (new papers + revised first round submissions)25 April, 2022: Author notification (accept or reject)16 May, 2022: Accepted paper camera-ready files due
Conference Dates
- June 29 to July 1, 2022: ACM COMPASS 2022 Conference in Seattle
New in 2022: Two submission rounds enable revise & resubmit
New in 2022, COMPASS will have two rounds of paper submissions, enabling a revise and resubmit (R&R) process. An R&R process better matches journals’ reviewing practices and authors benefit from feedback at the end of the first review round and get a real chance to propose a revised and better presentation of their work. We expect the process will lead to high-quality and impactful contributions.
Both the first round (October 2021) and the second round (March 2022) will accept new paper submissions. However, we highly encourage authors to submit their work to the first round, as this will provide authors with an explicit revision cycle within the review process.
Papers submitted to the first round (October 2021) will receive one of the three following decisions: Accept with minor changes, Revise and Resubmit (R&R), or Reject. A R&R decision gives authors the chance to revise their submission and resubmit it to the second round (March 2022), where it will receive another round of reviews from the same set of reviewers. Papers will then either be accepted or rejected.
We anticipate that papers that are able to take advantage of the R&R process will improve their chances of acceptance by having several months to address the reviewers’ comments and concerns via a revision.
Note that new papers submitted in the second round (March 2022) will not have a revision cycle and will receive one of two decisions: accept or reject.
Apply to be on the Technical Program Committee
We are committed to assembling a diverse and international technical program committee. To foster this, we have an open call for people who are interested in serving as Technical Program Committee (PC) members. Note that most PC members should already possess a PhD or equivalent levels of industry or practitioner experience.
To apply to join the Technical Program Committee, fill out this application form.
Full Paper Submission Instructions
Full papers will be original, archival submissions that will be archived in the ACM Digital Library. Papers should represent original, polished, and significant contributions. There is no page limit, and authors are encouraged to submit a paper of length proportional to its contribution (typical full papers are 7000-9000 words, not including references).
Papers should be submitted in PDF format, prepared using the ACM Primary Article Templates for LaTeX and Microsoft Word. Authors should submit manuscripts for review in a single column format (LaTeX submissions should use the ‘acmconf’ default conference proceedings template style). Submit papers on HotCRP. The submission site will open in early October for first round submissions, and early February for second round submissions.
All submissions must be fully anonymized. Submissions will go through a double blind review process, therefore no author names or affiliations may appear on the title page, and papers should avoid revealing their identity in the text and document metadata. Any references to authors’ own prior work should be in the third person. In addition, we aim to ensure that all of the COMPASS content be accessible to any and all persons (including reviewers) and we ask that your submissions be made as accessible as possible by following our guide to producing accessible documents.
The Development, Economics, and Policy track will also accept papers written in the economics short paper format (initial submissions need not be in the ACM template, as long as word count is at most 6,000 words, with at most 5 exhibits (tables or figures), following the AER:Insights guidelines. For this option, report the word count on the title page. Papers must be self-contained. Authors will need to format any accepted submissions into an ACM template for publication.)
To accommodate the publishing traditions of different fields, authors of accepted papers can ask that only a one-page abstract appear in the archival proceedings, along with a URL pointing to the full paper. Authors should guarantee the link to the full paper to be reliable for at least two years. This option is available to accommodate subsequent publication in journals that would not consider results that have been published in preliminary form in a conference proceedings.
Paper Tracks
To ensure strong research contributions, papers will be reviewed based on focus tracks corresponding to the research areas they draw upon. The key focal tracks are:
Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning and Data Science
This track takes paper submissions on research and development of AI/ML and data science techniques in the context of social impact. Topics may include, but are not limited to:
- Methods for large-scale data analysis, participatory sensing and crowd-sourced data collection.
- Novel prediction and/or decision-support models in societally critical domains like healthcare, education, governance and social policy.
- Analysis of massive, complex data sources, such as networked data, satellite data, mobile phone data, time-series, and spatial-temporal data.
- Methods for working with unstructured data including natural language and images, and multi-modal analyses combining structured and unstructured data.
- Data collection and techniques for building models for underrepresented contexts, including data regarding different groups and communities, underrepresented languages of the world, low-resource areas, etc.
- Handling of missing, messy, and biased data, including data cleaning, data wrangling, data integration, and domain adaptation methods.
- Data privacy, security, and anonymity while building machine learning models.
- FATE (fairness, accountability, transparency, and ethics) in AI and ML, especially as it applies to applications of these technologies in social impact domains.
Methods may be applied to relevant areas that aim towards social impact and sustainable societies, including but not limited to: agriculture, poverty mapping, disease surveillance, health screening, learning outcomes, resource allocation, etc. We encourage (but do not require) real-world deployment and evaluation of methods in collaboration with public sector partners such as government or NGOs. Submitted papers are expected to present an argument for the (either realized or potential) social impact of the work. We also encourage contributions on critical perspectives about machine learning that may limit effectiveness or quality of machine learning-led solutions for sustainable societies.
Example Papers
Computing Systems and IoT
This track takes paper submissions on the design, implementation, and deployment of all forms of computing and communication systems for sustainable societies. Topics of interest may include (but not limited to):
- Connectivity solutions and measurements
- Mobile systems and applications
- Spectrum management
- Content distribution
- Low-cost and/or low-energy computing systems and devices
- IoT devices and other systems for improving infrastructure (buildings, energy systems, roads, water and sanitation systems, agriculture, healthcare, governance, etc.)
- Computing technologies applied in energy and electricity networks
- Systems for measurement, monitoring, and/or management of urban and rural environments
- Deployment of sensing and communications technologies, case studies, and lessons learned
- Security and privacy in systems and IoT
- Smart cities applications
We especially encourage contributions on critical perspectives about technology that may impose limitations on technology-led solutions for sustainable societies.
Example Papers
Sustainability, Environment, and Climate Change
This track encourages papers on all aspects of sustainability of the planet pertaining to environmental sciences, climate change, and environmental policy. We encourage submissions across a broad spectrum of topics in this space, including but not limited to:
- Climate change modeling
- Environmental scientific studies
- Impact of climate change on populations
- Modeling environmental pollution and its impact of populations
- Biodiversity, wildlife and ecosystem conservation
- Sustainable management of natural resources
- Environmental policy studies and economics
- Studies on the limits of the sustainability of technology
- Measuring and evaluating the impact of nature-based strategies
Example Papers
- Infrastructure Resilience for Climate Adaptation
- Exploiting Data and Human Knowledge for Predicting Wildlife Poaching
- AirSim-W: A Simulation Environment for Wildlife Conservation with UAVs
- Conditional mixture models for precipitation data quality control
- Enhancing Seismic Resilience of Water Pipe Networks
Human-Computer Interaction, Design, and Critical Perspectives
This track takes paper submissions that are broadly in the domains of HCI, design, and critical perspectives. We encourage submissions that describe the design and use of novel interactive technologies and applications with individuals, communities, or organizations. Submissions may use a broad array of methods, including ethnography, qualitative, quantitative, design, usage and interaction analysis, mixed methods, and others. Domains of interest include health, education, gender, religion, agriculture, socio-economic development, poverty, financial services, and more. Topics of interest may include (but not limited to):
- Designing technologies or applications for underserved, marginalized, or at-risk communities
- Human-centered AI (where the contribution is related to the design, usage, sociotechnical context, or application rather than the AI itself)
- Information and computer ethics
- Design or study of sociotechnical systems for underserved communities
- Information system and technology design methodologies
- Social relationships and information flows within and across communities
- Gender and intersectionality
- Evaluations of usage and impact of technologies deployed in the field
- Human-centered security and privacy
- Reflections from long-term deployments
- Equality, diversity and inclusion
- Other topics related to interactions between technology, humans, and/or society
Example Papers
- Designing Appropriate Learning Technologies for School vs Home Settings in Tanzanian Rural Villages
- Lessons from El Paquete, Cuba’s Offline Internet
- Defamiliarizing the Domestic: Exploring “M-Kopa Solar” and Sustainable Practices in Rural Kenyan Households
- Mental health in the global south: challenges and opportunities in HCI for development
Development, Economics, and Policy
This track encourages paper submissions from economics, social sciences, and policy that pertain to sustainability and socio-economic development. Specific topics include but are not limited to:
- Policy evaluation using randomized control trials or observational data
- Study of markets, market design, and new forms of economic activity such as gig work and micro-lending, especially in low-and middle-income societies
- Measuring development, economic, or policy outcomes using non-traditional data (administrative, satellite, social media, mobile, text, etc.)
- Applying AI/ML methods to social science or economic policy
- Development economics studies
- Intersection of politics, governance, and development
- Social network analysis and analysis of social relationships
- Applications, effects, and regulation of technology in low- and middle-income societies
We encourage development, economics and policy papers that engage with a broad range of application domains, including public health, financial services, education, agriculture, gender, livelihood, employment, governance systems, and labor rights, among others.
The Development, Economics, and Social Policy track will also accept papers written in the economics short paper format (initial submissions need not be in the ACM template, as long as word count is at most 6,000 words, with at most 5 exhibits (tables or figures), following the AER:Insights guidelines. For this option, report the word count on the title page. Papers must be self-contained. Authors will need to format any accepted submissions into an ACM template for publication.)
Example Papers
Any questions not answered here can be sent to pc@compass.acm.org