Call for Papers

The submission deadline for papers has been extended to January 31, 2025.

COMPASS 2025, hosted in Toronto, invites interdisciplinary research on sustainability with a focus on how computing and moves toward sustainability are embedded in and shaped by specific local contexts—computing in place. Rooted in the broader discourse of sustainability but also open to questioning its prevailing narratives, COMPASS welcomes work that critically examines how technology intersects with social, environmental, and economic systems. This year’s theme encourages a deeper, situated perspective on how technological practices emerge as solutions, but also contributors to the complexities they claim to address.

COMPASS draws from a wide array of disciplines: computer and information sciences, social sciences, critical geography, environmental studies, economics, climate studies, and engineering. We aim to foster a discussion that interrogates not only the potentials but also the limitations of technology-led interventions in sustainability. This includes research that explores power dynamics, inequality, and extraction—how technology might reinforce or disrupt existing systems. We encourage work from activists, worker advocates, and indigenous scholars, alongside those studying topics such as labour movements, climate adaptation, and the ethics of sustainability practices. COMPASS values research that brings forth the often-unseen political and material consequences of digital infrastructure in shaping futures.

COMPASS 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. COMPASS also has a particular commitment to approaches and research that address the challenges faced by under-represented and marginalized communities.

The theme of the conference will be Computing in Place. We also invite submissions that speak to that theme and/or contribute to one or more of the following areas:

  • Systems and IoT for Sustainable Societies
  • HCI, Design and Critical Perspectives
  • AI, ML and Data Science for Sustainable Societies
  • Development, Economics and Policy
  • Environment, Sustainability and Climate Change
  • Technology, Media, and Social Practice

Authors will have the opportunity to present their work as part of either in-person and hybrid paper sessions.

In our papers track, we welcome a variety of submission types, including deployment experiences, practitioner reports, user studies, ethnographies, design research, and systems building. We invite contributions from a range of fields, practices, and individuals who may not see themselves as traditionally members of ‘computing’ disciplines, including the humanities and social sciences, climate and sustainability research, and community advocacy. 

Important Dates for Authors: 

  • Submission site open: January 10, 2025
  • Submission Deadline: January 17, 2025 January 31, 2025
  • Notifications: March 21, 2025
  • Camera-Ready Completion Deadline: April 7, 2025
  • COMPASS 2025 Conference: July 22-25, 2025

Deadlines are anywhere on earth (AoE) time.

Preparing Your Submission

Submission via HOTCRP Portal: https://compass2025.hotcrp.com/

As part of the submission process, authors must submit an abstract, keywords, and meta-data related to the submission’s contents. Authors will also be asked to select between one and three contribution areas that fit their submission paper. This selection will be used to assign your paper to one of the review areas. 

Paper length and format

Papers do not have a page limit. Authors are instead encouraged to submit a paper with a length proportional to its contribution. The length of typical submissions is expected to be approximately 7,000–8,000 words excluding references, figure/table captions, and appendices. Submissions above 12,000 words or below 4,000 words, will be considered for desk rejection. Papers whose lengths are incommensurate with their contributions will be rejected. Papers should be succinct, but thorough in presenting the work. Papers may be perceived as too long if they are repetitive or verbose, too short if they omit important details, neglect relevant prior art, or tamper with formatting rules to save on page count.

Formatting Your Submission

It is important that your submission is formatted correctly. Incorrectly formatted submissions might be rejected. Please use one of the following templates: 

  • Microsoft Word
  • LaTeX (Use sample-manuscript.tex for submissions)
  • Overleaf (or search for: ACM Conference Proceedings Primary Article)
    • To create a single-column version from this Overleaf template, the line that says “\documentclass[sigconf,authordraft]{acmart}” should be changed to “\documentclass[manuscript, screen, review]{acmart}”.

Papers must be submitted in PDF format in the single column format, and anonymized

Additional guidance is available from the ACM:
https://www.acm.org/publications/authors/submissions

Additional template formatting instructions from the ACM are available here: https:// www.acm.org/publications/taps/word-template-workflow

Accessibility

We ask that authors create accessible submissions when submitting their PDF. Please follow the guidance in the SIGCHI Accessibility Guide for Authors, particularly Section 1: Authoring an Accessible Document, and Section 2: Submitting Accessible Documents for Review. https://sigchi.org/resources/guides-for-authors/accessibility/ 

Anonymization Policy

All submissions must be anonymized for review. Author and affiliation sections and credits must be left blank. Authors of accepted submissions will add this information in preparation of the “camera-ready” version. We are using the ACM CHI Anonymization Policy of reviewing. We use a relaxed model that does not attempt to conceal all traces of identity from the body of the paper.

Authors are expected to remove author and institutional identities from the title and header areas, as noted in the submission instructions (Note: changing the text color of the author information is not sufficient). Make sure that no description that can easily reveal authors’ names and/or affiliations is included in the submission (e.g., too detailed descriptions of where user studies were conducted). Authors should also remove any information in the acknowledgements section that reveals authors or the institution (e.g., specific supporting grant information). Also, please make sure that identifying information does not appear in the document’s meta-data (e.g., the ‘Authors’ field in your word processor’s ‘Save As’ dialog box). In addition, we require that the acknowledgments section be left blank as it could also easily identify the authors and/or their institution.

Further suppression of identity in the body of the submission is left to the authors’ discretion. We do expect that authors leave citations to their previous work unanonymized so that reviewers can ensure that all previous research has been taken into account by the authors. However, authors are required to cite their own work in the third person, e.g., avoid “As described in our previous work [10], … ” and use instead “As described by Jones et al. [10], …”

Authorship and AI

We will be following the ACM Policy on Authorship, which states that Authors must be the “creator or originator of an idea” and/or Work; Authors must make a substantial contribution to the Work; and Authors must be accountable for the work that was done and its presentation in a publication. Generative AI tools may not be listed as authors, and their use must be fully disclosed in the work according to the policy. Papers found in violation of this policy may be rejected. 

Review Process

The COMPASS organizing team is committed to providing supportive and high-quality reviews to all submissions, regardless of research method or topic. Papers will be reviewed by a Program Committee that collectively represent expertise across all contribution types. Papers will be reviewed in a double-anonymized process. Each paper will be assigned a primary Associate Chair from the Program Committee (1AC), as well as 2 reviewers from the Program Committee by the Papers Chairs. All three reviewers will write a detailed review of their assigned submissions and assess the contribution of the research to the field. The 1AC will then write a separate meta review of the paper that summarizes the three reviews. These meta-reviews support the Papers Chairs in acceptance decisions. 

Papers will be evaluated on the following: 

  • Relevance to the conference topic and chosen area: see topic areas above;
  • Quality of submission: correctness, clarity, and depth of exposition, including contextualizing the approach, methodology, perspective, domain considered, etc.; and
  • Potential for impact: potential to influence academic disciplines, public discourse, or real-world systems.

Accepted papers will be included in the Proceedings of COMPASS 2025, and will become available in ACM Digital Library.

Upon Acceptance of Your Paper

Authors will be notified of conditional acceptance or rejection of their submission on or before the notification date listed above. Meta reviews will describe any further changes that the authors are expected to make to the paper prior to its publication. These should be made as part of a “camera ready submission” and submitted to the papers submission site by the deadline listed above. Final changes will be checked by members of the Program Committee prior to making a final acceptance of the paper. If authors are unable to meet the requirements for changes, the program chairs will be notified and may reject the paper.

All accepted submissions require a signed form assigning an exclusive publication license to the ACM (which will not require a publication fee), or an upfront fee to ACM to enable Open Access.

Additionally, each accepted submission requires a conference registration fee to be paid by one of the paper’s authors. If no author from the paper registers, the paper may not be published in the ACM Digital Library.

All published papers will appear online in the ACM Digital Library and be distributed digitally to conference delegates as part of the conference proceedings.

At the conference, authors of accepted submissions must present their work and be available to answer questions from other conference participants. Presenters of papers will have a presentation slot at the conference of approximately 20 minutes, though this may be altered prior to the conference based on scheduling needs. Information on presentations will be sent by email to the corresponding author. Papers whose authors do not present in any form may be removed from the ACM Digital Library and the conference proceedings.

Accepted authors should ensure they have obtained permissions to use licensed content and images that depict identifiable people in their conference contributions (paper, videos, and presentations). 

Questions?

Please direct any questions to the papers chairs at: papers-2025@compass.acm.org. 

By submitting your article to an ACM Publication, you are hereby acknowledging that you and your co-authors are subject to all ACM Publications Policies, including ACM’s new Publications Policy on Research Involving Human Participants and Subjects. Alleged violations of this policy or any ACM Publications Policy will be investigated by ACM and may result in a full retraction of your paper, in addition to other potential penalties, as per ACM Publications Policy.

Please ensure that you and your co-authors obtain an ORCID ID, so you can complete the publishing process for your accepted paper.  ACM has been involved in ORCID from the start and we have recently made a commitment to collect ORCID IDs from all of our published authors.  The collection process has started and will roll out as a requirement throughout 2024.  We are committed to improve author discoverability, ensure proper attribution and contribute to ongoing community efforts around name normalization; your ORCID ID will help in these efforts.

Some text in this guidance is adapted from prior ACM COMPASS conferences, ACM FAccT 2024, and ACM DIS 2024

JCSS Submission Process

Alternatively, papers may be submitted to the ACM Journal on Computing and Sustainable Societies (JCSS) at any time, on a rolling basis. Reviews and decisions (accept/minor revision; revise and resubmit; or reject) will be sent to authors roughly 3 months after submission. Papers that receive a “revise and resubmit” decision must submit their revisions between one to six months after initial feedback. Final decisions will be provided within 1 month of resubmission.

All papers that have been accepted or received a decision of “minor revision” by JCSS by March 1, 2025 will be invited to present at the COMPASS’25 conference in Toronto, Ontario. Authors can present their work either in-person or virtually; the conference will support both virtual and in-person attendance. 

In our papers track we welcome deployment experiences and practitioner reports from those who are working on the ground, navigating the complexities of applying sustainable technologies in diverse and often challenging environments. 

Join us at COMPASS 2025 to explore how computing in place shapes—and is shaped by—the urgent and contested demands of sustainability, within both human and environmental landscapes.

For questions, reach out to publications-2025@compass.acm.org.