Author Guidelines

Last updated: 2025-03-17 2:57AM GMT

The guidelines cover all submitted papers to the single-track paper program. For more information on the specific tracks and associated deadlines, please see this year’s call for papers.

All Papers submitted to the ISMAR 2025

ISMAR 2025 will host a single track for papers and include a revise and resubmit phase, strengthening the rebuttal opportunity.

This year, there is one submission deadline for a unified review process for both the IEEE TVCG journal and the conference-only papers. The possible outcomes of this unified process are:

• Accept as IEEE TVCG paper, with the presentation at ISMAR 2025
• Accept as IEEE ISMAR 2025 conference paper, with presentation
• Recommend as IEEE ISMAR 2025 poster
• Reject

Before Submission:

Previously published or submitted work. All paper submissions must not have been previously published. A manuscript is considered to have been previously published if it has appeared in a peer-reviewed or non-reviewed periodical or proceedings that is permanently available in print or electronic form to non-attendees, regardless of the language of that publication. A paper identical or substantially similar in content (in its entirety or in part) to one submitted to ISMAR should not be simultaneously under consideration for another conference or journal during any part of the ISMAR review process, from the submission deadline until notifications of decisions are emailed to authors.

Authors’ published prior work. In some situations, a submission may be built upon the authors’ prior work. To fully explain the relationship between the submitted paper and prior work, authors can provide the anonymized related papers as well as an anonymous letter of explanation that highlights the significant changes or advances; note that all supplied materials must be anonymized. In the submission, relevant previous work by the authors must be cited in the third person to preserve anonymity.

Poster papers of 3 or more pages are considered as existing works. This means that authors of already published 3+ page poster papers cannot resubmit longer versions of their published work at this year’s ISMAR.

Authors’ prior/related work currently under review. In some situations, a submission may be built upon authors’ prior work that is currently under review (e.g., a submission presenting a new data set is under review that the current submission builds upon), or has a contribution closely related to another submission under review (e.g., two submissions presenting the same concept but applied to different use cases). If such prior/related work has not yet been published, authors must provide these anonymized works including an anonymized letter outlining the relation to the ISMAR submission. This also applies to related submissions being under review at this year’s ISMAR conference.

Submissions violating this policy may be rejected. If authors are unsure about the inclusion of their own unpublished prior/related work under review, they should contact the conference Paper Chairs before submission.

Completeness. The submission must include all information necessary to evaluate the paper and must not require reviewers to go to websites or other external information sources, since that might circumvent page and media format limits, and may jeopardize the anonymity of the reviewers. Papers must not refer to videos not uploaded to PCS as part of the submission. Submissions violating this policy may be rejected. If authors are unsure about the inclusion of external information sources, they should contact the conference Paper Chairs before submission.

Videos. Authors are encouraged to submit videos to aid the Program Committee in reviewing their submissions. Videos must be submitted according to the instructions at the submission website. When submitted as supporting material, videos must be free of any identifying information prior to reviewing as per the double-blind submission policy. Authors submitting a video can optionally provide a text description/transcript of the video for accessibility. Videos should be playable with standard software on PCs, Macs, and Linux machines. If the reviewers cannot play the video, it may reduce the chances of the submission being accepted.

Review Duties for Authors. Due to the increasing number of submissions to ISMAR, we rely on many reviewers who are willing to provide expert opinions. To expand the reviewer pool and promote community integrity, the senior author/principal investigator will be required to register to review up to three papers through PCS at the time of submission. Additionally, senior authors are encouraged to ask experienced junior authors to register in PCS to review papers and mentor them in the review process.

Ethics and Responsibility. All submissions describing research experiments with human participants must follow the appropriate ethical guidelines as imposed by your affiliation, and authors are required to secure and report their approval by the relevant ethics commission, if applicable. If no approval was acquired, the reason should be explained in the submission. An approval by any ethical review board needs to be indicated via the submission system. Submissions must also state if informed consent by participants was obtained or explain why consent was not obtained.

Submission Requirements:

• Papers must be strictly formatted according to IEEE VGTC conference submission guidelines and submitted electronically as PDF documents. Submissions should be 4-9 pages with an additional 2 pages of references. If you plan on using the Word template, as of today, the provided .docx file may not comply with the ISMAR formatting guidelines. Please use the provided .dotx file and ensure that the final submission matches the formatting guidelines or the paper may be desk rejected. Check the provided sample pdf documents for correct formatting.

• ISMAR 2025 will host a single-track submission. As the journal and conference will be decided based on reviews, the authors shall not indicate the intention in the submission.

• ISMAR 2025 papers use a double-blind reviewing process (see Reviewing Process below). Thus, authors, affiliations, and acknowledgments must not be mentioned in the submitted paper, videos, or supplementary material.

• Papers must be written in English.

• Submissions must not be under review by any other conference, journal or other publication venue during ISMAR’s reviewing period, and must not be previously published or accepted for publication elsewhere. This includes publications that have previously appeared in languages other than English. ISMAR actively searches for duplicate submissions by exchanging author and title lists with other conferences and journals. Such submissions will be rejected without review, and the coordinators of the duplicate submission will be notified.

• Authors may include supplementary materials with the submission. Supplemental material can include videos, proofs, code, experimental data, appendices, audio files, and other files that supplement the paper. These materials will be included in the conference proceedings, as well as archived in the IEEE Digital Library. A pointer to the supplemental material should be included in the main paper. Supplemental material may not be used to extend page limits; the paper itself must completely describe the research and results.

• Videos should not be longer than five minutes, and the total size of all submitted materials (including the PDF document) must be under 100MB.

• Authors can optionally provide a description of each figure in the submission form for accessibility.

• All accepted papers will be subject to the registration and publication processing policy of ISMAR 2025 published on the website. If no author is fully registered by the camera-ready submission deadline, the accepted work will be withdrawn from publication.

Double-Blind Process and Anonymity Policy:

ISMAR uses a DOUBLE-BLIND review process. This means that both the authors and the reviewers must remain anonymous to each other. Submissions (including citations, supplementary material, and optional videos) must not contain information that identifies the authors, their institutions, funding sources, or their places of work. Relevant previous work by the authors must be cited in the third person to preserve anonymity. Authors that have questions/issues around the double-blind submission policy should contact the conference Paper Chairs.

Given the reviewers may recognize the submission authors based on information available online, the following are considered violations of the review process if they occur during the review process, i.e., from 30 days before the submission deadline till the submission is officially accepted (final version approved), or the authors are notified that the submission is rejected:

1. Listing ISMAR submissions or prepublications (ArXiv, institutional tech reports, …) of these submissions on authors’ individual or institutional webpages.

2. Generating any publicity for the submitted works via university or company PR teams or channels.

3. Publicizing the submitted work in external talks (unless it is a job talk).

4. Generating any publicity for the submitted works via authors’ individual or institutional social media channels or other forms of media. This includes publishing any types of interviews with editors/journalists/writers/interviewers of newspapers, radio, television, online shows, podcasts, or magazines, as well as public relations and media arms of companies, universities, and other research institutions.

5. Publicly replying or acknowledging authorship in response to any social media posts by others regarding the submitted work.

6. Creating public code or data repositories corresponding to the submission that allow determining the author’s identity (e.g., by listing the author name, or through the username).

Based on the above principles, the following are NOT considered a violation of the review process rules, if the respective conditions are satisfied:

1. Archiving the submission (to get a timestamp) as an institutional tech report, or a preprint on ArXiv or a similar service, at least 30 days before the submission deadline or after the official acceptance is allowed. However, the submission webpage or manuscript should not state anywhere that the submission is under review for ISMAR. It must not include the submission ID or use the IEEE VGTC conference format (this refers to conference name, copyright, etc., not to the choice of fonts, margins, or column layout).

2. Unlisted YouTube videos linked to an ArXiv submission are allowed. Such videos must not include submission IDs or author information.

3. Anonymous code or data, i.e., ones where the author’s identity cannot be determined through username or other means, either stand-alone or linked to an ArXiv submission, are allowed.

4. Authors can privately reply to submission-related queries submitted via social media. The replies must not be publicly visible.

If a potential violation of these guidelines is discovered, the case will be discussed by the Primary and Secondary review coordinators and Paper Chairs, who will determine if a violation has occurred and if, consequently, the paper in question should be desk rejected.

Submission Process:

All materials will be submitted electronically through the Precision Conference website at: https://new.precisionconference.com/ismar25b

If you already have an account with that system, please use that account to submit your materials. Otherwise, create a new account. As part of the submission, you will be able to choose a major topic and a list of associated keywords.

After Submission:

After your submission, the following process takes place:

• The submission will be reviewed by the program committee and external reviewers, unless it is subject to desk rejection. Each paper should receive at least three reviews.

• The reviews will be released to authors, and the result of the first review cycle determines if a submission is selected for a revision and resubmission for a second review cycle. This does not guarantee acceptance.

• The second review cycle consists of a short re-review of the revisions by reviewers and leads to a final recommendation.

• After acceptance, authors prepare and submit a final, camera-ready version of their paper.

• Finally, one of the authors presents the paper at ISMAR!

Review Process:

The following items outline the review process for contributions submitted to ISMAR. ISMAR policies and formatting requirements. In case of violation of these policies or formatting requirements, Paper Chairs will decide on desk rejection of the paper.

• Each submission will be assigned to two program committee members (referred to as Primary and Secondary). The Primary manages the review process and communicates with the authors. The Primary can see the authors’ names submitted to PCS. The Secondary serves as a reviewer and does NOT see the author names.

• The Primary and Secondary will review the paper initially and may suggest to desk-reject a paper that is outside the scope of the ISMAR topics of interests, has an exceptionally weak connection to AR/VR/MR, or violates ISMAR policies including this author guideline. The ISMAR Paper Chairs will make the final decision on desk rejection of the paper.

• ISMAR employs a two-tier reviewing process. Each submission will be reviewed by one member of the Program Committee (i.e., the Secondary) and two external reviewers. Each reviewer will be asked to submit a written assessment along with an initial recommendation.

• Review Cycle 1: The outcome of the first review cycle will be a set of submissions eligible for a revision and resubmission to address the reviewers’ comments in a second review cycle. The author's revised version of the submission provides an opportunity to supply additional information and clarifications requested by the reviewers and summarized in the meta-review. It is not intended to be a major revision with new contributions (e.g., theorems, algorithms, or experiments) not included in the original submission. Note that revision and resubmission does not guarantee acceptance.

• Review Cycle 2: Each revised paper will be re-reviewed by all reviewers. After checking the revisions, the reviewers and the Primary will make a final recommendation regarding acceptance or rejection.

• After the second review cycle, a group of select members from the IPC will make the final decision, if a submission is accepted as a journal article, as a conference paper, recommended as a poster, or finally rejected.

• In the case a submission is accepted, a shepherd will be assigned to the paper (usually the Primary) who assists the authors in preparing the camera-ready paper and who verifies that the authors comply with all conditions (if applicable). Papers accepted to journal and conference tracks will be formatted according to the corresponding templates.

Preparation of Camera-Ready Version:

Upload the final version to the same site where the original paper was submitted: https://new.precisionconference.com/ismar25b and enforce all other instructions coming from the publications chairs.

Use the “Final Submission Form” to provide your final version and any supplementary material, such as video files.

In the preparation of the final submission, follow the camera-ready instructions.

Ensure that you are using the correct formatting and submit the IEEE copyright form. Otherwise, your contribution might not be included in the proceedings.

Presentation:

All accepted papers will be presented orally at the conference. More details will be provided at the time of acceptance.

Best Paper Awards:

The paper chairs create a list of best paper candidates based on the accepted papers. There is no set size limit for this list. The paper chairs then forward this list to the Best Paper Awards Committee, which is organized separately from the program committee.

Also see the Reviewing Guidelines for more information.

General Guidelines

Plagiarism Check

Please note that all submissions will be checked for plagiarism using IEEE Crosscheck. Detection of significant plagiarism will lead to rejection. For more information about definitions of plagiarism and IEEE policies in this area, please see IEEE Publication Services and Products Board Operations Manual.

Writing a Good ISMAR Paper

A good ISMAR submission will result in both a respectable document for the proceedings and a good conference talk. As an author, you should ask yourself the following questions while writing your paper. Submissions that do not provide good answers to these questions are unlikely to be accepted.

What problem are you addressing?

The most common motivation for publishing a paper is to present a solution to a problem. When doing so, try to state all your constraints and assumptions. This is an area where it can be invaluable to have someone who is not intimately familiar with your work read the paper. Include a crisp description of the problem in the abstract and try to suggest it in the title. Note that the Paper Chairs depend almost completely on the abstract and title when they determine which Program Committee member to assign to the paper.

ISMAR papers often focus on a certain aspect of Augmented Reality, Mixed Reality, or Virtual Reality systems. The following list includes some example topics but does not represent an exhaustive list of all topics. We welcome any new idea beyond the usual range of areas.

• Interaction Methods: Does the paper propose a novel interaction method for Augmented Reality, Mixed Reality, or Virtual Reality? Does it present different use cases and applications for it? Can it demonstrate that the method performs better than other known ones?

• User Interface & Human Factors: Does the paper describe how Augmented Reality, Mixed Reality, or Virtual Reality is improving a user interface design, human task performance or perception?

• Tracking and Pose Estimation: Does the paper describe a novel method that is more robust in difficult conditions (lighting, outdoor, fast motion)? Is it a new, clever combination of different sensors? Does it provide more information for use in interaction and rendering?

• Rendering and Visualization: Does the paper describe a novel, improved method for realistic integration of virtual graphics into a mixed scene? Is it faster or more accurate than known methods? Does it present a novel way of presenting information about the real world?

• Displays and Input Devices: Does the paper describe a novel display (e.g., visual, or aural)? Does it describe a novel input device that provides different input modalities, is easier to use and deploy or more precise?

• Applications: Is the paper proposing a new application of Augmented Reality, Mixed Reality, or Virtual Reality in a specific domain? Are you providing a new understanding of usage patterns and social behavior of a deployed application? Mind that an application has a use case in a target domain; it is not just an implementation of software.

What were the previous approaches?

What are the relevant published works in your problem area? What deficiencies in their approaches are you trying to overcome? How does the new approach differ from previously published results? Do not expect the reviewers to know this information without telling them in the paper, as they are unlikely to remember the precise details of all the relevant literature. Make specific comparisons between your work and that described in the references; do not just compile a list of vaguely related papers. What are the limitations of your work and is the future work still to be addressed?

How well did you address your stated problem?

Based on your problem statement, what did you accomplish? You are responsible for arguing that the problem is sufficiently addressed. Include pictures, statistics, or whatever is required to make your case. If you find this part of the paper difficult to write, perhaps the work is not yet finished, and the paper should be deferred until next year. (And, perhaps, submitted as a poster this year).

The following describes some typical evaluation methods for different kinds of papers. This list is not exhaustive but provides some hints as to what can help to present your contribution.

• Interaction Methods: Did you measure how usable the method or system is? What is the performance of users (e.g. completion time, error rate, learning curve) compared to a previous interface developed for a similar task?

• User Interface & Human Factors: Is the improvement or effect described well supported through evaluations? Was the experimental design appropriate to your solution? Were sample size, statistical evaluation, and presentation and conclusions appropriate? Were sample sizes diverse and representative of all intended users?

• Tracking and Pose Estimation: What opportunity does the method contribute to the Augmented/Mixed/Virtual Reality domain? How does it compare to known state-of-the-art systems? Can your system maintain competitive robustness/reliability? Can it deal with difficult input including light conditions, fast motion, occlusions? How fast is it and on which hardware? It is also a good idea to use a standard data set to make the results comparable to other publications or make your test data sets available for other authors.

• Rendering and Visualization: Is the output quality of your system superior to previous methods? Is it faster or capable of operating at real-time rates? What hardware and sensors does it require? For visualization, what use cases does it cover? What amount or complexity of data can it deal with?

• Displays and Input Devices: What are the performance specifications of the display? For example, for a visual display, does it work indoor/outdoor, in strong light conditions, what is the field of view, and is it multi-user capable? What is the hardware/software required to recreate it? What are the specifications of the input device? Can it be used in a mobile setting?

• Applications: How did you design the application, what constraints from the application domain are essential? Was the system tested by end users that are representative of the intended population in the application domain? Did it affect a relevant factor, i.e. performance, safety? Did it create opportunities to improve the work methods?

What does this work contribute to the field?

What are your new ideas or results? If you do not have at least one new idea, you do not have a publishable paper. Can your results be applied anywhere outside of your project? If not, the paper is probably too narrowly purposed for ISMAR. On the other hand, beware of trying to write a paper with too large a scope.

Is the paper complete?

The question that generates a large amount of discussion within the Program Committee is to determine whether a paper is complete. If the paper presents an algorithm or technique, an experienced practitioner in the field should be able to implement it using the paper and its references. If the paper claims to present a faster or more efficient way of implementing an established technique, it must contain enough detail to replicate the experiment on competing implementations. When you quote numbers, be sure that they are not misleading, state clearly whether they were measured, simulated, or derived, and how you did the measurements, simulations, or derivations. For example, CPU time measurements are meaningless unless the reader is told the machine and configuration on which they were obtained.

Does the paper present too much information?

Many large, poorly written papers contain a good paper trying to get out. It is the author’s responsibility, not the reviewer’s, to discover this paper and turn it into the submission. If you have addressed a single, practical problem, do not try to generalize it for the purposes of publication. If you have a formal theory or elaborate architecture, do not include all the vagaries of the implementation unless they are critical to the utility of the theory. Do not include the contents of your user’s manual; instead, describe the model or functionality achieved. You should assume your audience has a working knowledge of user-interface development and access to the major journals in computer science, electrical engineering, and psychology. A short conference paper can only present a few concise ideas well.

Can this paper be presented well?

While ISMAR papers are judged primarily as technical papers, some consideration is given to how suitable the topic is for a conference presentation. Think of how you would present your ideas, and how big the audience is likely to be. Papers that have a small number of concisely stated new ideas and that are visually interesting tend to appeal to a large audience and be easy to present. As recent conferences clearly show, these criteria do not eliminate papers that have taxonomies or strong theoretical content, or appeal to a specialized audience, if they contain significant new ideas.

Should a video also be included?

A video can be very helpful for communicating technical results, especially when the paper discusses an interaction technique. However, do not try to save space in the paper by putting essential information into the video. The paper must stand on its own.

Is the paper accessible?

All information, including information in figures, charts, tables, etc., should be available to readers who consume it in different ways. For example: some of us cannot see color, some read papers as a monochrome printout, some use low-contrast displays, and some listen to the content instead of seeing it. CHI 2021 has useful information on making a paper accessible.

Is the paper using gender-neutral language?

Use “he” when referring to men or boys. Use “she” when referring to women or girls. Avoid phrases such as “he/she” or “he or she” when a gender is not clearly known. Instead use “they” as a gender-neutral pronoun. When referencing a profession, use the gender-neutral form. For example, use fire fighter, police officer, or worker instead of fireman, policeman, or workman. See this excerpt of the Chicago Style for more information about gender-neutral pronouns.

Further Examples:

You can also find the full list of papers previously published at ISMAR in the IEEE Digital Library (IEEE Xplore). Furthermore, the ismar.net website lists past best paper awards, which are good examples of great ISMAR papers. Note that the ISMAR proceedings from previous years include TVCG journal publications and conference proceedings.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

• Is ISMAR a visual tracking-only conference?

No. ISMAR has and continues to help bring to the world key works on real time 3D tracking, scene mapping, pose estimation and registration. However, ISMAR welcomes submissions of all types related to Augmented, Mixed, and Virtual Reality. At ISMAR we are highlighting the interest in work that goes beyond tracking. Issues on usefulness of AR, learning, training, therapy, rehabilitation, virtual analytics, entertainment, context, behavior, and object recognition together with other wearable sensors using computer vision, sensor networks and new types of onboard and external sensing technologies become very relevant to augment our world. Note that this is list is not exclusive by any means, so if you have questions, please contact the Program Chairs via email: program2025@ieeeismar.net.

• Does the IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR) only accept submissions focusing on Mixed and Augmented Reality?

No. The ISMAR conference accepts submissions from all areas of Extended Reality, including Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Mixed Reality, and others. See a list with example topics in the Call for Papers.

• Is it acceptable to publish my paper on ArXiv?

Please read the full "Double-Blind Process and Anonymity Policy" above. In a nutshell: Yes, you are allowed to archive your submission (as a way to get a timestamp) on ArXiv or a similar service. However, the manuscript should not state anywhere that the submission is under review for ISMAR. You should further not list this prepublication on your individual or institutional webpages or generate any publicity for it through other forms of media as this would constitute a violation of the double-blind review process.

Do not hesitate to contact us for any further information.

Document History

This document was updated and extended by the ISMAR 2025 Program Chairs: Ulrich Eck, Gun Lee, Alexander Plopski, Missie Smith, Qi Sun, Markus Tatzgern. It was adopted following the work of the 2024 Program Chairs: Ulrich Eck, Misha Sra, Jeanine Stefanucci, Maki Sugimoto, Markus Tatzgern, Ian Williams, the 2023 Conference Paper Chairs: Jens Grubert, Andrew Cunningham, Evan Y. Peng, Gerd Bruder, Anne-Hélène Olivier, and Ian Williams, the 2021 Journal Paper Chairs: Daisuke Iwai, Denis Kalkofen, Guillaume Moreau, and Tabitha Peck as well as the 2021 Conference Paper Chairs: Maud Marchal, Anne-Hélène Olivier, Rafael Radkowski, Jonathan Ventura, and Lily Wang. The document was obtained from Shimin Hu and Stefanie Zollmann, Wolfgang Broll, Holger Regenbrecht, and J. Edward Swan II, who inherited it from Wolfgang Broll, Hideo Saito, and J. Edward Swan II, based on Walterio Mayol, Christian Sandor, and Rob Lindeman, based on significant materials created by Ron Azuma on how to write a successful ISMAR paper and how to be a successful Program Chair, also based on the 2011 UIST Author Guidelines edited by Maneesh Agrawala and Scott Klemmer (using material provided by Saul Greenberg), who inherited it from François Guimbretière, who inherited it from Michel Beaudouin Lafon, who inherited it from Ravin Balakrishnan and Chia Shen, who inherited it from Ken Hinckley and Pierre Wellner, who inherited it from Dan Olsen, who inherited it from Steve Feiner, who inherited it from Joe Konstan, who inherited it from Michel Beaudouin Lafon, who inherited it from Ari Rapkin, who inherited it from Beth Mynatt, who inherited it from George Robertson, who inherited it from Marc H. Brown, who inherited it from George Robertson, who got lots of help on it from Steve Feiner, Brad Myers, Jock Mackinlay, Mark Green, Randy Pausch, Pierre Wellner, and Beth Mynatt. We also acknowledge the anonymity guidelines presented at SIGGRAPH and have shaped our policies to include these for 2025 (https://s2025.siggraph.org/anonymity-policy/).