FOCS Camera-Ready

Acceptance at FOCS creates two publication duties with different owners of truth: a proceedings version, produced to IEEE specifications and published via IEEE Xplore and the IEEE Computer Society Digital Library, and a public full version with complete proofs that the CFP expects on arXiv, ECCC, or an equivalent open host by the camera-ready deadline (2026 CFP, checked 2026-07-08; the 2026 camera-ready date and format instructions were not public at check time — the acceptance packet is the controlling source, 待核实). This skill sequences both.

The two deliverables

	Proceedings version	Public full version
Publisher	IEEE (Xplore + CS Digital Library)	You (arXiv / ECCC)
Role	Citable record of the FOCS acceptance	Record of correctness — the document experts actually read
Length	Per acceptance packet (待核实)	Unlimited; all proofs
Rights	IEEE copyright/publication form (electronic; exact form 待核实)	You retain arXiv license choice
Deadline	Camera-ready date (待核实)	CFP expectation: same date
Failure cost	Paper dropped from proceedings	Community reads a proofless announcement; reputational, and real

Treat the full version as the primary deliverable and the proceedings file as its formatted excerpt — that ordering produces consistent documents; the reverse ordering produces a proofless PDF and an orphaned preprint.

De-anonymization, done completely

Reversing double-blind is more than restoring the author block:

• Author names, affiliations, emails, ORCIDs in the packet's required format and order (author-order changes after acceptance need chair approval).
• Acknowledgements and grant numbers restored — check funder mandates now, since some require specific contract-number phrasing and open-access handling of the accepted version.
• Self-citations rewritten out of the third person where it now reads absurdly ("Chen et al. [7] — the present authors — showed…" becomes "In earlier work [7] we showed…").
• The "full version" pointer made concrete: replace "the full version" with the actual arXiv/ECCC identifier on the first page.

Consistency audit before the deadline

The one camera-ready failure that follows a theory paper forever is divergence between the proceedings version and the full version. Run the statement-freeze check across the two sources one last time:

# same extractor as focs-reproducibility; both sources, post-edits
./extract_statements.sh proceedings-src/ fullversion-src/
# hashes must match: no theorem statement may differ between the
# document people cite and the document people check
# then verify the cross-pointers resolve:
grep -o 'arXiv:[0-9v.]*' proceedings-src/*.tex   # correct ID, correct version

If reviewer comments prompted real changes (a repaired lemma, a weakened claim), apply them to both documents and record them in the full version's changelog ("v3, camera-ready: Lemma 6.2 hypothesis corrected following committee comments"). Improvements beyond reviewer comments are safe when they strengthen exposition; new results belong in the journal version, not in a camera-ready that no longer matches what was refereed.

The November talk and the awards file

• Talk: every accepted FOCS paper gets a program slot in New York (November 8–11, 2026); whether the 2026 program runs single-track or parallel sessions was unannounced at check time (待核实). Build the talk from the ten-page window's narrative — problem, obstacle, one real idea — not from the section structure; twenty minutes fits one idea.
• Registration and attendance duties for accepted papers (who must register, in-person requirements): 待核实 in the acceptance packet; budget as if required.
• Awards: the PC designates Best Paper and the Machtey Award for best student paper from the accepted pool — recent Machtey citations (2024: the Ising-perceptron capacity paper; papers with all-student author teams) show the profile. If your author team's student status matters, confirm the packet's eligibility declaration is filled accurately; misdeclared status is unfixable after the program is printed.

Working with IEEE production

Expect the production pipeline of an IEEE Computer Society proceedings — specific class files, a compliance-checking step, and an electronic copyright form — with the 2026 specifics (template, page allowance, upload system) defined only by the acceptance packet (待核实). Two habits that prevent the classic failures: run the packet's compliance checks on day one rather than deadline day, because font-embedding and figure-format errors take iterations to clear; and keep the proceedings source a generated projection of your canonical source (a documented set of cut points and \iffull switches), never a hand-forked copy — hand forks are how the proceedings version acquires the typo the full version already fixed.

Endgame sequence

1. Acceptance week: read the packet twice; diary the camera-ready date; file the IEEE form early (copyright questions take days, not hours).
2. Week 1: apply reviewer-prompted fixes to the canonical source; regenerate both documents from it.
3. Week 2: de-anonymization pass; funder-compliance check; consistency audit above; co-author sign-off on the exact PDFs.
4. Submission: upload proceedings files; post/refresh the full version so the identifier printed in the proceedings resolves today, not at the conference.
5. Before travel: talk rehearsed against a mixed-TCS audience; slides carry the arXiv/ECCC ID on the final frame.