Information for Authors

Is TACCESS the right place to publish your work?

TACCESS welcomes submissions of original, unpublished work that is not under consideration elsewhere. The topic of the paper should fall within the scope of TACCCESS's charter and topic areas described in the Call for Papers.

Widely disseminated conference proceedings and newsletters are a form of publication, although they may not be archival. Publication or republication of a (perhaps revised) paper which has been widely disseminated is permitted only if the Editors-in-Chief judge that (a) the revision contains significant amplification or clarification of the original material or (b) there is a significant additional benefit to be gained from journal publication. Any prior appearance of a substantial amount of a submission should be noted in a cover letter and on the title page. The authors should also either include or give a pointer to a copy of the earlier publication.

Survey papers will be considered only if they present a new perspective or clearly benefit the field.

Submissions should be well-positioned within the accessibility literature, showing how the work reported fits in with existing work. References to relevant papers in the accessibility literature should be cited - if there are few of these then the paper may not be relevant for TACCESS.

Manuscript length of up to 11,000 words is common, although papers longer than this are also considered.

TACCESS will consider ideas for special issues.

Formatting and preparing your manuscript

TACCESS requires that articles be submitted electronically. While the use of the ACM format is not required for the initial submission, authors are encouraged to use the ACM format to facilitate the conversion that will be necessary upon acceptance.

To ensure proper indexing, classification, retrieval and dissemination, authors must include the following in the manuscript.

• Descriptive title
• Author names and affiliations
  Authors' names should be given without titles or degrees along with the name and address of the organization for which the work was carried out. The author's current address should be given in a footnote on the first page. Identify the contact author for co-authored work.
• Abstract
  The abstract should be 150 to 200 words and consist of short, direct, and complete sentences. It should be informative enough to serve in some cases as a substitute for reading the paper itself. It should state the objectives of the work, summarize the results, and give the principle conclusions, but omit future plans and citations. Try to avoid starting with the words "This paper ..."
• Content indicators (required once paper is accepted)
  Three types of content indicators must be assigned: (1) categories and subject descriptors, (2) general terms, (3) keywords and phrases. The first two items are selected from the Computing Reviews Classification Scheme most recently revised in 1998. Select as many as are applicable. The keywords and phrases are additional English language words that indicate the content of the submission.
• Citations to relevant literature
  Citations should be referenced within the text with the surnames of the authors and the year of publication, with examples as follows:
  [Nelson, 2004] for a single author
  [Cailliau and Ashman, 1999] for two authors
  [Iyengar et al., 2006] for more than two authors

It is always useful to look at the review form that reviewers will complete in reviewing your paper, as it will assist you in preparing your paper.

NOTE: The ACM Digital Library will host ancillary material for a paper on its web site. This material, an online appendix that does not appear in the print journal, is linked to and accessed from the online table of contents. For example, authors could provide hypertext and/or XML versions of their papers, or animations, or any other appropriate technology. Authors that wish to use this option should attach such material as an appendix to their submission and indicate in their cover letter that this material is intended to be ancillary material included in the digital library, and how it is intended to be accessed. All ancillary material should be free from viruses.

Submitting your manuscript

TACCESS requires that manuscripts be submitted electronically. We strongly prefer that manuscripts be submitted in Microsoft Word format, but we will also accept PDF and HTML documents. Before submitting, please use a spelling checker and correct errors in English, grammar, punctuation, figure and table numbering, and so forth.

You are welcome to indicate the general area within the TACCESS scope
you feel is most appropriate for your manuscript.

To submit your manuscript, please email your documents to taccess@acm.org.

The Review process

When you submit your manuscipt via email to taccess@acm.org, you should receive an acknowledgement that the paper has been successfully received and assigned to reviewers.

If you fail to receive an acknowledgement by 3 weeks after submitting your paper, please contact the Editors-in-Chief at asears@umbc.edu and vlh@us.ibm.com to verify that the submission has been received.

When we receive your manuscript and verify that it can be read and is within the scope of the journal, an Editor-in-Chief will take responsibility for handling the review process. The Editor-in-Chief will assign the article to 3-4 reviewers and study the reviews that are returned. Final decisions to accept submissions will be made by both Editors-in-Chief.