The 56th ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC 2024), sponsored by the ACM Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Computation Theory (SIGACT), will be held in Vancouver, Canada from Monday, June 24 to Friday, June 28.

Papers presenting new and original research on the theory of computation are sought. Typical but not exclusive topics of interest include algorithms and data structures, computational complexity, randomness in computing, algorithmic graph theory and combinatorics, analysis of Boolean functions, approximation algorithms, cryptography, computational learning theory, continuous and discrete optimization, economics and computation, parallel and distributed algorithms, quantum computing, algorithmic coding theory, computational geometry and topology, computational applications of logic, algebraic computation, and computational and foundational aspects of areas such as machine learning, fairness, privacy, networks, data management, databases and computational biology. Papers that extend the reach of the theory of computing, or raise important problems that can benefit from theoretical investigation and analysis, are encouraged. The program committee will make every effort to consider a broad range of areas.

Submission format: Submissions should start with a title page consisting of the title of the paper, no author information (see below), and an abstract of a few paragraphs summarizing the paper's contributions. There is no page limit and authors are encouraged to use the "full version" of their paper as the submission. Each submission should contain within the initial ten pages following the title page a clear presentation of the merits of the paper, including a discussion of the paper's importance within the context of prior work and a description of the key technical and conceptual ideas used to achieve its main claims. This part of the submission should be addressed to a broad spectrum of theoretical computer science researchers, not solely to experts in the subarea. Proofs must be provided that can enable the main mathematical claims of the paper to be fully verified.

Although there is no bound on the length of a submission, material other than the abstract, table of contents, and the first ten pages will be read at the committee's discretion. Authors are encouraged to put the references at the very end of the submission. The submission should be typeset using 11-point or larger fonts, in a single-column, single-space (between lines) format with ample spacing throughout and 1-inch margins all around, on letter-size (8 1/2 x 11 inch) paper. Submissions deviating significantly from these guidelines risk rejection without consideration of their merits.

STOC 2024 will use double-blind reviewing, and as such, submissions should not reveal the identity of the authors in any way. In particular, authors' names, affiliations, and email addresses should not appear at the beginning or in the body of the submission. Authors should not include obvious references that reveal their own identity, and should ensure that any references to their own related work are in the third person (e.g., not "We build on our previous work…" but rather "We build on the work of…").

The purpose of this double-blind process is to help PC members and external reviewers come to an initial judgment about the paper without bias, and not to make it impossible for them to discover who the authors are if they were to try. (In particular, to manage Conflicts Of Interests, author information will be available to the PC Chair, as well as to a small set of COI-Management PC Members on an as-needed basis.) Nothing should be done in the name of anonymity that weakens the submission or makes the job of reviewing the paper more difficult. In particular, important references should not be omitted or anonymized. In addition, authors should feel free to disseminate their ideas or draft versions of their paper as they normally would. For example, authors may post drafts of their papers on the web, submit them to arXiv, and give talks on their research ideas.

All submissions will be treated as confidential, and will only be disclosed to the committee and their chosen sub-referees. In addition, the program committee may consult with journal editors and program chairs of other conferences about controversial issues such as parallel submissions.

PC Member Submissions: Submissions authored or coauthored by PC members (other than the PC chair) are allowed.

Recommended Best practices for References: Authors are encouraged to include hyperlink cross-referencing for bibliographic entries, theorems, sections, and so on, using for example the hyperref, cleverref, or varioref packages. If helpful, a table of contents may be added on a page immediately following the title page; this will not count towards the first ten pages.

Authors are asked to avoid "et al." in citations in favor of an equal mention of all authors' surnames. If the number of authors is large, consider writing "\cite{XYZ} show..." instead of "X et al. show". Bibliographic references should preferably be alphanumeric (e.g., the first letters of the authors' surnames, or at least the first three followed by +) followed by year of publication, instead of just a numerical reference. If using BibTeX, this can be accomplished by using \bibliographystyle{alpha} or \bibliographystyle{alphaurl}.