Performing minor corrections in a paper after camera-ready deadline

Question

I have an accepted paper at a computer science conference. Before the camera-ready deadline was over, I submitted an updated version addressing some issues. Now, I got some other minor suggestions from an advisor, which could be worked into the paper. However, the camera-ready deadline is already over. What should I do?

Please note, that in the email, which the authors received from the conference's organizers, the following was stated regarding what happens after the camera-ready deadline:

Our publisher has recently introduced an extra control loop: once data processing is finished, they will contact all corresponding authors and ask them to check their papers. We expect this to happen shortly before the printing of the proceedings.

So I see two options:

• Contact the conference organizers now and ask if I can still update the camera-ready version despite the deadline already being expired
• Just wait and use the above described extra control loop to adapt the paper. However, I think this extra control loop is not really there to modify the paper's content, but rather it should be used to double-check the layouting.

Do you see any other options? What would you suggest to do?

Answer 1

First, make the changes in any case. That way, you'll have the updated version that makes you most happy ready to instantly go, whichever route it might take.

As for which route it might take, there's no way to tell for certain except for the particulars of the conference. However, I would recommend the following:

1. Sometimes a camera-ready deadline is "soft," and an automated online system will still be open for updates. Try updating your camera-ready version and see if it takes it.
2. Whether or not the automated system allows you to update your camera-ready, email the contact point for the camera-ready (this might be the organizers or it might be the publishing society, e.g., IEEE has you send the camera-ready through their system rather than the organizers); if you uploaded an updated version, tell them; if not, email them the updated version. There is a good chance that it will simply be able to be added to the pipeline at this point.
3. If that fails, then send the corrections at the "final check" stage: it is better to do it before this, though, because "shortly before the printing" makes me thing this is more supposed to be just about "Did we accidentally totally corrupt your embedded vector graphics?"
4. Finally, if all of that fails, you can always request a correction to the archival proceedings, though for minor changes this might not be granted.