Call for Open Source Software

ACM Multimedia is the premier international conference dedicated to advancing research and applications across diverse multimedia fields. Multimedia research focuses on technologies that enable the use and exchange of content integrating the multiple perspectives of different digital modalities, including image, text, video, haptics, virtual and augmented reality, audio, speech, music, sensor, and social data.

The Open Source Software track is an important part of the ACM Multimedia program. The track, now in its 20th edition, is intended to celebrate, encourage and promote the contribution of researchers, software developers and educators to advance the field by providing the community with implementations of codecs, middleware, frameworks, toolkits, libraries, multimedia players, applications, authoring tools, and other multimedia software. These resources advance the field by providing a common set of tools for building and improving multimedia research prototypes. The use of these tools also allows others to replicate research results more easily.

To qualify, the software must be provided with source code and licensed in such a manner that it can be used free of charge in academic and research settings. As part of the review process, the software will be built from the sources. All source code, license, installation instructions, and other documentation must be available on a public web page or on publicly available software repositories such as GitHub, Bitbucket, etc. License compatibility with other open source software is encouraged. Dependencies on non-open source third-party software are discouraged, with the exception of operating systems and freely available commercial packages.

Authors are encouraged to prepare as much documentation as possible, including examples of how the provided software might be used, existing prototypes that use the software, video demos, download statistics or other public usage information. Entries will be selected for inclusion in the conference program based on peer review. The criteria for judging submissions include broad applicability and potential impact, novelty, technical depth, demo suitability, and other miscellaneous factors (e.g., maturity, popularity, compatibility with commonly used programming languages, no dependence on closed source, documentation quality, etc.)

Authors of selected entries will be invited to present and demonstrate their software as part of the regular conference program. In addition, accepted overview papers will be included in the conference proceedings. An overall winning entry, as judged by reviewers and the program committee, will be recognized formally at ACM Multimedia 2026.

Submission Guidelines

Authors interested in submitting an entry to the ACM Multimedia Open Source Software track should make their software contribution available by providing a public URL for download, and prepare a package containing the following information to be submitted via the online submission system under the Open Source Software track:

• A PDF file containing a 4-page at maximum paper including an overview of the open source software package, its description, applications, intended audience, main features, etc. This overview paper should be prepared using the same guidelines and formatting as technical papers, although due to the nature of this submission, reviews will not be double-blind. Authors will be required to sign the copyright to the ACM. This PDF should contain the following information:
  • Title of submission.
  • Names and affiliations of authors.
• Submitters are also encouraged to tag their paper with up to two areas from the main track (see Topics of Interest page for a list of the areas).
• The permanent link for the open source software (e.g., GitHub, Bitbucket, Sourceforge, Google Code, SVN).

Authors are strongly encouraged to ease the task of testing and building their code using containers or VMs, e.g., using Docker or Vagrant, or using packet manager systems, e.g., NuGet, CPM, BiiCode, Maven, Bower, etc.

The compressed archive file with all source code, documentation, build/install instructions, and licenses must be placed in a web-accessible location. The public URL for the project page where software, documentation, and open source license can be found must be included in the overview paper. Comprehensive and clear build/install instructions will be a crucial component of any submission. The evaluation committee will make reasonable efforts to build the software for the top contribution, but if they are unable to make the software run, it will be excluded from the track.

These documents should be submitted through the submission system. Please submit the paper in PDF format and the supplementary file as a ZIP archive.

Important Dates

Please submit your Open Source Software Paper via OpenReview (https://openreview.net/group?id=acmmm.org/ACMMM/2026/Open_Source_Software_Track) until May 28, 2026. The submission deadline is at 11:59 p.m. of the stated deadline date Anywhere on Earth.

• Submission deadline: May 28, 2026
• Notification of acceptance: July 16, 2026
• Camera-ready submission: August 06, 2026
• Author registration: August 20, 2026

Contact

For any questions, please contact the Open Source (OS) Chairs: <opensource-mm26@acmmm.org>:

• Chenglin Li (Shanghai Jiao Tong University)
• Alan Guedes (University of Reading)
• Junwei Liang (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology)