The ACM MM 2026 review form, explained

How ACM MM reviewers read your paper

ACM MM reviewers judge novelty (what the paper contributes and its value to the community), scientific rigor (experiment design, reproducibility, support for claims, code/data release) and multimedia suitability, separating minor camera-ready fixes from major flaws. Papers on new problems should not be devalued for lacking a new algorithm; arXiv is not a publication. The rebuttal cannot add new experiments. Final reviews and responses become public on OpenReview.

• Golden rule: write the review you would like to receive.
• Critique "the paper"; do not address the authors as "you".
• No vague "it is well known that…" claims; cite specific peer-reviewed work (your own only rarely).
• Do not request new experiments for the rebuttal; say clearly what should be clarified.
• Neutral proof-reading requests; avoid "native English speaker" wording.

Where the bar sits. ACM MM 2025 accepted 1,250 of 5,330 research papers (23.5%; 2024: 26.2%). No score thresholds are public; on the 1–6 scale a mean of ≥ 4 (Borderline Accept) is a rough proxy for acceptance.

The reviewer form, field by field

In the order reviewers see it, with every score and its official wording.

1. 01

   Paper Summary

   Free text

   About five sentences on what the paper does and claims.

2. 02

   Suitability

   Single choice

   Choose one. ACM MM prefers multimodal/multimedia research.

   • unsuitable for the MM venue as it involves unimodal/unimedia processing
   • unimodal/unimedia in nature but of sufficient interest to the multimedia community
   • definitely suitable for MM as the work demonstrates multimedia processing
3. 03

   Paper Strengths

   List of points

   Soundness, significance and novelty, and relevance to multimedia; value to the community.

4. 04

   Weaknesses

   List of points

   Same axes. Separate minor errors fixable for camera-ready from major flaws that warrant rejection. Check scientific rigor: experiment design, reproducibility, support for claims, code/data release.

5. 05

   Preliminary Rating

   Score · 1–6

   Preliminary rating before the rebuttal; a final recommendation follows the discussion.

   Score	Meaning
   6	Accept - This submission should definitely be presented at ACM Multimedia.
   5	Weak Accept - I would need strong arguments to reject this submission.
   4	Borderline Accept - I lean towards acceptance, but I could be convinced otherwise.
   3	Borderline Reject - I lean towards rejection, but I could be convinced otherwise.
   2	Weak Reject I would need strong arguments to accept this submission.
   1	Reject This submission should definitely not be presented at ACM Multimedia.

6. 06

   Confidence Score

   Score · 1–4

   How certain you are about your assessment.

   Score	Meaning
   4	Very Confident You are absolutely certain about your assessment. You are very familiar with the related work.
   3	Confident You are fairly confident in your assessment. It is possible that you did not understand some parts of the submission or that you are unfamiliar with some pieces of related work.
   2	Somewhat Confident You are confident in your assessment, but not absolutely certain. It is not impossible that you did not understand some parts of the submission or that you are unfamiliar with some pieces of related work.
   1	Not Confident Your assessment is an educated guess. The submission is not in your area or the submission was difficult to understand.

7. 07

   Award

   Single choice

   Choose one.

   • No: This paper should not be considered for an outstanding paper award.
   • Yes: This paper should be considered for an outstanding paper award.

Area chair meta-review

ACM MM ACs summarize each paper's strengths and weaknesses and make a recommendation; the AC form is not public.

• Accept (oral)
• Accept (poster)
• Reject

ACM MM submission requirements

Reviewers check these. Gaps are easy points to lose.

1. 6–8 pages plus up to 2 pages of references; no appendix in the main file
2. Double-blind; complete OpenReview profiles for all authors
3. Multimodal / multimedia scope (out-of-scope papers may be desk-rejected)
4. At most 10 submissions per author

Policy on LLMs in reviewing