Important Dates
| BNI Paper Submission Deadline: | 13 February 2026 (Extended) |
| Notification of Acceptance: | 15 April 2026 |
| Camera-Ready Submission: | 25 April 2026 |
Call for Brave New Idea Papers
In this track, we invite papers exploring highly innovative ideas and paradigm shifts in conventional theory and practice of multimedia retrieval. Submissions may arise from:
- New ways of thinking within a single discipline
- Work across disciplines that bring new perspectives on problems or solutions
- Research involving unprecedented scales of data
- Work that involves combinations of information channels previously underexplored
- Work that proposes ways to engage multimedia to help tackle some of our world's most pressing problems
Papers may not be "complete" in the "traditional" manner, in the sense that it may not be possible to have experimental results comparing other related efforts, or that they may not have publicly available data sets used for performance evaluation. Key criteria for evaluation of the submissions of this track are that the papers are visionary while pointing out feasible next steps, and that they can inspire other researchers in the community.
Submission Guidelines
Brave New Idea (BNI) papers are expected to have a high component of novelty. They can also address an understudied, open problem in multimedia retrieval, which may receive less attention in the regular paper track. However, BNI papers should still support their ideas with sufficient scientific argumentation, and where appropriate experimentation or proof. The papers also require high clarity in presentation.
Difference Between Regular Full Papers and BNI Papers
BNI submissions do not require new empirical results that outperform a state-of-the-art baseline, unlike traditional ICMR submissions. However, BNI submissions that focus on novel, exploratory solutions still need to support their ideas with sufficient experimental evidence.
BNI submissions that focus on novel perspectives on existing problems or new research visions do not require empirical results but are still expected to defend their position with solid scientific arguments based on the relevant literature. In-depth discussions and explanations of implications are also expected.
Submission Guidelines
Paper Format
All papers must be formatted according to the ACM proceedings style. Click here to access LaTeX and Microsoft Word templates for this format. If you use LaTeX, please use sample-sigconf.tex as the template (or see the Overleaf template here).
Maximum Length of a Paper
A typical brave new idea paper is around 6 pages, but submissions may be up to 8 pages (excluding one page of references).
Single-Blind Review
As brave new ideas should be ambitious and feasible at the same time, ACM ICMR will use a single-blind review process for BNI paper selection. Authors should provide author names and affiliations in their manuscript.
Submission
ICMR 2026 uses EasyChair. Papers must be submitted via the following link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=acmicmr2026
Any paper submitted to this track should have a cover page indicating why this paper is submitted to this track, referring to the criteria indicated above, and not within the regular ACM ICMR paper track. The cover page should be uploaded as a separated file.
Contact
For any question regarding submission of BNI papers, please email the Brave New Ideas Chairs at .
Brave New Ideas Chair
- Shin'ichi Satoh, National Institute of Informatics, Japan