SciPy Proceedings

This is the repository for submitting to and managing the Proceedings for the Annual Scientific Computing with Python Conference.

This repository is a home for authors, reviewers and editors to collaboratively create the proceedings for the conference.

You can find more information about the proceedings' organising principles below.

All communication between authors and reviewers should be civil and respectful. There are no exceptions to this rule. Please see the NumFOCUS Code of Conduct for more info. Attendees at SciPy 2026 are subject to the NumFOCUS Code of Conduct.

You can find the schedule for 2026 below.

Please use @-mentions in issues and pull requests(PRs) to contact the proceedings Co-Chairs.

If you are an Author, please see Instructions for Authors.

If you are a Reviewer, please see Instructions for Reviewers.

If you are an Editor, please see Instructions for Editors.

If you are a Publisher, please see Instructions for Publishers.

If you are Submitting Slides, please see Instructions for Slides.

Organising Principles: Openness

Overall, the SciPy proceedings are organised to be a fully open proceedings.

We aim to combine the best aspects of open source development, open peer review, and open access publication.

Built by and for Open Source Communities on Open Source Tech

The technologies used for running the conference are themselves developed in the open and built on open source tools.

Open Development:

• with many people contributing code over more than a decade
  • many contributors start as authors submitting to the proceedings
  • provides a natural pathway for new members to join the proceedings committee
• technologies are managed via public, open source GitHub repositories

The systems for running the conference are built on top of open source tools, including:

• MyST Markdown (mystmd.org)
• Typst - for fast PDF generation (e.g. SciPy template)

Open Peer Review meets Open Source Code Review

The entire submission and review procedure occurs through public PRs attached to identifiable individuals.

• Authors and reviewers are encouraged to work collaboratively to improve submissions throughout the review process, much like open source code-review.

• Reviews are collaborative, aiming to improve the publication quality. This is possible because the content was already vetted by the program committee.

• Conversations occur attached to people's real GitHub usernames and are open to the public.

  • This allows for a transparent open review process.
  • This holds authors and reviewers accountable and encourages civil communication practices.

Open Access for an Open Community

The papers are published as true Open Access (OA) articles with Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY-4.0) license.

• There are no article processing charges barring authors from submitting papers.

  • Reviewers and co-chairs volunteer their time.
  • Services with free tiers (like GitHub) allow distributing the underlying technologies with minimal cost.

• Papers are openly available at http://proceedings.scipy.org, with no pay walls barring consumption or author processing charges.

• All papers have DOIs (making them easily citable) and are also openly available from those DOIs.

• From 2023 onwards, full HTML is the preferred format in addition to the PDF being available.

The community is involved in the entire process for creating the proceedings, which ensures relevance to the community that created them.

• Papers are submitted by authors who will be presenting talks and posters at the annual SciPy conference. Because we know the content is relevant to the SciPy community, review can focus on improving papers, not vetting them.

• Reviewers are invited by the editors, but community members may volunteer to review papers that interest them. The only barrier to participation is having a GitHub account.

Contacting the Proceedings Co-Chairs

The most effective way to contact the Proceedings Co-Chairs for issues related to this GitHub repository is to use GitHub's issues and "@"-mentioning the Co-Chairs, either individually or with the team @scipy-conference/2026-proceedings.

In 2026, the Proceedings Co-Chairs are:

• Rowan Cockett (@rowanc1)
• Sean Freeman (@freemansw1)
• Christopher Holloman
• Sanhita Joshi (@sanhitamj)
• Franklin Koch (@fwkoch)
• Charles Lindsey (@cdlindsey)
• Chong Shen Ng
• Hongsup Shin (@hongsupshin)
• Jennifer Yoon

Timeline for 2026

In addition to the following list, we break up the deadlines in the respective documents for authors and reviewers.

• May 1: Authors invited to submit full papers
• May 16: Webinar offered to authors
• May 22: Reviewer survey sent
• June 20: Deadline to submit first draft by authors, as GitHub pull request
• June 22: Assignment of reviewers to papers
• June 27: Reviewer invitations sent
• June 27: Open Review Period begins
  • During this initial review period, authors may still refine their first draft.
  • Reviewers may comment on papers during this period, with the understanding that authors may still be working on substantial additions and edits.
  • Authors and reviewers should be in open communication so reviewers do not spend all their energy on an unfinished draft.
  • Reviewers should at least provide initial, high-level feedback during this period.
• July 11: Backup reviewers assigned as necessary
• July 25: Initial review complete
  • At this point, the author should consider their submission a final draft.
  • Reviewers continue to comment on the paper during this period.
  • Any author revisions should only be in response to reviewer comments.
• August 22: Final review deadline
  • Reviewers must be done with their reviews at this point.
  • Authors continue to make revisions in response to final review comments during this period.
• August 30: Final author revision deadline
• August 30: Open Review Period ends
  • Authors put down their pens.
  • Reviewers make an up or down decision on publication readiness of papers during this period.
• September 6: Final reviewer decision deadline
• September 13: Proceedings final sign-off by editors
  • The publication process begins after final sign-off.

Instructions for Authors

Please submit your papers by 23:59 PST of the Deadline to submit first draft.

Submit your papers as a MyST Markdown (mystmd.org), narrative Jupyter Notebook, or LaTeX file via PR against this repository. Please only use LaTeX if you are already familiar with writing papers in LaTeX. The build process uses the mystmd CLI, which allows us to support a web-first reading experience.

If you are submitting a Jupyter Notebook, the SciPy Proceedings supports executable content and interactive widgets. By submitting a Jupyter Notebook, you are bringing your publication closer to your research, facilitating reproducibility, and allowing for interactive figures that more deeply communicate your results. If you are interested in submitting an executable, interactive notebook, please contact the Proceedings Co-chairs using the @scipy-conference/2026-proceedings team.

During the Open Review Period authors should work with their reviewers to refine and improve their submission.

Proceedings Co-Chairs have final say in determining whether a paper is to be accepted to the proceedings.

Authors should respond to all the reviewers' comments.

Authors should default to modifying their papers in response to reviewers' comments.

Authors may not agree with the reviewers comments or may not wish to implement the suggested changes. In those cases, the authors and reviewers should attempt to discuss this in the PR's comment sections. It is important to remember in these cases that we expect all communication between authors and reviewers to be civil and respectful.

In the event that authors and reviewers are deadlocked, they should alert the Proceedings Co-Chairs to this situation. As always, the Proceedings Co-Chairs have final say in whether to accept or reject a paper.

Getting Help

An excellent webinar entitled "SciPy Proceedings 2025: Quickstart and authoring tutorial" is available on YouTube.

If you have a challenge with any technical aspect of authoring your paper in MyST or LaTeX, please do not hesitate to reach out via your GitHub pull request or issue on this repository. A member of the Proceedings Co-chairs will help you directly or identify a work-around.

Author Deadlines

• May 1: Authors invited to submit full papers
• May 16: Webinar offered to authors
• June 20: Deadline to submit first draft by authors, as GitHub pull request
• June 22: Assignment of reviewers to papers
• June 27: Reviewer invitations sent
• June 27: Open Review Period begins
  • During this initial review period, authors may still refine their first draft.
  • Authors and reviewers should be in open communication so reviewers do not spend all their energy on an unfinished draft.
• July 25: Initial review complete
  • At this point, the author should consider their submission a final draft.
  • Any author revisions should only be in response to reviewer comments.
• August 30: Final author revision deadline
  • Authors put down their pens.

General Information and Guidelines for Authors

• Papers are formatted using MyST (mystmd.org) or LaTeX (which also uses MyST, please see notes on LaTeX below)
• The paper is written and reviewed using the interactive HTML view (i.e. myst start), the PDF is built upon acceptance only
• Example papers are provided in papers/myst_template and papers/tex_template
  • These papers provide examples of how to:
    • Label figures, equations and tables
    • Use math markup
    • Include code snippets
    • Use a BibTeX files and/or DOIs for citations
• When creating your pull-request, add a pull-request label of draft to trigger the build process. If you do not add this, a proceedings chair member will add it for you.
• Authors may include a project or consortium (e.g. The Jupyter Project)
• There must be at least one corresponding author, and this must be a specific person with a valid email address
• Authors of papers from previous SciPys may change their name on their published work by contacting the Proceedings Co-chairs
• All citations that have DOIs should include those DOIs in the paper's references section, see mybib.bib.
• All figures and tables should have captions.
• Figures and tables should be positioned close to their explanatory text.
• All abbreviations should be identified in your myst.yml (docs)
• License conditions on images and figures must be respected (Creative Commons, etc.)
• Images and figures should be reasonably sized and formatted for viewing online; typically less than 1 MB
• Do not modify any files outside of your paper directory
• When using the LaTeX option, please consider:
  • SciPy is supporting HTML. LaTeX is not involved in reading or rendering; we use Typst for building PDFs
  • Custom LaTeX macros are not supported and some packages may not be supported
• The paper should be at most 6000 words including figures but not including references; this is about 8 pages for the published PDF.

Policy on Previously Published Material

Submissions to the SciPy Proceedings should be novel scientific articles that have not previously been reviewed and published. Submitting un-reviewed preprints is acceptable. You may also include content published in other contexts, e.g. software documentation, but it must be presented in a distinct way, as a scientific article.

Final submission acceptance will be at the discretion of the Proceedings Co-Chairs. Please contact them if you have any worries about the novelty or publication history of your submission.

Policy on Gen AI Use for Authors

The SciPy conference permits the use of generative AI tools for authorship, but requires transparent disclosure of their use. Refer to the Gen AI policy for more details.

Author Workflow

Below we outline the steps to submit a paper.

Before you begin, you should have a GitHub account. If we refer to <username> in code examples, you should replace that with your GitHub username.

More generally, angle brackets with a value inside are meant to be replaced with the value that applies to you.

For example, if you typically clone using the web URL, and your GitHub username was mpacer, you would transform

git clone <scheme>github.com/<username>/scipy_proceedings.git

into:

git clone https://github.com/mpacer/scipy_proceedings

Author workflow steps

[!NOTE] There is a webinar on YouTube that goes through the author submission process for 2026 submissions using MyST Markdown.

1. Get a local copy of the scipy_proceedings repo.
2. Update your local copy of the scipy_proceedings repo.
3. Create a new branch for your paper based off the latest 2026 branch.
   • If you submit multiple papers, you will need a new branch for each.
4. Install MyST Markdown and Node and copy a template.
5. Write your paper, commit changes, and build your paper
6. Create a PR or push changes to your PR's branch and check your paper.
   • If you want to alter other parts of the scipy_proceedings repo, do not include it in your submission's PR, create a separate PR against dev (see below for more details).
7. Repeat steps 5 and 6, while also responding to reviewer feedback.

Getting a local copy of the scipy_proceedings repo

• If you do not have a GitHub account, create one.
• Fork the scipy_proceedings repository on GitHub.
• Clone the repo locally
  • replace <scheme> with git@ or https://, for example
  • replace <username> with your GitHub username
  • git clone <scheme>github.com/<username>/scipy_proceedings.git
  • cd scipy_proceedings/
• Add the scipy-conference repository as your upstream remote
  • git remote add upstream <scheme>github.com/scipy-conference/scipy_proceedings

If you run git remote -v you should see something like the following:

origin	<scheme>github.com/<username>/scipy_proceedings.git (fetch)
origin	<scheme>github.com/<username>/scipy_proceedings.git (push)
upstream	<scheme>github.com/scipy-conference/scipy_proceedings.git (fetch)
upstream	<scheme>github.com/scipy-conference/scipy_proceedings.git (push)

Getting the latest branch

• Fetch the latest version of the scipy_proceedings repo
  • git fetch upstream
• Check out the upstream 2026 branch
  • git checkout -b 2026 --track upstream/2026

Creating a new branch

If you are submitting only one paper, you can use the 2026 branch directly.

Otherwise, you will need to create a new branch based on 2026 and set its upstream to origin.

git checkout 2026
git checkout -b <your_branch_name>
git push --set-upstream origin <your_branch_name>

Setting up your environment

• Optional: Create a new environment (using your choice of environment manager, e.g., pyenv or conda).
• Install MyST Markdown from mystmd.org
  • pip install mystmd
• (Recommended) Install and enable git pre-commit hooks
  • pip install pre-commit
  • pre-commit install
  • Optional: run once on the whole repo: pre-commit run --all-files
• Create a new directory papers/<your_directory_name>
  • if you are submitting one paper, we recommend you use <firstname_surname>
  • if you are submitting more than one paper, you will need to use a different directory name for each paper
• Copy an example paper into your directory: either papers/myst_template or papers/tex_template
  • Update the id in the myst.yml to by scipy-2026-<your_directory_name>

Write your paper

• To have a live preview of your changes:
  • Change directories cd papers/<your_directory_name>
  • Run myst start and open the web-server provided
• Refer to the syntax in the template papers or online at mystmd.org
• Update the author information and affiliations in myst.yml
• As you make changes to your paper, commit those changes in discrete chunks
• If you come across any challenges, ask the Proceedings Co-chairs for help via a GitHub issue or comment on your PR

Note: The templates are setup for a single MyST/LaTeX file in the top level of <your_directory_name>. If you have more than one file run myst init --write-toc (docs), ensuring that the root is the main file of your manuscript.

Supplementary material

Supplementary material may be included with your paper. Simply include additional MyST markdown, Jupyter notebook, or LaTeX files in your folder. These will be published alongside your primary manuscript. Supplementary material will not add to the word count.

Commit your changes

• Commit any changes inside the papers/<your_directory_name>
• When you push your commits to your PR's branch, the paper will be auto-built in GitHub actions
• Do not commit any changes to files outside of your paper directory

If you want to alter other parts of the scipy_proceedings repo, we use a separate submission procedure (see below).

Preview your paper

Your paper will be edited and reviewed in HTML, the PDF will only be built on acceptance.

To preview your paper:

• Ensure mystmd is installed (guide)
• In papers/<your_directory_name> run myst start
• Open the web-server from your console
• Check that this output matches what is built on your PR

Create a paper PR

Once you are ready to submit your paper, make a pull request on GitHub. Please ensure that you file against the correct branch.

• Create a pull request against the 2026 branch
• Do not modify any files outside of your paper directory. Create a separate PR for any changes to the build system.
• Ensure that your PR title begins with Paper:. Note: for the first commit in your PR, an editor will add the paper label, which will start the GitHub actions.

Creating build system PRs

Curvenote is used as the build system infrastructure.

If you want to change documentation, etc., we use a separate submission procedure.

• Create a new branch against dev
• Make your changes
• Do not commit any changes from your paper PR to this new branch
• Make a separate PR against the dev branch, it will be reviewed separately

Push to your PR

When you push to your repositories branch it automatically run GitHub actions on the PR. Note that this will require authorization for your first commit only. The build process takes about a minute, and then posts or updates a comment on the PR with a link to the build result on Curvenote. The build page has a link to your preview.

Check your paper's build

The review process will be completed on the HTML, and you can check to see if the paper(s) that you preview locally match the paper(s) that you see online. These will be available in a GitHub comment or through the logs in the GitHub action.

If it is not the same, please immediately contact us with a GitHub issue describing the discrepancy. Please include screenshots and an explanation of the differences. For best results, please @-mention the Proceedings Co-Chairs.

Instructions for Reviewers

You will be reviewing authors' pull requests. While authors should have a proper draft of their paper ready for you by the Deadline to submit first draft.

We ask that you read this set of suggested review criteria before beginning any reviews.

All communication between authors and reviewers should be civil and respectful at all times.

The goal of our review process is to improve the paper that the authors are working on. Our aim is to have you and the author collaborate on making their better by using an iterative process.

While our basic approach is to have you and the author iterate, we ask you to complete an initial review and start that conversation by the Initial Complete Review deadline.

Feel free to leave inline comments about any particular line or figure, and also on the overall submission.

How to leave comments on Pull Requests in GitHub:

Open the submission, link, or PR (Pull Request) assigned to you.

• For overall comment(s):

1. The PR page will bring you to the Conversation tab.
2. Find Add a comment box at the bottom of that tab. Leave a comment.

• For inline comments:

1. Open the tab Files Changed.
2. Locate a text file, for example, main.md
3. To leave a comment on any of the lines, click on the + sign on the left side; this should open a comment box.
4. To comment on figures, or other attachments, use the text file to leave an inline comment.

For more detailed instructions refer to this page by GitHub

We ask that by the Final Reviewer Decision deadline you have a recommendation to either accept or reject the paper at that point and time.

Note: You may recommend changes after the Final Reviewer Decision deadline. If there are any major changes after the Final Reviewer Decision deadline you should immediately contact the Proceedings Committee Co-Chairs. As a heuristic, if you think the paper should not be in the proceedings unless the authors make the change in question, then that change should be requested and made before the Final Reviewer Decision deadline.

Reviewer Deadlines

• May 22: Reviewer survey sent
• June 22: Assignment of reviewers to papers
• June 27: Reviewer invitations sent
• June 27: Open Review Period begins
  • Reviewers may comment on papers during this period, with the understanding that authors may still be working on substantial additions and edits.
  • Authors and reviewers should be in open communication so reviewers do not spend all their energy on an unfinished draft.
  • Reviewers should at least provide initial, high-level feedback during this period.
• July 11: Backup reviewers assigned as necessary
• July 25: Initial review complete
  • Reviewers continue to comment on the paper during this period.
  • Any author revisions should only be in response to reviewer comments.
• August 22: Final review deadline
  • Reviewers must be done with their reviews at this point.
  • Authors continue to make revisions in response to final review comments during this period.
• August 30: Open Review Period ends
  • Authors put down their pens.
  • Reviewers make an up or down decision on publication readiness of papers during this period.
• September 6: Final reviewer decision deadline

Policy on Gen AI Use for Reviewers

The SciPy conference permits the use of generative AI tools for reviewing, but requires transparent disclosure of their use. Refer to the Gen AI policy for more details.

Reviewer Workflow

• Read this set of suggested review criteria
• Click on the Pull Requests Tab and find the papers assigned to you
• A comment at the top of the PR will have a link to the paper to review online
• After reading the paper online, you can start the review conversation however you prefer
  • You can use in-line comments (on the paper itself) or high-level comments.
• Authors will respond to your comments, possibly via their own comments or by modifying their paper.
• This begins an iterative review process where authors and reviewers can discuss the evolving submission.
• By the Final Reviewer Decision deadline, we ask that you give two things:
  1. A comprehensive review of the paper as it stands. This will act as the final review.
  2. A final recommendation to include the paper in the proceedings or not.
     • When you make the Final Recommendation, please contact the proceedings Co-Chairs in the PR in question.

Review Criteria

A small subcommittee of the SciPy 2017 organizing committee has created this set of suggested review criteria to help guide authors and reviewers alike. Suggestions and amendments to these review criteria are enthusiastically welcomed via discussion or pull request.

Requirements

• MyST Markdown (mystmd)
• Typst (>0.12.0) to build PDFs locally
• GitHub actions for the build process

Build Process

The build process is completed through GitHub actions on every commit. A comment is posted after the build process completes with a list of checks and a link to the built output on Curvenote.

Authors: you should check to ensure that your local builds match the papers built online. Please create an issue if they do not match.

Reviewers: You should be able to see the built article from the GitHub comment, and review from the preview link.

For Organizers

Publisher Deadlines

• Early May: Authors invited to submit full papers
  • The build process is supported by Curvenote (a SciPy sponsor) and it is maintained throughout this period.
• Early September: Proceedings final sign-off by editors
  • The publication process begins after final sign-off.

Instructions for Editors

As reviewers review papers, editors should apply labels to the PR to flag the current state of the review process. All paper PRs must have the paper label before the GitHub action will be triggered. Additionally, as editors and reviewers are assigned, the editors should add the reviewers GitHub handles to the PR summary comment.

Other labels that should be used are:

• needs-more-review if the paper needs further review,
• pending-comment if the paper is waiting on an authors' response, or
• unready if the paper is not ready for the proceedings.

Editors should come to a final 'ready', 'unready' decision before the Final Editorial Decisions for Proceedings Contents deadline.

Editor Deadlines

• May 1: Authors invited to submit full papers
• May 22: Reviewer survey sent
• June 22: Assignment of reviewers to papers
• June 27: Reviewer invitations sent
• June 27: Open Review Period begins
  • Reviewers may comment on papers during this period, with the understanding that authors may still be working on substantial additions and edits.
  • Authors and reviewers should be in open communication so reviewers do not spend all their energy on an unfinished draft.
• July 11: Backup reviewers assigned as necessary
• July 25: Initial review complete
  • Editors should verify that reviews have been started
• August 22: Final review deadline
  • Editors should verify that reviews have been completed
• September 6: Final reviewer decision deadline
• September 13: Proceedings final sign-off by editors
  • The publication process begins after final sign-off.

Instructions for Slides

Slide/Poster submission steps

1. Get a local copy of the scipy_proceedings repo.
2. Update your local copy of the scipy_proceedings repo.
3. Create a new branch for your paper based off the latest 2026 branch.
4. Inside the presentations folder, there are directories for:
   1. 3-minute lightning talk slide decks (lightning)
   2. Posters presented at the poster session (posters)
   3. 30-minute talk slide decks (slides)
   4. SciPy tools plenary slide decks (tools)
   5. 45-minute keynote slide decks (keynote)
5. Choose the appropriate folder, and make a new directory inside it with a unique name
6. Copy your slide deck or poster into the directory, and add a file called myst.yml with the following fields needed for uploading to Zenodo (using an empty string for author orcid or affiliation if these cannot be provided):

version: 1
extends: ../../../proceedings.yml
project:
  title: 'The title of your presentation'
  authors:
    - name: First author or presenter
      orcid: 0000-0000-0000-0000
      affiliation: University of SciPy
    - name: Second author or presenter
      orcid: 0000-0000-0000-0001
      affiliations:
        - University of SciPy
        - National Academy of NumFocus
  abstract: |
    The abstract or description of your talk/poster.

7. Create a PR

You can see examples of submissions in the example folder in each presentation directory. For slides and posters, you should use the corresponding prefix for your PR title, e.g. Slides:.