The following rules for Best Paper Awards were developed by a committee consisting of Paul Beame, David Johnson, Prabhakar Raghavan, Eva Tardos  and David Williamson (Chair). The committee developed the policy for FOCS. The same policy was adopted for STOC by the SIGACT Executive Committee, as announced in the STOC 2002 Business Meeting.

The Program Committee may designate up to three papers accepted to the conference as FOCS/STOC Best Papers.

Each author on each of the selected papers will receive a certificate or plaque with the name of the award, the name of the paper, and the names of the authors of the paper, to be awarded at the Business Meeting that year.

The main criterion for selection is the same as for being a top-rated paper in the conference: introduction of a strong new technique, solution of a long-standing open problem, introduction and solution of an interesting and important new problem, etc. These are the characteristics associated with giving a paper the highest score.

Additionally, the committee should have substantial confidence in the correctness of the paper.  While the committee may choose to accept papers to appear in the conference while lacking confidence that the paper is correct, such papers should not be recipients of the Best Paper Award.  Since only abstracts are submitted to the conference, the committee may, after accepting a paper to the conference, inform the authors that the paper is being considered for the Award, and request additional details.  It is suggested that the committee finalize its decisions on the Award in time to have the recipients listed in the proceedings of the conference.  However, the committee may choose to use the time up until the conference itself to continue reviewing the papers.

The committee should verify that the final proceedings version of the paper meets the high promise of the submitted abstract.

If no paper meets the criteria above, then no award need be given.

If a paper qualifies for the Machtey/Lewin Best Student Paper Award, it should not be disqualified from being considered for the Best Paper Award, and vice versa; a paper meriting both Awards should be given both Awards.

Past Winners