Call for Papers
SURGeLLM invites submissions on structured understanding, retrieval, generation, and evaluation in the era of LLMs — with structured artifacts (tables, charts, maps, flowcharts, diagrams) treated as first-class citizens.

Contact: surgellm@googlegroups.com. See Important Dates: https://surgellm.github.io/acl2026/dates/.
We welcome submissions in two categories: Proceedings (Archival) and Non-Proceedings (Non-Archival).
Submission
Main Submission (Archival)
Accepted papers are published in the ACL Anthology.
Direct submission (OpenReview)
ARR commitment (OpenReview)
Non-Proceedings (Non-Archival)
Presentation-only track for cross-presentation of ACL 2026 Findings and other recently accepted work (not published in the workshop proceedings).
Non-archival submission form
We welcome both long (up to 8 pages) and short (up to 4 pages) submissions in ACL format (excluding references and appendices).
At submission time, authors must indicate whether the paper is intended for archival (proceedings) or non-archival presentation.
ARR-reviewed papers can be submitted via the commitment form if they have not been accepted/published elsewhere.
ACL Findings / main-conference papers may request cross-presentation via the non-archival track (subject to capacity).
We welcome a broad spectrum of contributions: position papers, datasets/benchmarks, systems reports, ablations, and negative results (when well-supported).
If you rely on non-public resources (e.g., proprietary data), ensure results are responsibly summarized and compliant with ACL policies.
Main Submission (Archival)
Papers accepted in this category will be published in the ACL Anthology.

Submissions may be under review elsewhere at the time of submission.
Upon acceptance, authors must make a binding commitment to publish the paper in exactly one venue.
Archival submissions must present substantially new and original work and comply with ACL policy on overlap/self-plagiarism.
If you plan to submit your work to a future venue, choose the non-archival track instead.
Submit:

Direct submission (OpenReview)
ARR commitment (OpenReview)
Non-Proceedings (Non-Archival)
This category is intended for presentation and discussion only; papers will not appear in the workshop proceedings.

We welcome cross-presentation of ACL 2026 Findings papers (and other recently accepted work), subject to capacity.

Submit:

Non-archival submission form
What we’re looking for
We welcome a broad spectrum of contributions, including:

New tasks, benchmarks, and evaluation frameworks for structured reasoning/retrieval/generation.
Models and training recipes (prompting, fine-tuning, structure-specialized embeddings, agentic pipelines).
Systems and deployment lessons (DataOps, governance, reliability, throughput/latency, human factors).
Careful ablations, negative results, and reproducibility studies that illuminate failure modes and trade-offs.
Formatting and length
We welcome both long (up to 8 pages) and short (up to 4 pages) papers in ACL format (excluding references and appendices).
Submissions should be consistent with ARR submission requirements: https://aclrollingreview.org/cfp#paper-submission-information
If anonymization is required for your track, do not include author names/affiliations in the submitted PDF.
Submission checklist
Pick a track: archival (proceedings) vs non-archival (presentation only).
Use ACL format; stay within page limits (excluding references/appendix).
Follow ARR/ACL anonymization rules when applicable.
Include enough experimental detail to support reproducibility (and clearly state any non-public resources).
Topics

See the topics list :

Methods for tabular understanding and question answering (multi-table reasoning, multi-hop inference, and multimodal integration).
Natural language interfaces to structured data (Text-to-SQL, semantic parsing, schema linking, and data discovery).
Structure-aware retrieval (tables, cells/rows, chart elements, maps, workflows, and code fragments).
Structured generation (text → tables/charts/figures/code) with faithfulness, controllability, and robust evaluation.
Agentic systems for structured data understanding and analysis (time series, graphs, tabular, etc).
Data-centric AI for LLMs on structured data (representation learning, augmentation, robustness, and domain adaptation).
Benchmarking and evaluation (scalability, throughput, contamination, reproducibility, and human-centered assessment).
Applications and governance for LLMs over structured data (DataOps, privacy, fairness, and reliability).

Important dates
Direct paper submission deadline 2026-03-05
Pre-reviewed ARR commitment deadline 2026-03-24
Notification of acceptance 2026-04-28
Camera-ready paper due 2026-05-12
Workshop dates 2026-07-02 – 2026-07-03

Mentoring and accessibility
We plan a student mentoring lunch session and community Q&A (details TBD).
If you have accessibility needs or questions about hybrid participation, email surgellm@googlegroups.com.
Multiple submission & cross-presentation
At submission time, authors must clearly indicate whether their submission is intended for archival (proceedings) or non-archival presentation.
Only papers not committed to any other venue are eligible for archival publication in the ACL Anthology.
Papers previously accepted elsewhere are eligible only for non-archival presentation.
Authors intending to submit their work to future conferences/journals should select the non-archival track.
ACL Findings / main-conference papers may request cross-presentation via the non-archival track (subject to capacity).