CogSci 2026 Submissions

Paper Submissions

You will need to indicate your planned mode of attendance at submission. If your submission is accepted, you will need to finalize your presentation mode when you turn in your camera-ready paper. Note that it will not be possible to switch an in-person talk to a remotely-presented talk after your camera-ready submission, since in order to manage costs we will not have the appropriate administrative or technical support for widespread remote presentation.

Submitted research papers may be no more than six pages long, with an unlimited number of pages for references, and must use the two-column format described in the “Submission Formats” section below. Reviews of paper submissions will be double-blind; thus the submissions must be anonymized: no information identifying the authors should be included in the submissions. After the Notification of Decisions, authors of accepted papers will have the opportunity to revise their submissions prior to the Final Form (camera ready) submissions deadline. To facilitate revisions, authors will be allowed to update their six page paper and add an unlimited amount of pages for acknowledgements and references. 

All paper submissions will be evaluated by peer reviewers who make recommendations to the Program Committee. The final decision of acceptance is made by the Program Co-Chairs.

Student authors are welcome at CogSci 2026. Students who are the first authors of accepted research papers qualify to apply for travel grants awarded by the Robert J. Glushko and Pamela Samuelson Foundation. In addition, undergraduate students who are presenting authors are eligible for the Sayan Gul award. Requests for student travel grants must be made at the time of paper submission. See the Conference Awards page for more information.

Several other honors will be awarded to select research papers with students identified as the first author. These honors include the Marr Prize for the best student paper and four awards for research involving computational modeling methods. The awards decisions are made by an awards committee, whose members are appointed by the conference Program Committee.

Preprint Policy:

For 6-page papers submitted to the 2026 conference, you are welcome to make a non-anonymized version of your paper available online to the general community (e.g., via preprint servers such as ArXiv or the Open Science Framework) at any time.  Posting preprints facilitates the open, transparent exchange of scientific ideas and can speed the advancement of knowledge.  However, in order to preserve double-blind peer review as much as possible, we ask that you refrain from broadly advertising any non-anonymized version of your paper via social media or other means (e.g., emails to large recipient lists announcing your paper) between the dates of February 1 (conference submission deadline) and April (decision notifications).

Contributed Symposia

A contributed symposium is allotted 90 minutes, sufficient for four 20-minute talks including questions, followed by a discussion. Proposals should list the speakers and the moderator, describe their qualifications, and explain the importance of the topic. Inclusion of more than 4 talks needs to be strongly justified.

A symposium proposal is submitted as a two-page summary to be included in the Proceedings if accepted (see Submission Formats below). The best symposia present differing perspectives drawn from a wide range of disciplines on a common topic. Proposals including speakers from similar backgrounds or theoretical perspectives are not usually accepted. Contributed symposia are competitive and peer-reviewed to aid in determining acceptance. Contributed symposia should not be conflated with invited symposia arranged by the conference organizers.

Member Abstracts

Members of the Cognitive Science Society may submit a 150-word abstract. Each member can be the first author on only one member abstract (a member can be a co-author on more than one abstract). The Program Committee reviews the member abstracts for relevance. Accepted abstracts will be included in the Proceedings, and presented at the conference as posters.
For 2026: All member abstracts are assessed for quality and fit with cognitive science. In recent years, the number of member abstract submissions has exceeded the allowable space for in-person poster presentations. Should more abstracts be accepted than space permits, a random process will be used to identify which abstracts will be accepted. Further, we cannot guarantee that there will be space for authors of rejected full papers to resubmit that work as a member abstract.

Pre-conference Workshops & Tutorials

For 2026: Researchers are encouraged to submit proposals for the tutorials and workshops to be offered on the day immediately preceding the main conference. Workshops and tutorials are presented in-person only to in-person attendees; there is no remote presentation or attendance option. Workshops and tutorials can be either half day (4 hour AM/PM) or full day (7 hour + 1 hour lunch break) formats. Please indicate the intended length of your workshop/tutorial when submitting. Proposals for tutorials and workshops must be submitted via the PCS submission portal by the submission deadline. Both tutorial and workshop proposals are competitive, with only a limited number of proposals accepted for the program.

Tutorials allow participants to gain new insights, knowledge, and skills from a broad range of research in cognitive science. Tutorials must cover a well-established topic or method, and be delivered by one or more experts in that area. Tutorials should be presented at a level that will make the material accessible to a postgraduate student with a doctoral degree in any discipline of cognitive science. We strongly encourage an interactive delivery format. Proposals should be submitted as two-page summaries that describe the significance of the topic or method, describe the structure and activities to be included in the tutorial, describe the credentials of the tutorial organizer, and include relevant references (see “Submission Formats,” below.) Comments and evaluations from peer reviewers will be solicited to aid in acceptance decisions. Tutorial organizers will be given access to the email addresses of the preregistered participants so they can contact them in advance about needed equipment or supplies, as well as to let them know of any preparations prior to the tutorial. Tutorial organizers and any presenters will be given complimentary tutorial registration. 

Workshops provide opportunities for in-depth discussions on topics of importance in Cognitive Science. Workshops may concentrate on emerging research areas, cross-disciplinary topics, application issues, and research methods. Workshop organizers are responsible for selecting and inviting speakers, and assembling input from each presenter. Workshop proposals should be submitted as two-page summaries that describe the significance of the topic, each presenter’s planned contribution, and the structure of the workshop. (See “Submission Formats,” for proposal format.) Peer reviewers will be solicited to aid in making acceptance decisions. Workshop organizers will be given access to the email addresses of the preregistered participants so they can contact them in advance about needed equipment or supplies, as well as to let them know of any preparations prior to the tutorial. Workshop organizers and any presenters will be given complimentary workshop registration.