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itcs-topic-selection

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Use when deciding whether a theoretical-computer-science result belongs at ITCS or should be routed to STOC, FOCS, SODA, CCC, ICALP, TCC, or a journal, and when distinguishing ITCS from its depth-first siblings by the conceptual-novelty test — is this a new question, model, or connection worth asking, rather than the deepest theorem of the year.

ITCS-Skills/skills/itcs-topic-selection/SKILL.md

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# ITCS Topic Selection

Decide the venue before drafting, and decide it on the axis ITCS actually selects on. ITCS — the
**Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science** conference — was founded (as *Innovations in
Computer Science*, 2010) to reward **conceptual novelty**: a new model, a new question, a
surprising connection, a direction the field had not thought to take. Its sibling flagships STOC
and FOCS reward the **deepest, most polished** result on questions the field already agrees are
hard. A technically strong paper whose real virtue is that it *finally proves a known hard
theorem* is respected and then, often, routed away from ITCS as "not innovative enough" — while a
bold, imperfect, genuinely new idea can be accepted here that STOC/FOCS would reject for want of
depth.

## The routing question that matters most
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