Open Letter to the ACT Steering Committee

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To the ACT Steering Committee:

We are writing to express our concern at the recently-created extra proceedings track at Applied Category Theory 2026.

Section C.(1) of the Call for Papers invites 12-page proceedings submissions on "teaching and communication of applied category theory (T&C)". The appearance of an ad-hoc "Teaching & Communication" PC, consisting of only three members, may indicate that these submissions will not follow the same refereeing process.

Program Committee members were not informed about this parallel proceedings track when they accepted to serve at ACT. They never consented to it—nor to have their names attached to it—and were never provided with a justification, instructions, evaluation criteria, or examples of papers for the track. The only precedent is an education session at QPL2025 that accepted a single submission.

We are concerned that this track may be used to publish articles in the pedagogy of mathematics through a back channel, circumventing the peer-review process of that field and damaging the reputation of ACT as a publication venue.

We urge the steering committee to call off this recently-created extra proceedings track. Teaching of mathematics deserves to be valued in its own right, and our community may lack at the moment the expertise and diversity required for an adequate peer-review of teaching and communication proceedings. Methodological articles are better served by the existing specialized venues upholding standard publication ethics; experience reports would be better served by a dedicated non-proceedings special session on teaching and communication.

The Signatories, 19 February 2026.

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