# Venue Positioning and Verification

Use this playbook when publication venue affects contribution framing, evaluation expectations, timing, format, artifact policy, or submission readiness. Venue selection is a research-position decision, not a branding exercise.

## Entry conditions

Identify the intended output, current contribution and evidence state, candidate audience, timing constraints, artifact availability, confidentiality, and whether the request requires a CCF classification. Do not select a prestigious venue before the contribution and nearest prior work are intelligible.

An early venue pass may establish audience and feasibility constraints. A final pass must be repeated before submission because rankings, tracks, calls, deadlines, page limits, anonymity rules, and policies can change.

## Primary-source verification

For each material venue fact, record the URL, publisher or organizing body, accessed date, covered edition or year, and exact scope.

- Verify CCF classification against the current official CCF recommendation source, not a blog, remembered list, or model knowledge.
- Verify scope, tracks, dates, templates, page limits, review model, anonymity, artifacts, ethics, conflicts, AI/tool disclosure, and submission system against current official venue pages.
- Treat aggregators and community pages only as discovery aids. Resolve consequential facts to the official source.
- If official sources conflict or the relevant edition is not yet published, mark the fact unresolved and state the consequence.

Never embed a supposedly permanent CCF-A venue list or deadline into project instructions.

## Fit assessment

Evaluate:

- audience and problem fit;
- contribution type and expected evidence;
- nearest accepted work and saturation;
- methodological and reproducibility expectations;
- likely reviewer competence and terminology;
- manuscript and artifact feasibility under current limits;
- timing, cost, travel, access, ethics, and disclosure constraints;
- backup venues that require no dishonest reframing.

Do not reshape claims beyond the evidence merely to imitate a venue's recent papers. A venue mismatch may cause `return`, `pivot`, `hold`, or selection of a different output; it does not authorize hiding negative results or inflating novelty.

## Decision record

For durable publication work, create or update `research/VENUE.md` from the template. Record a primary target, alternatives, evidence for classification and fit, unresolved facts, and reverification triggers. A valid decision is `target`, `backup`, `hold`, or `stop`, with a bounded rationale.

Finish by naming the selected audience, current verification date, material constraints, fit risks, backup route, and the next date or event that requires reverification.