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Anonymity tips

All papers submitted to the ACM SIGCOMM conference undergo a "double-blind" reviewing process - the authors do not know the identity of the program committee members and referees who review the paper, nor do the program committee members and referees know the identity of the authors.

In order to preserve the anonymity of authorship, authors must take care in preparing their manuscript:

  • Remove authors' names and affiliations from the title page.
  • Remove acknowledgement of funding sources(s) from the title page.
  • Use care in naming your files.  For example, if your name is Joe Smith and you submit a postscript file generated from a .dvi file called Joe.Smith.dvi, one might easily infer that you are the author by looking into the postscript file.
  • Use care in referring to related past work, particularly your own, in the paper.  For example, if you are Joe Smith, the    following text gives away the authorship of the submitted paper:
     In our previous work [1,2], we presented two protocols for ....  In
this paper, we build on that work by ..

Bibliography

[1] Joe Smith, "A Simple Protocol for  ...," Proceeedings of ACM  Sigcomm 1997, pp. 1 - 10.
[2] Joe Smith, "A More Complicated Protocol for..," Proceeedings of ACM Sigcomm 1998, pp. 34 - 44.


On the other hand, it is important to reference related past work in order to set the context for the current paper.  Thus, the following style of writing (which preserves anonymity but leaves the reader unable to grasp the context of the submitted paper) is also unacceptable and should be avoided:
    
In our previous work [1,2], we presented two protocols for ....  In
this paper, we build on that work by ..

Bibliography

[1] reference removed for double blind reviewing
[2] reference removed for double blind reviewing


A good solution is to reference your past work in the third person (just as you would any other piece of work that is  related to the submitted paper).  This allows you to set the context for the submitted paper, while at the same time preserving anonymity:
    
In previous work [1,2], the authors presented protocols for ....
In this paper, we build on that work by ..

Bibliography

[1] Joe Smith, "A Simple Model of ...," Proceeedings of ACM Sigmetrics 1997, pp. 1 - 10.
[2] Joe Smith, "A Detailed Model of ...," Proceeedings of ACM Sigmetrics 19987, pp. 34 - 44.


In the end, common sense and careful writing can go a long way towards preserving anonymity.  Remember -  the goal is to preserve anonymity while at the same time allowing the reader to fully grasp the context (related past work, including your own) of the submitted paper.