Call for Papers

The ACM SIGCOMM 2023 conference seeks papers describing significant research contributions or significant deployment experience in communication networks and networked systems. SIGCOMM takes a broad view of networking, and welcomes submissions on these topics, among others:

All types of computer networks, including mobile, wide-area, data center, embedded, home, and enterprise networks.
All types of wired and wireless technologies, including optics, radio, acoustic, and visible light-based communication.
All aspects of networks and networked systems, such as network architecture, packet-processing hardware and software, virtualization, mobility, resource management, performance, energy consumption, topology, robustness, security, diagnosis, verification, privacy, economics, evolution, and interactions with applications.
All parts of the network life cycle, including planning, designing, building, operating, troubleshooting, and migrations.
All approaches and techniques, including theory, analysis, experiments, and machine learning.

SIGCOMM 2023 will accept submissions in three tracks: research, experience, and panel. Panel submissions are new this year.

Strong research track submissions will significantly advance the state of the art in networking by, for instance, proposing and developing novel ideas or by rigorously evaluating or re-evaluating existing ideas. Strong experience track submissions will present key insights and takeaways found in the course of designing and executing deployments of existing networking techniques, especially in settings that most in the community cannot duplicate (for instance, for reasons of scale). Strong panel submissions will propose a topic and panel of speakers whose ideas and interactions will engage conference attendees. All submissions should discuss the limitations of their work. Survey and tutorial papers are out of scope and will not be reviewed.

Research submissions must be anonymous (not revealing author names). Experience submissions must also be anonymous, but due to their nature, may reveal the name of the deploying organization or deployed system. The authorship of a panel submission may be anonymous, but the proposed panelists must be named in the body of the submission. While no author names can appear in a paper submitted for review, all authors must be listed in HotCRP before the submission deadline so reviewer conflicts are handled properly.

At paper registration time, authors must explicitly indicate in the submission form if their paper is to be considered for the research, experience, or panel track. Each submission will only be considered for the one track identified at submission time.

Panels and Other Sessions

In addition to the main conference, SIGCOMM 2023 will have a series of co-located workshops, tutorials, poster and demo sessions, an outrageous opinions session, and conference best paper and SIGCOMM awards. The main submission site will also solicit proposals for other panels. Panels aim to inspire lively discussion and research direction-setting independent of any specific work, and may have many formats, from conventional panel discussions to games. However, panels are limited to the length of a conference session (at most 60 minutes). Panel proposals will be submitted to the SIGCOMM 2023 submissions site. Proposals should be no more than 5 pages describing topic, format, and length, plus as many pages as necessary for references and supporting letters from planned participants. Proposals will be evaluated based on relevance of topic and potential to engage the audience.

Submissions

Submissions should be in two-column, 10-point format, and can be up to 12 pages in length with as many additional pages as necessary for references and optional appendices (up to 5 pages for panel submissions).

Submissions and final papers may include appendices (following references, not counting against the 12 pages). Reviewers are not required to read appendices or consider them in their review. Authors should thus ensure that the core paper is complete and self-contained. For example, if the appendix provides details of a proof or experiment, the body should summarize the key result. Appendices may also include non-traditional material, such as videos, datasets, and code, all appropriately anonymized.

The review process may involve multiple rounds of review. Papers that are not selected to proceed may receive early notification, including reviews.

Accepted papers may be shepherded by a member of the program committee to ensure reviewer feedback is appropriately addressed. The shepherd will also review appendices and must approve their necessity.

SIGCOMM 2023 plans to be an in-person event, and the authors of every accepted paper are expected to arrange for an in-person attendee to present the paper and answer questions.

For accepted papers, the official publication date is the date the proceedings are made available in the ACM Digital Library. This date may be up to two weeks prior to the first day of the conference. The official publication date affects the deadline for any patent filings related to published work. (For those rare conferences whose proceedings are published in the ACM Digital Library after the conference is over, the official publication date remains the first day of the conference.)

Detailed submission instructions can be found here.

Submission site: https://sigcomm23.hotcrp.com

Ethical Concerns

All papers must include, in the main body of the paper, a statement or subsection about ethical issues raised by the work. In limited cases this could simply be a sentence disclaiming ethical issues, but work involving human subjects or potentially sensitive data (e.g., user traffic, social network information, censorship evasion) must clearly discuss the relevant issues. Papers that do not include an ethics statement may be rejected.

Papers must follow basic precepts of ethical research and subscribe to community norms. Misrepresentation, plagiarism, and coercion and abuse related to authorship or review are unacceptable at SIGCOMM. Works must also show respect for norms around privacy, secure storage of sensitive data, voluntary and informed consent for human subjects and users who might be placed at risk, avoiding deceptive practices when not essential, beneficence (maximizing the benefits to an individual or to society while minimizing potential harm to an individual), and risk mitigation. Authors may want to consult the Menlo Report and the ACM ethics policy for further information on ethical principles, and they may find the Allman/Paxson paper in IMC 2007 helpful for a perspective on ethical data sharing. Authors should also consult ACM Publications Policies, especially those around Authors; Plagiarism, Misrepresentation, and Falsification; Research Involving Human Subjects; Prior Publication and Simultaneous Submissions; and Coercion and Abuse.

Many organizations have an ethics review process, sometimes called an Institutional Review Board (IRB), and in many projects, IRB involvement is appropriate. IRB approval of research is an important factor and should be mentioned, but the program committee will independently evaluate the ethical soundness of the work just as they evaluate its technical soundness.

The Program Committee takes a broad view of what constitutes an ethical concern, and the PC chairs may reach out to authors during the review process if questions arise.

Artifact Evaluation for Accepted Papers

The authors of accepted SIGCOMM 2023 papers will be invited to submit supporting materials to the Artifact Evaluation process. Artifact Evaluation is run by a separate committee that will assess how well the submitted artifacts support the work described in the accepted papers. Participation in Artifact Evaluation is voluntary and has no influence on paper acceptance, but it is strongly encouraged. Papers that go through the Artifact Evaluation process successfully will receive badges printed on the papers themselves. Additional details on the Artifact Evaluation process can be found here.