Call for Papers
The 24th ACM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks (HotNets 2025) will bring together researchers to engage in a lively debate on the theory and practice of computer networking and networked systems. HotNets provides a venue to discuss innovative ideas and debate future research agendas for the field.
We invite researchers and practitioners to submit short position papers. We encourage submissions that identify fundamental open questions, advocate for new approaches, offer constructive critiques of the state of networking research, re-frame or debunk existing work, report unexpected early results from a deployment, report promising but unproven ideas, or propose new evaluation methods. Authors need not support their ideas with full evaluations; we consider well-reasoned arguments or preliminary evaluations sufficient support for the possibility of the paper's claims in HotNets.
We seek interesting ideas over incremental, well-baked systems. An ideal submission has the potential to open a line of inquiry for the networking and adjacent communities. We strongly discourage "conference papers in the miniature." The program committee will explicitly favor early work and papers likely to stimulate reflection and discussion, ideally benefiting the networking community broadly, over incremental work that is ready for publication at a conference.
HotNets takes a broad view of networking research. The scope includes (but is not limited to) new ideas that relate to mobile, wide-area, data-center, home, and enterprise networks and that use a variety of link technologies (e.g. wired, wireless, optical, visual, and acoustic), as well as social networks and network architecture. HotNets encompasses all aspects of networks, which include (but is not limited to) packet-processing and transmission hardware and software, virtualization, mobility, provisioning and resource management, performance, energy consumption, sustainability, topology, robustness, measurement, diagnosis, verification, privacy, security, economics and evolution, theory, usability, machine learning, and interactions with applications.
This year, the program committee will do an initial fast round of reviewing that will provide early rejection or advancement to later rounds of more traditional, thorough reviewing. The program committee will select papers based on originality, likelihood to stimulate insightful discussion, and technical merit. Accepted papers will be posted online prior to the workshop and will be published in the ACM Digital Library to facilitate wide dissemination of the ideas discussed at the workshop.
Policy on Concurrent Submissions
Concurrent submissions to HotNets 2025 and any other peer-reviewed venue that cover the same work (differences in the degree of detail given the two venues' length limits notwithstanding) are prohibited, and will result in the immediate rejection of the HotNets submission in question. "Concurrent" means any other peer-reviewed venue whose reviewing period (i.e., between submission and notification) overlaps with that of HotNets. The "same work" means, for example, a submission overlapping significantly in content with a conference submission. However, a position paper submitted to HotNets (e.g., that reflects broadly on the state of some aspect of the field, adopts a position as to how the field should move forward, or articulates a broad avenue of future work) will not be considered the "same work" as a conference-length paper on a specific system that addresses a point under the broad umbrella covered by the position paper. Authors with questions about this policy should contact the PC co-chairs before submitting.
Ethical Concerns
As part of the submission process, authors must attest that their work complies with all applicable ethical standards of their home institution(s), including, but not limited to privacy policies and policies on experiments involving humans. Note that submitting research for approval by one's institution's ethics review body is necessary, but not sufficient – in cases where the PC has concerns about the ethics of the work in a submission, the PC will have its own discussion of the ethics of that work. The PC takes a broad view of what constitutes an ethical concern, and authors agree to be available at any time during the review process to rapidly respond to queries from the PC chairs regarding ethical standards.
Workshop Participation
HotNets attendance is limited to roughly 90 people in person to facilitate a lively discussion (potentially with additional virtual participants). In-person invitations will be allocated first to one author of each paper, HotNets organizers and committee members, and conference sponsors. We require the paper presentations to be in-person (if authors have any concerns about this, they are welcome to contact the PC chairs). To promote an inclusive workshop, HotNets will also make a limited number of open registration slots for in-person attendance available to the community.
Submission and Formatting
Papers should be formatted according to the two-column ACM proceedings format. Each paper should have no more than 6 pages, excluding references, in 10 point font. There is no limit on the page count for references, however appendices are not allowed. Papers must contain novel ideas and must differ significantly in content from previously published papers.
All submissions must be blind: they must not indicate the names or affiliations of the authors in the
paper. Only electronic submissions in PDF will be accepted. Submissions must be written in English,
render without error using standard tools (e.g., Acrobat Reader), and print on US Letter paper. Each
reference must list all authors of the paper (i.e., do not use "et al."). The citations should
be in numeric style, e.g., [52]. Please make sure that figures and tables are legible, even after the
paper is printed in gray-scale. Papers that exceed the length requirement or deviate from the expected
format will be rejected.
This archive contains a LaTeX
class file that follows the prescribed submission format. The hotnets25-template.tex
included in the archive has the correct defaults for HotNets 2025 submissions. Specifically, the first
two lines should be:
\documentclass[sigconf, 10pt, anonymous, nonacm]{acmart}
\settopmatter{printfolios=true, printccs=false, printacmref=false}
The template uses these margins and they will be checked in the HotCRP format checker. Please ensure that the correct template is being used and that the margins are properly set.
top=57pt (0.792 inches)
bottom=73pt (1.014 inches)
inner=54pt (0.75 inches)
outer=54pt (0.75 inches)
The default citation style is numeric. Please do not modify the acmart.cls file or settings
to try to sneak in additional space.
Submit papers on the HotCRP.
Important Dates
| Paper submission deadline: |
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| Author notification: | September 17, 2025 |