Call for IMC 2017 Shadow PC

To provide an educational experience by exposing students to a review process and to subsequently train the next generation of program committee (PC) members, the ACM IMC 2017 TPC would like to make submitted papers available to the shadow PC. Shadow PCs allow students and others interested in future PC service to read submitted papers and go through the reviewing process, ultimately arriving at a shadow conference program. This opportunity allows future PC members to learn first-hand about the peer-review process and gain experience as a reviewer. The shadow PC process is run on a different system and the shadow PC reviewers will not have any access to the real reviews, the names of the real reviewers, or any other data such as relative rankings. Shadow PC reviewers will have to abide by the same rules and restrictions applicable to regular PC members. This includes, but is not limited to, rules against discussing the papers outside of the PC context, or using in any way results from reviewed papers before such papers have been published. Delegated reviews (i.e., external reviews) are not allowed for the shadow PC. Making a submitted paper available to shadow PC is optional; authors will have the opportunity to opt-in during the paper submission process. Shadow reviews for papers that are reviewed by the shadow PC will be sent out after the actual IMC’17 review process.

Authors who have participated in previous shadow PCs have found the additional reviews helpful; however, these reviews will have no bearing on acceptance to the technical program. You can directly contribute to a successful shadow PC and benefit from the additional feedback on your submission by making your paper available to the shadow PC with no extra overhead. Simply indicate your choice in the HotCrp submission site.

Shadow PC Chairs (contact: imc2017shadowpc@sigcomm.org)

Call for applications for TPC

Following a successful model used at other premier technical conferences such as SIGCOMM, CoNext, EuroSys, and NSDI, IMC will be organizing its first Shadow Program Committee in 2017. The Shadow PC will consist of PhD students, postdocs, early-career academics, and junior researchers and will provide reviews on a subset of submissions to the conference. Paper authors can choose to opt-in for shadow reviews.

The IMC Shadow PC will function much like an independent version of the “Senior” PC, including holding an in-person or online PC meeting and deciding the program of papers it would have selected (note that only authors will learn the “shadow” fate of their own papers, which will have no impact on the actual IMC PC process). Shadow PC members will be expected to review a full load of 5-10 papers (depending on the number of submissions selected for the Shadow PC process) on time and participate in online discussion, as well as follow the ethical standards of peer review. Shadow PC members will also be required to do a small amount of reading about the PC process. Shadow PC members must respect the anonymity of the review process and not share which papers they have reviewed or solicit sub-reviews. Shadow PC members who do not adhere to the review deadlines will be excluded from the process. Shadow PC reviews will be made available (anonymized) to the authors.

The Shadow PC meeting will likely be held on July 28, 2017 in NYC and/or London (details TBD). Shadow PC members should attend in-person or online (some travel grants will be available to support attendance). Shadow PC members will not attend the Senior PC meeting, and the Shadow PC program acceptance decisions will not be made available publically. However, some PC members might attend the shadow PC meeting to help with the discussions.

If you are interested in participating, please apply by uploading your application material to https://imc17shadowpc.hotcrp.com submission site by May 26th, 2017, Midnight Pacific time. Your application should consist of a single PDF file which includes a CV and a brief (0.25-1 pg) motivation statement explaining why you’d like to participate in the shadow PC. Be sure to include your name, position/year of study, areas of research experience, publications (feel free to include tech reports, papers under submission/preparation, and unreviewed manuscripts, as long as you indicate them as such) or past reviewing experience (ok to have none).

Shadow PC Members

Shadow PC Chairs (contact: imc2017shadowpc@sigcomm.org)

Shadow PC Members

Important Dates

Conference submission deadline May 18th, 2017
Deadline to apply for Shadow PC May 26th, 2017 (Midnight Pacific time)
Notification of acceptance June 1st, 2017
Shadow review deadline July 20th, 2017
Shadow discussion period July 21-27th, 2017
Shadow PC meeting July 28th, 2017