Call For Papers, ACM IMC 2026

The Internet Measurement Conference (IMC) is a highly selective venue for the presentation of measurement-based research in data communications.

IMC takes a broad view of contributions that are considered in scope for improving the practice of network measurement, including, but not limited to:

• collection and analysis of data that yield new insights about network structure and network performance (e.g., traffic, topology, routing, energy utilization, performance)
• collection and analysis of data that yield new insights about application and end-user behavior (e.g., economics, privacy, security, application interaction with protocols)
• measurement-based modeling (e.g., workloads, scaling behavior, assessment of performance bottlenecks, causality)
• methods and tools to monitor and visualize network-based phenomena
• systems and algorithms that build on measurement-based findings
• theoretical analysis and modeling of networked-systems and measurement techniques
• novel methods for data collection, analysis, and storage (e.g., anonymization, querying, sharing)
• reappraisal of previous empirical network measurements and measurement-based conclusions
• descriptions of challenges and future directions the measurement community should pursue

Networks of interest include:

• Internet transit networks
• edge networks, including home networks, broadband access networks (e.g., cable, fiber), and cellular networks
• data center networks and cloud computing infrastructure
• peer-to-peer, overlay, and content distribution networks
• software-defined networks
• online social networks
• online services, platforms, and content providers
• experimental networks, prototype networks, and future internetworks

Data Availability

As we are in the era of data-driven research, IMC 2026 will focus on advancing the state of the art in the collection, usage, analysis, and sharing of network measurements for the research community. Despite the efforts in stimulating reproducibility of research as well as sharing of data, little progress has been made in our community to make research data open. Therefore, our attention when assessing contributions will be particularly on the willingness of the authors to share their data and make their work reproducible.

To encourage data sharing and reproducibility, authors will be required to make a declaration on artifact availability (full, partial, or no availability) for the submitted work. Since legitimate reasons (such as proprietary and privacy reasons) may prevent authors from sharing artifacts, papers will be assessed based on whether the contributions warrant acceptance despite the lack of artifact availability. In the case of no availability of artifacts, the authors are expected to explain why this is the case in a specific section. Artifact submission is not required at the paper submission time. All papers accepted to the program will be shepherded to ensure that the artifacts promised have been made available.

Replicability Track:

IMC 2026 will continue the Replicability Track for submissions that aim to reproduce or replicate network measurement results that have been previously published at IMC or other top-tier related venues (e.g., SIGCOMM, SIGMETRICS, USENIX, CCS, etc.) on topics of interest for the IMC community. Priority will be given to replicability studies, although reproducibility studies are also in scope. For the definitions, please see ACM’s site.

Submissions to this track are two-phase. Prospective authors are invited to submit an Expression of Interest (EoI) via the submission system in the form of a 1-page abstract, which must explain:

- Which paper the authors aim to replicate
- Whether the paper will be replicated or reproduced
- What the IMC community stands to learn from the replication or reproduction
- The chosen approach, and why it will lead to new insights

A small committee will evaluate the EoIs and their potential to be of interest to the IMC community. The authors of strong abstracts will receive an invitation to a full submission.

The EoI serves to avoid misunderstandings and disappointment for authors, as we acknowledge that replicating or reproducing a paper is a significant effort to which potential authors would commit much time.

Full submissions will then be assessed by the TPC and must conform to the same criteria and rules as full submissions on the main track (see below).

See the Important Dates section for the EoI deadline. Full submissions have the same deadlines (abstract registration and full submission) as the IMC Spring deadline.

Papers accepted in this program will have the opportunity to present their work as part of IMC’s main technical track, a poster, or both.

Review process and criteria

IMC 2026 invites two forms of submissions:

• Full papers (up to 13 pages for text and figures + unlimited pages for references and appendix) that describe original research, with succinctness appropriate to the topics and themes they discuss.
• Short papers (up to 6 pages for text and figures + unlimited pages for references and appendix) that convey work that is less mature but shows exciting promise, OR offer results that do not merit a full submission. Short papers could articulate a high-level vision and describe challenging future directions that the authors believe the community should tackle; validate, verify, or update important results; or present new ideas that challenge existing assumptions. Reviewers will be reminded of the specific expectations for short papers.

Authors should submit only original work that has not been published before and is not under submission to any other venue. We will consider full paper submissions that extend previously published short, preliminary papers (including IMC short papers), in accordance with the SIGCOMM policy and the ACM Plagiarism Policy. The ACM policy on simultaneous submissions does not consider technical reports (including arXiv) to be concurrent publication or submission. This year we will also ask authors to declare if a previous version of their paper was submitted at past editions of IMC or to any other ACM conference.

The review process will have several reviewing rounds. To allow authors time to improve their work and submit to other venues, authors of submissions for which there is a consensus on rejection will be notified early.

Similar to last year, IMC 2026 will have two deadlines per year (November 20th, 2025 and April 29th, 2026) and an optional one-shot-revision process across deadlines. The key goal of these deadlines is (i) to further enhance the quality and timeliness of the papers we publish; (ii) provide more flexibility in submission timing, with guaranteed timeliness of reviews; (iii) allowing exciting but not-yet-ready papers to receive a one-shot-revision decision in lieu of rejection (allowed only for one round); and allow researchers to spread out their submissions across the year and submit high quality work. As a result, there are three possible outcomes for submitted papers.

● Accept: Accepted papers from both deadlines will be presented at the IMC conference and appear as part of the proceedings. Accepted papers submitted to the November deadline will appear as accepted on the IMC website and the authors will be permitted to talk about these upcoming publications, for example listing them on their CVs.

● One-Shot-Revision: Papers marked with this outcome will be given specific action points and can be resubmitted during the next deadline. At that point, the same reviewers will judge them. This judgment will be made on the basis of whether the authors have satisfied the requests accompanying the revision decision. Unlike in the shepherding process, the requested action points may include running additional experiments that obtain specific results (e.g., comparing performance against a certain alternative and beating it by at least 10%). During this revision period, the paper is still considered under review to IMC and therefore cannot be submitted to other conferences unless the authors first withdraw it from consideration. The one-shot revisions can be submitted to the next immediate deadline: Authors of papers with one-shot-revision decisions in IMC 2026 Cycle 1 will have 3 months to work on their revision, with a delayed resubmission deadline set to IMC 2026 Cycle 2 of June 4, 2026. Authors of papers with one-shot-revision decisions in IMC 2026 Cycle 2 can resubmit their paper to IMC 2027 Cycle 1.
We expect a small fraction of papers to receive one-shot revisions. To avoid overwhelming the review process, the criteria for selecting the one-shot-revision option requires at least one champion among reviewers, advocating for the relevance and timeliness of the work; only up to 3 additions/changes to the paper can be asked; and the TPC must agree that if those 3 conditions are satisfied then there is no doubt that the paper deserves to be accepted.

● Reject: Rejected papers cannot be resubmitted at the next deadline. Approximately 12 months must pass since the last IMC deadline they were submitted to. Thus, papers rejected from IMC 2025 Cycle 2 cannot be submitted to IMC 2026 Cycle 1. This includes rejected short papers that authors intend to extend to the long format for a new submission. They can be submitted to IMC 2026 Cycle 2.

IMC 2026 will bestow three awards on paper submissions, (1) a Best Paper award; (2) a Best Student Paper award; and (3) a Community Contribution award. All accepted papers are eligible for the best paper award; the best student paper award is limited to papers whose main author is a student at the time of submission. The community contribution award will recognize a paper with an outstanding contribution to the community in the form of a new dataset, source code distribution, open platform, or other noteworthy service to the community. To be eligible for the community award, the authors must make data or source code publicly available or have a software artifact that is accessible and usable by the public at the time of the camera-ready deadline. The authors indicate their eligibility on the submission form and are also encouraged to include a link to the contribution in the submitted paper.

A few accepted papers may be forwarded for fast-track submission to IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking.

Detailed submission instructions

For all information about paper submission—including anonymity, ethics, use of generative AI, and paper formatting—please see the Detailed Submission Instructions page.

Dates

Cycle 1 Deadline

Cycle 2 Deadline

Note: 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 your conference. The official publication date affects the deadline for any patent filings related to published work.

Update on ACMs new open access publishing model for 2026

Starting January 1, 2026, ACM will fully transition to Open Access. All ACM publications, including those from ACM-sponsored conferences, will be 100% Open Access. Authors will have two primary options for publishing Open Access articles with ACM: the ACM Open institutional model or by paying Article Processing Charges (APCs). With over 2,700+ institutions already part of ACM Open with more institutions joining from around the world every week, the majority of ACM-sponsored conference papers will not require APCs from authors or conferences (currently, around 75% on average across all ACM-sponsored conferences).

Authors from institutions not participating in ACM Open will need to pay an APC to publish their papers, unless they qualify for a geographic or discretionary financial hardship waiver. To find out whether an APC applies to your article, please consult the list of participating institutions in ACM Open and review the Policy on Geographic APC Waivers and Discounts Policy and the Policy on Discretionary APC Waivers. Keep in mind that discretionary waivers are rare and are granted based on specific criteria set by ACM. Simply sending a message to ACM indicating an inability to pay an APC is typically insufficient justification for such a waiver. Waivers are based on the specific circumstances of the author(s) requesting the waiver. ACM does take seriously into consideration the institutional affiliation of the authors and whether it is a reasonable expectation that their institution should be joining the ACM Open program. This is necessary for the long-term financial sustainability of the ACM Open model.

Understanding that this change could present financial challenges, ACM has approved a temporary subsidy for 2026 to ease the transition and allow more time for institutions to join ACM Open. The subsidy will offer:

● $250 APC for ACM/SIG members

● $350 for non-members

This represents a 65% discount off the regular APC list prices, funded directly by ACM. Authors are encouraged to help advocate for their institutions to join ACM Open during this transition period. This temporary subsidized pricing will apply to all conferences scheduled for 2026.

Diversity and Inclusiveness

As part of our efforts at fostering diversity and inclusiveness, we provide the following guidelines to assist you when preparing your paper submission and/or your conference presentation.

Inclusivity Guidelines: Good technical writing often requires pedagogical examples to explain complex ideas. These provide an opportunity to promote inclusiveness by challenging implicit biases and assumptions.

• Avoid gender-specific pronouns if possible. Where required, consider interspersing a balance of male (“he”, “his”), female (“she”, “her”), and gender-neutral (“they”, “their”) ones.
• Use gender-neutral names in examples. Instead of Alice and Bob, try Alex and Jun. Consider names that reflect a variety of cultural backgrounds: Esteban, Naveena, Sasha, Sergey, Tuan, Xin, and so on.
• Refrain from assuming binary gender. For instance, the “gender” column in a table of data should have more than just “male” and “female” values.
• Be mindful of people’s diverse backgrounds. Not everyone has two parents. Not every marriage involves “husband” and “wife”. Not everyone lives in a house, or has a car.

Accessibility Guidelines: Color and hearing perception varies from person to person depending on age, color blindness, distance, visual acuity, etc. Make sure that the contents of your paper are accessible to all, by considering the following:

• Use patterns, symbols, and textures to emphasize and contrast visual elements in graphs and figures, rather than using colors alone. Graphs should be readable either in monochrome or color versions.
• Use a color palette that is designed for visually-impaired or color-blind people. Avoid poor color combinations such as green/red or blue/purple.

Submission Site

For Cycle 1 submission (deadline November 20, 2025), please submit your paper at https://imc2026-cycle1.hotcrp.com/.

For Cycle 2 submission (deadline April 29, 2026), please submit your paper at https://imc2026-cycle2.hotcrp.com/.

Please submit your Expression of Interest for the Replicability Track (deadline December 16, 2025) at https://imc2026-repro.hotcrp.com/.