Call for Papers
The ACM SIGCOMM 2020 conference seeks papers describing significant research contributions to the field of communication networks and networked systems. SIGCOMM'20 takes a broad view of networking research, which includes (but not limited to) the following topics:
- All types of networks such as mobile, wide-area, data-center, home, enterprise networks, internet-of-things, and social networks.
- All types of technologies such as wired, wireless, visual, and acoustic.
- All aspects of networks and networked systems such as architecture, packet-processing hardware and software, virtualization, mobility, sensors, resource management, performance, energy consumption, topology, robustness, security, diagnosis, verification, privacy, economics and evolution, and interactions with applications.
- All types of design and experimental approaches such as theory, measurements, and machine learning-based techniques.
We want each SIGCOMM'20 paper to significantly advance the state-of-the-art in networking, for instance, by proposing and developing novel ideas or rigorously (re-)evaluating existing ideas. The review process will take the nature of the contribution into account. We encourage authors to discuss not only the benefits but also the limitations of their work.
SIGCOMM'20 will have a separate operational systems track. Papers in this track describe the design, implementation, analysis, and experience with large-scale, operational systems and networks. While they may not necessarily describe new ideas, they are welcome if they disprove or strengthen existing assumptions, deepen the understanding of existing problems, and validate known techniques at scales or environments in which they were never applied before. The goal of these papers is to provide new insights and learnings to the networking research community that can only be obtained from real world implementation and deployments. Authors should indicate in the submission form and paper title that they are submitting to this track. (The final version of the program will not keep this distinction.) Submissions to the operational systems track should also be double-blind. However, given the nature of these papers, it is OK to reveal company or system name (but NOT author names).
In addition to the main conference, SIGCOMM 2020 will have a series of co-located workshops, tutorials, poster and demo sessions, a travel grant program, and conference best paper and SIGCOMM awards.
Submissions
Submissions must be in 2-column, 10-point format and can be up to 12 pages long, with as many additional pages as necessary for references and optional appendices. Detailed submission instructions will be included on the conference Web page.
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. For accepted papers, the shepherd will review appendices and must approve their need. Appendices may also include non-traditional material, such as videos, datasets, and code, all appropriately anonymized as needed.
NOTE: 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.)
Submission site: http://sigcomm2020.hotcrp.com
Detailed submission instructions
Important dates
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Friday, Feb 7, 2020
Paper submission deadline
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Friday, May 15, 2020 (tentative)
Notification date (tentative)
There is no separate paper registration or abstract submission deadline. However, authors are encouraged to register their papers early to familiarize themselves with the submission site and avoid any unexpected last minute glitches.
Ethical Concerns
All papers must include, in the main body of the paper, a statement about ethical issues. This could be simply the sentence “This work does not raise any ethical issues.” If the work involves human subjects or potentially sensitive data (e.g., user traffic or social network information, evaluation of censorship, etc), the paper should clearly discuss these issues, perhaps in a separate subsection.
Papers must follow basic precepts of ethical research and subscribe to community norms. These include respect for privacy, secure storage of sensitive data, voluntary and informed consent if human subjects are involved or other people are 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 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.
Many organizations have an ethics review process (sometimes called an Institutional Research Board, IRB). In some cases, research work may clearly have no human subjects, and formal institutional review may not be required. (However, a sentence in the paper stating this evaluation is still required.) In many cases, IRB involvement is appropriate. IRB approval of research is an important factor (and should be mentioned), but the TPC will still evaluate ethical soundness of the work, just as they evaluate technical soundness.
If there are questions about the ethics process, please contact the program committee chairs. The PC 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.
