Call for Papers
Overview
The 2024 ACM SIGMETRICS / IFIP Performance conference will be held in Venice, Italy, on June 10-14, 2024.
We solicit papers on the development and application of state-of-the-art, broadly applicable analytic, simulation and measurement-based performance evaluation techniques. The conference provides a high-quality forum for presenting results and discussing ideas that further our knowledge and understanding of the measurement, modeling, analysis, and design of computing systems and networks. Of particular interest is work that presents new performance evaluation methods, or that creatively applies previously developed methods to make predictions about, or gain insights into, key design trade-offs in a variety of computing, networked, and cyber-physical systems, ranging from mobile devices and Internet-of-Things (IoT) applications to large-scale cloud computing systems and the smart grid.
The conference presents papers that have been accepted to appear in the Proceedings of the ACM on Measurement and Analysis of Computing Systems (POMACS). There are multiple deadlines to submit your work in time for a presentation at the conference (see below). A panel of reviewers will consider all accepted and eligible papers for the Best Paper Award and the Stephen S. Lavenberg and Kenneth C. Sevcik Outstanding Student Paper Award. Additionally, a selection of the accepted papers, as identified by a panel of reviewers, may be nominated for publication as Research Highlights in the Communications of the ACM (CACM).
Topics
We solicit papers describing original and previously unpublished research. Specific topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following.
Quantitative measurement, design and evaluation studies of:
- Computer and communication networks, protocols and algorithms
- Wireless, mobile, ad-hoc and sensor networks, quantum networks, IoT applications, and blockchain networks
- Computer architectures, hardware accelerators, multi-core processors, memory systems and storage networks
- High Performance Computing
- Operating systems, file systems and databases
- Virtualization, data centers, distributed and cloud computing, fog and edge computing
- Mobile and personal computing systems
- Energy-efficient computing systems
- Real-time and fault-tolerant systems
- Security and privacy of computing and networked systems
- Software systems and services, and enterprise applications
- Social networks, metaverse, multimedia systems, Web services
- Cyber-physical systems, including the smart grid
Methodologies, formalisms, metrics, solution techniques and algorithms for:
- Analytical modeling techniques and model validation
- Workload characterization and benchmarking
- Performance, scalability, power and reliability analysis
- Sustainability analysis and power management
- System measurement, performance monitoring and forecasting
- Anomaly detection, problem diagnosis and troubleshooting
- Capacity planning, resource allocation, run time management and scheduling
- Experimental design, statistical analysis, simulation
- Game theory, network economics, and platform design
- Machine learning, AI, Big data, data mining, graph analysis, optimization
- Quantum computing
Important Dates
There are three submission opportunities over the course of the year.
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Summer submission website: sigperf24summer.hotcrp.com
- Registration of abstract: August 2, 2023
- Paper submission: August 9, 2023
- TPC Meeting: September 22, 2023 (Friday) or September 23, 2023
- Author notification: September 26, 2023
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Fall submission website: sigperf24fall.hotcrp.com
- Registration of abstract: October 4, 2023
- Paper submission: October 11, 2023
- TPC Meeting: December 8, 2023 (Friday) or December 9, 2023
- Author notification: December 12, 2023
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Winter submission website: sigperf24winter.hotcrp.com
- Registration of abstract: January 24, 2024
- Paper submission: January 31, 2024
- TPC Meeting: March 22, 2024 (Friday) or March 23, 2024
- Author notification: March 26, 2024
Deadlines are hard and at 23:59 AoE (Anywhere on Earth).
Papers may be submitted to any deadline and, upon acceptance, papers will be scheduled for publication in the Proceedings of the ACM on Measurement and Analysis of Computing Systems (POMACS) and presentation at the ACM SIGMETRICS / IFIP Performance 2024 conference.
The journal publication of accepted papers will appear in the issue of POMACS immediately following acceptance; i.e., papers that are accepted for the Summer and Fall deadlines will appear in POMACS before the conference.
Submission Instructions
Papers must be submitted electronically in printable pdf form via the submission site posted on this page. All submissions should satisfy the following requirements:
- Soft tracking: SIGMETRICS / Performance uses “soft” tracking to better match reviewers with submitted papers and to more clearly define the scope of submissions. All submissions, regardless of the selected track, will be treated equally in terms of acceptance criteria and review guidelines. Authors must select a track from among the four listed on the submission website when submitting their paper. Optionally, a second track may be selected only for papers with a strong inter-disciplinary element. For authors who have difficulty selecting a track, the PC chairs will be available to provide advice. The four tracks adopted for SIGMETRICS / Performance 2024 (for all three deadlines) are:
- Learning. Papers in this track make progress on either (i) the design and analysis of machine learning and AI algorithms, broadly defined, or (ii) the application of tools from machine learning and AI, broadly defined, to the design, control, and optimization of computing, networked, social, or cyber-physical systems. The areas of interest include, but are not limited to, learning theory, online learning, reinforcement learning, deep learning, trustworthy learning (causality, fairness, privacy), distributed learning, as well as their applications to systems.
- Measurement & Applied Modeling. Papers in this track make an empirical or applied contribution. They often either (i) draw significant insights from real or synthetic data through access to new data sources or experiments, or through novel analysis of existing data sources; and/or (ii) propose and apply a new model or simulation tool to capture real-world phenomena. Papers in this track may present general-purpose measurement or simulation methodologies, or may focus on a specific application domain, or a particular technology, and explain data obtained from measurements of that domain or technology.
- Systems. Papers in this track make a contribution to the design, implementation, and/or practical evaluation of computing, networked, social, or cyber-physical systems. The areas of interest include, but are not limited to networking, distributed systems, computer architecture, wireless networks, edge/IoT applications, high performance computing, cloud computing, energy efficiency, real-time and fault-tolerant computing, security and privacy, social networks, and cyber-physical systems, including the smart grid. System papers with a strong machine learning and AI focus are encouraged to apply to the Learning track.
- Theory. Papers in this track make progress on existing theoretical problems, propose new ones, or introduce significant new analysis techniques. The areas of interest include, but are not limited to, stochastic processes & applied probability, graph theory, scheduling & resource allocation, queueing theory, caching theory, algorithms, mathematical optimization, control theory, market design & game theory, privacy & security, network science, and algorithmic fairness.
- Up to 20 pages, in single-column acmsmall template format, for technical content (including all tables and figures), plus unlimited pages for references. No changes to margins, spacing, or font sizes are allowed from those specified by the style files. Papers violating the formatting guidelines will be returned without review. Additionally, authors may supplement their paper with an appendix, whose length is not constrained. However it may only be used for the purpose of justifying the technical correctness of their claims stated in the body of the paper, e.g., a subset of the proofs or additional experimental validation. Note that the novelty of the submission will be judged based on the technical content of the paper and the reviewers are not obliged to read the appendix.
- Reviewing is double anonymous (also known as double blind); please do NOT include your name or affiliation on the submission. Please refer to the anonymity guidelines below in the Policies section.
- Authors must truthfully declare all conflicts with program committee members on the submission page. If a paper is found to have undeclared conflicts or has listed false conflicts, the paper may be rejected. Conflicts include shared institutional affiliations, collaborations (joint research, authorship, or funding) that occurred in the last 24 months before the selected submission deadline or are expected in the near future, past or current PhD student/supervisor relationships, and close personal or family relationships.
- Authors are encouraged to conform to the inclusivity guidelines provided in the Diversity and Inclusiveness section below.
The Reviewing Process
Papers invited to present at the SIGMETRICS / Performance conference are journal papers accepted to the Proceedings of the ACM on Measurement and Analysis of Computing Systems (POMACS). The reviewing process for submissions is a hybrid of the traditional conference and journal models in computer science. There are three possible outcomes from the first round of submission:
- Accept with Shepherding: Every accepted paper will be shepherded in order to ensure that important suggestions from the reviewers are incorporated into the final version of the paper. This is similar to the “Minor Revision” outcome at a journal.
- One-shot Revision: This is similar to the “Major Revision” outcome in a journal. In such cases, the authors will receive a list of issues that are required to be addressed before the paper can be accepted. Authors may then submit a revision of the paper during one of the next three submission deadlines (this may fall into ACM SIGMETRICS 2025 deadlines). The revision should include an author response to the issues raised by the reviewers as part of the appendix of the paper. If the paper is not submitted within this time then any resubmission will be treated as a new paper. The outcome after resubmission of a “one-shot revision” will either be “Accept with Shepherding” or “Reject”. The one-shot revision may be rejected, for example, if the reviewers find that the issues they raised were not satisfactorily addressed in the revision. If the revision is accepted as a poster or rejected then any future revision of it may not be resubmitted to any SIGMETRICS deadline within 12 months following the initial submission of the paper.
- Reject: If the paper is rejected it may not be resubmitted to any SIGMETRICS deadline within 12 months following the initial submission of the paper.
Policies
- Anonymity guidelines: ACM SIGMETRICS / IFIP Performance is double anonymous, meaning that authors should make a good faith effort to anonymize their papers. As an author, you should not identify yourself in the paper either explicitly or by implication (e.g., through the references or acknowledgments). However, only non-destructive anonymization is required. For example, system names may be left un-anonymized, if the system name is important for a reviewer to be able to evaluate the work. Specifically, please take the following steps when preparing your submission:
- Remove authors' names and affiliations from the title page.
- Remove acknowledgment of identifying names and funding sources.
- Use care in naming your files. Source file names, e.g., Joe.Smith.dvi, are often embedded in the final output as readily accessible comments.
- Use care in referring to related work, particularly your own. Do not omit references to provide anonymity, as this leaves the reviewer unable to grasp the context. Instead, a good solution is to reference your past work in the third person, just as you would any other piece of related work.
- If you need to reference another submission at ACM SIGMETRICS / IFIP Performance 2024 on a related topic, reference it as follows: "A related paper describes the design and implementation of our compiler [Anonymous 2024]." with the corresponding citation: "[Anonymous 2024] Under submission. Details omitted for double anonymous reviewing."
- If you cite anonymous work, you should also send the deanonymized reference(s) to the PC chairs in a separate email.
- Publication of a pre-submission version of the submission on your personal website, institutional archive, or the arXiv is allowed. We encourage the authors to do so as far away as possible from the submission deadline, as potential reviewers may be automatically notified (e.g., if subscribed to receive updates on recently posted papers). In addition, authors should take care not to widely broadcast information about their arXiv submission, for example, on social media forums or a general press release or large mailing lists where PC members in the recipient list or audience can easily identify the authors.
- PC members and other reviewers are expected to not actively attempt to deanonymize papers. In either case, if there is a breach of double anonymous reviewing, the author and the reviewer should report it to the PC chairs.
- For accepted papers, it is expected that the list of authors will not change between the last submission and the final camera-ready copy. However, papers undergoing a one-shot revision are allowed to add authors between the submissions.
- The paper must have a substantive title and abstract. Placeholders are not allowed after the registration deadline. Any submission that does not have a substantive title and abstract by the registration deadline will be rejected without further notice.
- Submissions must present original research. However, previous publication of preliminary work as an extended abstract at a workshop is acceptable as long as the submission includes substantial new material. Further, in such cases, authors should (i) acknowledge their own previous workshop publications with an anonymous citation, and (ii) explain the differences between the SIGMETRICS / Performance submission and the prior workshop paper. A rule of thumb is that a prior workshop publication should be at most 6 pages long, not including references.
- It is ACM policy not to allow simultaneous submissions, where the same paper is concurrently submitted to more than one conference/journal. Any simultaneous submissions detected will be immediately rejected from all conferences/journals involved, and the authors may be blacklisted if multiple such violations are detected, including across conference editions. It is considered a simultaneous submission for a paper that is being considered for a one-shot revision to be submitted to another conference/journal before being withdrawn from the SIGMETRICS / Performance process. This applies to all papers, i.e., even authors who wish to opt out of POMACS can only submit to a journal after they have received a decision from SIGMETRICS / Performance.
- All accepted papers will undergo a shepherding process. The camera-ready paper must be approved by the shepherd for final publication prior to any upload to the ACM camera-ready management system. No unauthorized changes to the body of the paper or references are allowed in between shepherd approval and camera-ready upload. Violations will be investigated by the conference leadership and may lead to sanctions.
- Authors have the option to “opt out” of publication in the ACM POMACS journal if they would like to publish their work in some other journal. Authors who choose this option must still present their work at the conference and undergo shepherding under the same terms as papers that will appear in ACM POMACS. Additionally, a 1-2 page extended abstract of the work must be included in Performance Evaluation Review. This abstract must contain a link to an online version of the full paper that will be maintained for at least 2 years.
- For papers that decide to “opt out”, an expedited review process of accepted papers will be provided by the following journals: ACM Transactions on Modeling and Performance Evaluation of Computer Systems, Elsevier Performance Evaluation, INFORMS Operations Research, Stochastic Models, and Stochastic Systems. In each case, after you have notified the TPC Chairs of your decision, you should prepare your manuscript using the same preparation guidelines as standard papers for the journals, indicate in the cover letter that the paper was published at SIGMETRICS / Performance, and submit the paper with an authors’ response to the SIGMETRICS / Performance reviews. Note that, in all cases, the paper will undergo a separate reviewing process within these journals, and acceptance at SIGMETRICS / Performance does not guarantee acceptance of the journal submission.
- Papers accompanied by nondisclosure agreement forms will not be considered. All submissions will be treated as confidential prior to publication. Rejected submissions will be permanently treated as confidential.
- To avoid any potential bias, the core conference organizers, including the General Chairs and Program Chairs, will not submit papers to any of the SIGMETRICS / Performance submission deadlines in this call for papers. PC members and other Organizing Committee members, however, are allowed to submit their papers.
Ethical Considerations
Papers describing experiments with users or user data (e.g., network traffic, passwords, social network information), should follow the basic principles of ethical research, e.g., beneficence (maximizing the benefits to an individual or to society while minimizing harm to the individual), minimal risk (appropriateness of the risk versus benefit ratio), voluntary consent, respect for privacy, and limited deception. When appropriate, authors are encouraged to include a subsection describing these issues. Authors may want to consult the Menlo Report for further information on ethical principles, or the Allman/Paxson IMC '07 paper for guidance on ethical data sharing.
Authors must, as part of the submission process, 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’s review process may examine the ethical soundness of the paper just as it examines the technical soundness.
As a published ACM author, you and your co-authors are subject to all ACM Publications Policies, including ACM's new Publications Policy on Research Involving Human Participants and Subjects. In particular, authors must follow the basic research and publication principle outlined by the ACM Publication Board's Policies and Procedures and the ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct. Relevant policies regarding the publication and review processes include ACM's policies (i) on the roles and responsibilities in ACM publishing, (ii) on the coercion and abuse in the ACM publications process, and on plagiarism, misrepresentation, and falsification.
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.
Contact the SIGMETRICS / Performance 2024 PC chairs at sigperf24tpcchairs@sigmetrics.org in case of questions or concerns.
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