Submission Rules
Submissions violating the formatting and anonymization rules will not be considered for publication. There will be no extensions for reformatting.
The instructions are similar in spirit to ones used for other conferences with double-blind reviewing (submissions and reviews are anonymous). If you have any questions, feel free to send email to tom @ cs.washington.edu.
Good luck with your submission!
Formatting rules
Submitted papers must be no longer than fourteen (14) 8.5"x11" pages, using a 10 point font on 12 point (single spaced) leading, with a maximum text block of 6.5 inches wide by 9 inches deep. The page limit includes everything: references, title page, figures, appendices, etc. Please take note of the following:
- Submissions should be anonymous. On the front page, in place of the authors' names, the paper should indicate: the paper ID number assigned during the paper registration process and the total number of pages in the submission.
- Pages should be numbered. (For the submission, you may be better off not using the SIG template; just use the standard latex "article" format in 10, or larger, point double column, so that pages are numbered.)
- The paper should print well on black-and-white printers, not color printers. This is especially true for plots and graphs in the paper.
- The output should be formatted for printing on LETTER (8.5" x 11") size paper, with 10-point font and 12-point spacing. All material (except page numbers) should be in a 6.5" by 9" block on each page. The block should be formatted with two columns, with 0.25" separation between the two columns.
- Symbols and labels used in the graphs should be readable as printed, and not only with a 20x on-screen magnification.
- Try to limit the file size to less than 15 MB.
Anonymizing rules
Please make a good faith effort to anonymize your paper. 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. For example, a paper on experiences with the design of .NET should not be re-written to be about "an anonymous but widely used commercial distributed systems platform".
Additionally, please take the following steps when preparing your submission:
- Remove authors' names and affiliations from the title page.
- Remove acknowledgement 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 have a concurrent submission, reference it as follows: "Closely related work describes a microkernel implementation [Anonymous 2007]." with the corresponding citation: "[Anonymous 2007] Under submission. Details omitted for double-blind reviewing."
- If you cite anonymous work, you must also send the deanonymized reference(s) to the chair in separate email.
We recognize that, even following these guidelines, closely building on your own prior work may indirectly reveal your identity.
Writing Advice
Lots of papers and books have been written about how to write a good paper. We strongly suggest that you read the following:
- An Evaluation of the Ninth SOSP Submissions; or, How (and How Not) to Write a Good Systems Paper.
This was written by Roy Levin and David D. Redell, the program committee co-chairs for SOSP-9, and first appeared in ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review, Vol. 17, No. 3 (July, 1983), pages 35-40. - The Science of Scientific Writing, George D. Gopen and Judith A. Swan, In American Scientist, Vol. 78, No. 6 (Nov-Dec, 1990), pp. 550-558.
This article describes not how to write an entire paper, but how to write sentences and paragraphs that readers can understand.
For matters of English usage, style, and taste we strongly recommend that you purchase and consult this little gem of a book:
- The Elements of Style. William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White. Macmillan Publishing Co., New York, 1979.