atc-submission

name	atc-submission
description	Use when auditing an ATC (ACM SIGOPS Annual Technical Conference, formerly USENIX ATC) submission for HotCRP readiness — the paired two-page extended abstract plus full paper, the two-column 12/6-page budget, the double-blind anonymity sweep, ACM Open Access publication, and desk-reject triage before the early-June AoE cutoff.

ATC Submission

Run this audit before uploading to the ATC HotCRP site (atc26.hotcrp.com). ATC 2026 is the first ACM SIGOPS Annual Technical Conference — the continuation of the former USENIX ATC — so the process changed in the handover: a new two-round, extended-abstract review, a June deadline, a Hong Kong / November conference, and ACM Open Access publication. Every number below was read from the ATC 2026 SIGOPS call and the USENIX ATC '25 pages on 2026-07-09 via search renderings (see resources/official-source-map.md); treat them as a one-cycle snapshot and reopen the live call first.

The paired upload (the thing authors miss)

ATC's first review round judges a two-page extended abstract, uploaded together with the full paper in one HotCRP submission:

• The extended abstract gives the motivation and contribution and is for review only — it is not published.
• It must stand on its own: a round-one reviewer may read only the abstract, and a round-two reviewer may read only the paper. Neither may assume the other.
• A copy of the introduction can serve as the abstract only if it fits two pages and reads self-contained — usually it needs tightening, not just truncation.

If your submission has a strong paper but a weak, dependent abstract, you can be cut in round one before anyone opens the PDF. Audit the abstract as hard as the paper.

Format and page budget

• Two-column format: text block 178 × 229 mm (7 × 9 in), 10-point Times Roman (or similar) on 12-point single-spaced leading, A4 or US letter. This is the classic USENIX systems layout; whether the SIGOPS edition mandates the USENIX template file or an ACM equivalent is 待核实 — confirm on the call.
• Page budget: full papers ≤ 12 pages, short papers ≤ 6 pages, excluding references and appendices but including all text, figures, tables, and footnotes.
• Reviewers are not required to read appendices; nothing that decides acceptance may live only in an appendix (see atc-supplementary).

Double-blind sweep

ATC review is double-blind: reviewer and author identities are mutually concealed. Because systems papers lean on code, testbeds, and system names, the leak surface is wide:

# Mechanical pass on the submission PDF and any anonymized artifact archive
pdfinfo paper.pdf | grep -Ei 'author|creator|producer'
pdftotext paper.pdf - | grep -nEi 'github\.com/[a-z0-9-]+|gitlab|zenodo\.org/record|acknowledg|grant|our (prior|previous) (system|work)' | head
unzip -l artifact.zip | grep -Ei '\.git/|\.DS_Store|/home/|/Users/|hostname' | head
grep -rniE 'university|@[a-z0-9.]+\.edu|cluster [a-z0-9-]+|internal-|corp\.' artifact/ --include='*.md' --include='*.sh' | head

The systems-specific leaks: a system named after your group or product, a cluster hostname in a log or config, a git remote inside a zipped repo, an acknowledgments/funding line, and citing your own prior system as "our system X." Cite your own work in the third person and never write "reference removed for blind review." Mirror any linked repository behind a blind service before upload.

Desk-risk triage

Finding at audit time	Severity	Real fix
No extended abstract, or it does not stand alone	Round-one failure	Write/tighten a self-contained 2-page abstract; verify it reads without the paper
Main text over the 12/6-page budget	Desk-reject-grade	Cut or move to an appendix; references/appendices do not absorb body text
Format altered (margins, column width, shrunk font)	Desk-reject ground	Recompile to the two-column spec; recover space editorially
Identity leak in PDF, artifact, system name, or self-citation	Anonymity violation	Re-anonymize, re-host, scrub metadata, third-person self-cites
Same work under review elsewhere	Concurrent-submission exposure	Withdraw one venue; verify the current concurrent-submission wording
Claims with no runnable evidence	Scored weakness	Add the anonymized artifact and a claim-to-experiment map

Final-week order of operations

1. Freeze the system and results early; prose can churn, the measurements cannot.
2. Write the extended abstract last but audit it first — read it cold, without the paper, and check the problem, contribution, testbed, and result all land in two pages.
3. Run the double-blind checks on the final PDF, the final extended abstract, and the final artifact archive — not on drafts.
4. Fill every HotCRP field — topic tags that match your evidence, conflicts for every coauthor's institution and recent collaborators — a day early; late conflicts are the classic midnight failure.
5. Confirm the exact deadline day on the SIGOPS call (renderings disagree on 1 vs. 10 June 2026 — 待核实) and target AoE, not local midnight.
6. Re-download both uploaded PDFs and read them cold to confirm they are the files you meant.

Reverify each cycle

• The exact June deadline day, the abstract/paper pairing rule, and whether the two-round model persists.
• The page budget and which template file (USENIX vs. ACM) is required (待核实).
• Whether the Deployed Systems / experience track is offered (待核实), the artifact-track timing, concurrent-submission wording, and any AI-disclosure rule.
• ACM Open Access / APC terms and waivers.

Output format

[ATC submission status] ready / blocked / needs work
[Extended abstract] present and self-standing? yes/no
[Format] pages used (body/refs), two-column template compliance
[Anonymity] clean / leaks: <where>
[Artifact] anonymized runnable package linked? claim-to-experiment map present?
[Fix queue] <ordered, with owners and dates before the early-June AoE cutoff>