imc-review-process

name	imc-review-process
description	Use when reasoning about how an ACM IMC submission is evaluated, covering double-blind multi-round review, the Accept / One-Shot-Revision / Reject decision categories, the reviewer-champion rule and bounded action points, early rejection of consensus-reject papers, shepherding for artifact availability, and how IMC's two-deadline model differs from SIGCOMM/NSDI cycles.

IMC Review Process

Model the pipeline before interpreting any single review. IMC's process is built around two deadlines a year and a distinctive middle outcome — One-Shot-Revision — that is neither a plain reject nor an open-ended major revision. The most consequential mental shift for authors arriving from a single-round conference is that a good-but-incomplete measurement paper has a bounded path to acceptance across deadlines.

Process model

• Submission and review run on HotCRP with double-blind anonymity maintained through reviewing.
• Review proceeds in several rounds. Papers with a consensus for rejection are notified early, so authors can move the work to another venue without waiting for the full cycle.
• First decisions fall into Accept, One-Shot-Revision, or Reject. Reviewers weigh the significance of the measurement finding, the credibility of vantage points and ground truth, the soundness of methodology, honesty about limitations and confounds, the Ethics treatment, and artifact availability.
• Accepted papers may be shepherded by PC members — notably to ensure the artifacts promised in the availability declaration are actually made available.

The One-Shot-Revision, precisely

Element	What the call specifies
Trigger	At least one reviewer champion advocating the work's relevance and timeliness
Scope	Up to 3 additions/changes — a bounded, concrete action list, not "revise broadly"
Resubmission	To the next deadline in the two-deadline cycle
Re-review	By the same reviewers, against the action points

The strategic reading: a One-Shot-Revision is a contract. It is granted because someone believes in the paper, and it is judged narrowly on whether the named action points were done. Treat it as a near-accept with obligations, not a coin flip (see imc-author-response).

Reading a decision against the categories

Decision	What it means	Author move
Accept	Finding and method hold; shepherding for availability	Deliver the promised artifact; do not reopen scope
One-Shot-Revision	A champion exists; a bounded set of gaps (a missing vantage point, a confound to address, an ethics clarification)	Execute exactly the named action points; resubmit next deadline to the same reviewers
Reject	Structural: unrepresentative vantage points, no ground truth, thin measurement, ethics failure	Reframe or reroute (SIGCOMM/NSDI/CoNEXT/PAM or a journal); do not lightly resubmit unchanged

Design the submission so its weakest point is an addressable action item (an extra vantage point, a longitudinal slice, a bounded confound) rather than a structural flaw (a study design you cannot redo before the next deadline).

How IMC differs from its siblings

• vs. SIGCOMM / NSDI: those reward systems and protocol design with a supporting evaluation; IMC rewards the measurement itself and enforces the Ethics gate and availability declaration harder. Never assume a shared calendar or template.
• vs. a single-deadline conference: IMC's two deadlines plus One-Shot-Revision give a within- year second chance with continuity of reviewers — closer to a lightweight revise-and-resubmit than to "reject and try next year."
• vs. a journal: the revision is one shot and bounded (up to a few action points), not an open iterative loop.

Who reads you

Expect measurement experts who will interrogate vantage-point representativeness, whether ground truth is real, whether the finding is a snapshot artifact of a moving Internet, and whether the active measurement was safe and ethical. Because IMC spans scanning, DNS, routing, web, security, and social measurement, papers are matched to subarea reviewers — a vague methodology gets caught, not skimmed.

Where author leverage actually exists

[Before submission]  topic tags + vantage-point framing -> reviewer pool      (largest lever)
[Initial reviews]    factual corrections, clarifying vantage-point coverage, ethics clarifications
[One-Shot-Revision]  the strongest lever: execute the bounded action points exactly, for the
                     same reviewers, and show each one done
[Shepherding]        deliver the promised artifact; this is about availability, not new science
[After reject]       no appeal; reroute to a sibling venue or a journal

Misreadings to avoid

• Treating One-Shot-Revision as a full rewrite window — you get a bounded action list and the same reviewers; scope creep signals you missed the point.
• Treating One-Shot-Revision as guaranteed — the second read against the action points is real.
• Ignoring the early-reject signal — a consensus-reject notice is a routing prompt, not an invitation to argue.
• Underestimating shepherding — a promised dataset that never materializes is a real problem.
• Projecting last year's cadence — deadline dates and revision mechanics are per-edition.

Output format

[Process stage] pre-submission / awaiting reviews / one-shot-revision / shepherding / accepted
[Decision category] accept / one-shot-revision / reject, with the criterion driving it
[Champion?] is there a reviewer advocate? which review reads closest?
[Action points] <the bounded list to execute for the next deadline>
[Leverage plan] the next-stage action that can actually change the outcome
[Forbidden moves] identity leak / scope creep beyond the action points / undelivered artifact