conext-topic-selection

name	conext-topic-selection
description	Use when deciding whether a networking project belongs at ACM CoNEXT or should be routed to SIGCOMM, NSDI, IMC, SIGMETRICS, MobiCom, or HotNets, and when using CoNEXT's two-cycles-per-year calendar and PACMNET journal-style fit to choose the venue and the cycle by contribution shape and evidence maturity.

CoNEXT Topic Selection

Decide the venue and the cycle before drafting. CoNEXT — the ACM International Conference on emerging Networking EXperiments and Technologies, sponsored by ACM SIGCOMM — is a broad systems-and-measurement networking venue whose research papers are PACMNET journal articles. Reviewers read for a durable networking contribution evaluated on the real target (a testbed, deployment, or trace), not a one-conference result. A technically strong paper whose real lesson is about pure theory, pure ML, or a non-networking system is respected and then rejected as out of scope.

The two routing questions that matter most

Networking has several strong flagships with overlapping scope, so ask two things:

1. Which networking community and rigor bar fits this contribution? (CoNEXT vs. SIGCOMM/NSDI/ IMC/SIGMETRICS/MobiCom.)
2. Which of CoNEXT's two cycles is the nearest honest deadline my evidence is ready for? (December vs. June — a real lever unique to CoNEXT.)

A strong paper is often publishable at more than one venue; the nearer honest deadline and the best community fit usually win.

Sibling-venue routing table

Signal in your project	Better home	Why
Broad networking contribution — systems, measurement, or architecture — evaluated on a real platform, ready for the nearer CoNEXT cycle	CoNEXT	Two-cycle PACMNET track; broad systems-networking scope
Top-tier, polished result aimed at the field's most selective single-deadline stage	SIGCOMM	The flagship; single annual deadline, its own bar and calendar
Systems paper centered on a built-and-deployed networked system with a strong implementation story	NSDI	Networked-systems design and implementation focus; USENIX proceedings
The whole contribution is a measurement study of the Internet or a large system	IMC	Purpose-built internet-measurement venue
Core is performance modeling, analysis, or evaluation methodology	SIGMETRICS	Measurement-and-modeling home (also a PACMNET-family stream)
Wireless/mobile systems are the heart	MobiCom / MobiSys	Mobile/wireless-systems scope
Early idea or position with an argument but little evaluation	HotNets (or CoNEXT Student Workshop)	Venue for provocative early work

Contribution shapes CoNEXT rewards

• Systems + implementation + evaluation on the real target — a new mechanism in the data plane, transport, routing, or the network stack, built and run on real hardware or a faithful testbed (the ASIC-switch-insertions lineage).
• Internet / systems measurement — a campaign that changes what the community believes about how networks or protocols behave in the wild (the QUIC/TLS-performance lineage).
• Network architecture with deployment or scalability evidence — a design shown running and scaling, not merely proposed (the inter-domain multi-path lineage).
• Operational / traffic-engineering systems — measurement plus intervention at real carrier/operator scale (the hyper-giants lineage).
• Wireless and low-power networking — a model or protocol that respects a real device constraint and is validated on a testbed (the ultra-low-power broadcast lineage).

The platform-realism and re-label tests

Two quick tests sharpen a borderline verdict:

• Platform-realism test: is the central claim evaluated on the real target the paper is about (switch, NIC, kernel, testbed, deployment, or real trace), or does a simulation stand in for hardware? CoNEXT rewards evidence on the real platform; a simulation-only systems claim is a re-route or a revision risk.
• Re-label test: could this paper be submitted to IMC (pure measurement), NSDI (a built system), or a theory venue unchanged and read as native there? If its heart is one of those, route accordingly; CoNEXT rewards the broad networking framing with real-platform evidence.

The model-swap test (for ML-for-networking papers)

If your paper leans on a learner or LLM, ask whether the networking lesson survives swapping the model for another. If not, the model is the contribution and an ML venue fits better; if the lesson is about the network (a measured phenomenon, a deployable mechanism), CoNEXT fits — evaluate it on the real target and add a contamination-aware ablation (see conext-experiments).

Evidence maturity, without the ladder cliché

Fit is necessary but not sufficient: the same idea sits at different doors depending on how far the evidence has come. An idea with an argument but little evaluation is a HotNets or Student-Workshop paper; a mechanism evaluated only in simulation needs a testbed before the research track; a measurement too preliminary for the bar belongs in a workshop first. Submitting one step early earns a "promising, but..." — but CoNEXT's two cycles soften this: the next honest deadline is months away, not a year.

Cheap reconnaissance before committing

[Scope]   scan the last two CoNEXT programs (dblp, conferences.sigcomm.org) for your subarea
          -> 3+ recent papers = a reviewer pool exists; 0 = opening or mismatch
[Citations] is your bibliography majority networking venues (CoNEXT/SIGCOMM/NSDI/IMC/SIGMETRICS)?
          -> majority non-networking => reviewers read you as a visitor; naturalize the intro first
[Calendar] which CoNEXT cycle (Dec/Jun) is next, vs. SIGCOMM/NSDI/IMC dates -> route to the nearest
          honest fit rather than waiting for a marginal preference

Decision procedure

[Audience] who acts differently if the claim holds? -> operators / protocol designers / systems builders / researchers?
[Claim type] systems mechanism / measurement / architecture / operational / wireless
[Platform] is it evaluated on the real target, or only simulated? -> real => CoNEXT-ready
[CoNEXT vs siblings] pure measurement -> IMC; built system with deep impl -> NSDI; top polish -> SIGCOMM
[Cycle] December vs June -> nearest honest deadline the evidence is ready for
[Verdict] CoNEXT <cycle> / sibling venue / workshop, with a one-line reason

Run this before the writing skills; a wrong venue or cycle decision wastes every later step. When the verdict is CoNEXT, continue with conext-workflow for the calendar and conext-writing-style for the paper shape.