imc-submission

IMC Submission

Run this audit before uploading to the IMC HotCRP site. IMC — the ACM Internet Measurement Conference, sponsored by ACM SIGCOMM — judges a submission on what it measured about the real Internet and how, so the mechanics below are where good measurement work is needlessly lost. Every number was read from the IMC 2026 call and submission instructions and the IMC 2025 call on 2026-07-09 via search renderings (see resources/official-source-map.md); treat them as a one-cycle snapshot and reopen the live pages first.

Pick the cycle first

IMC runs two deadlines a year (cycle 1 ~20 Nov 2025, cycle 2 ~29 Apr 2026). This is a real choice, not a formality:

• The One-Shot-Revision path resubmits to the next deadline with the same reviewers, so a cycle-1 submission that earns a revision lands back in cycle 2. If your data collection finishes late, cycle 2 may be the honest target rather than rushing cycle 1.
• Registration precedes submission by roughly a week (cycle 1: register ~13 Nov 2025). Miss registration and no PDF slot exists.

Format and page budget

• ACM acmart template, in the required review format, unmodified. This is the ACM path — do not carry an IEEE two-column habit across from a sibling networking venue.
• Upload the BBL file of your references on the reviewing system, as the submission instructions require — a missing BBL is a preventable processing failure.
• Page budget (IMC 2025 basis; confirm 2026): full papers up to 13 pages of text and figures + unlimited references and appendix; short papers up to 6 pages of text and figures. Any paper with more than 6 pages of technical content is reviewed as a full paper.
• The appendix is unlimited but may not be used to dodge the body limit — the page-limited body must be self-contained and decision-complete.

Double-blind sweep (including infrastructure)

IMC uses double-blind review: no author names or affiliations, no identifying grant numbers, and third-person references to your own prior work. Measurement papers leak identity in ways a generic checklist misses:

# Mechanical pass on the submission PDF
pdfinfo paper.pdf | grep -Ei 'author|creator|producer'
pdftotext paper.pdf - | grep -nEi 'github\.com/[a-z0-9-]+|zenodo\.org/record|acknowledg|grant|@[a-z0-9.]*\.edu' | head

The measurement-specific leaks: a vantage point or testbed that only your group operates, an AS number or probe hostname that names your institution, a RIPE Atlas measurement ID tied to your account, a released-dataset URL on a personal or lab domain, and acknowledgements to the operators who gave you access. Anonymize the infrastructure description, not just the byline.

The Ethics section is a gate

IMC requires a clearly marked Ethics section or appendix; a paper without one may be rejected. This is not boilerplate:

• Human subjects / user data (traffic, DNS queries, social data, credentials): document IRB approval or exemption, and attach the anonymized determination form if required. Reason explicitly against Belmont Report principles — respect for persons (consent), beneficence (risk vs. benefit), justice (who bears risk vs. who benefits).
• Active measurement: argue that probing does not harm targets or intermediary networks, name opt-out/blocklist handling, and rate-limit disclosure.
• Vulnerability or exposure findings: state a responsible-disclosure plan and its timeline.

Write this section early (see imc-experiments); ethics approvals cannot be retrofitted at the deadline.

Artifact-availability declaration

Every submission carries a declaration: full, partial, or no availability.

• Prefer full: an anonymized dataset/tool link the reviewers can inspect.
• No availability is acceptable only with a stated legitimate reason (proprietary data, privacy, legal) in a specific section — a silent "none" reads as a weakness.
• Accepted papers are shepherded to deliver what was promised, so do not over-declare.

Desk-risk triage

Final-week order of operations

1. Freeze the measurement narrative early; the finding and its vantage points cannot churn.
2. Register title/abstract/authors/conflicts before the registration cutoff.
3. Write the Ethics section and confirm IRB/disclosure documentation is ready.
4. Build the anonymized dataset/tool link and set the availability declaration honestly.
5. Run the mechanical anonymity checks — including infrastructure — on the final PDF.
6. Upload the PDF and the BBL, fill every HotCRP field (topics, conflicts for every coauthor's institution and recent collaborators) a day early, then re-download and read the PDF cold.

Reverify each cycle

• Exact deadline/registration dates and which cycle you are targeting.
• The page limits and acmart variant.
• Ethics-statement wording and the IRB-form requirement.
• Artifact-declaration options and any responsible-disclosure or AI-use rule — all cycle-volatile.

Output format

[IMC submission status] ready / blocked / needs work
[Cycle] deadline 1 / deadline 2, registered by the cutoff? yes/no
[Format] pages used (body/refs), acmart compliance, BBL uploaded?
[Anonymity] clean / leaks: <where, incl. vantage points>
[Ethics] section present? IRB/disclosure documented? yes/no
[Availability] declaration full/partial/none + justification if none
[Fix queue] <ordered, with owners and dates before the AoE cutoff>