atc-related-work

ATC Related Work

Position the paper in the systems literature, not against a strawman. ATC's broad scope means your reviewers span subareas, and a related-work section that a storage reviewer and a networking reviewer both find fair is a signal the paper is well situated. Because review is double-blind, positioning and self-citation must be handled carefully.

Cover the lanes a systems reviewer expects

For most ATC papers, at least these lanes should be visible:

• The direct predecessors — the systems and techniques you build on or replace, with the specific mechanism you change.
• The alternative approaches — other ways the community has attacked this problem, and why yours differs (not just "we are better," but how the design differs and what that buys).
• The adjacent subareas — where an idea from storage, networking, virtualization, or scheduling informs your design; ATC reviewers respect cross-pollination when it is credited.
• The measurement/experience literature — prior studies of the phenomenon you address, so your motivation rests on evidence, not assertion.

Delta-first positioning

Write each comparison delta-first: state what the prior system does, then the specific difference and its consequence.

• Weak: "Unlike X, our system is more efficient."
• Strong: "X admits objects on first reference, spending write budget before reuse is known; our policy defers admission to a probation window, so writes concentrate on reused objects — the difference we measure in §4."

A delta a reviewer can check against your evaluation is worth more than a paragraph of adjectives. Every claimed delta should map to an experiment (see atc-experiments).

Sibling-venue awareness

ATC sits among specialized and flagship systems venues, and reviewers will expect you to engage the right literature regardless of where it appeared:

• OSDI / SOSP: the flagship line for your subarea — cite the landmark systems even though ATC is broader; ignoring them reads as unfamiliarity.
• NSDI: for anything touching the network stack, dataplanes, or protocols.
• FAST: for storage and file-system work.
• EuroSys: the other broad SIGOPS-family systems venue — closely related programs.
• Workshops (HotOS/HotStorage): where the idea may have first appeared as a position.

Do not misattribute a landmark to ATC because it is famous — many canonical systems papers are OSDI/SOSP/NSDI (see resources/exemplars/library.md for the guardrail list). Cite each to its real venue.

Double-blind self-citation

• Cite your own prior systems and papers in the third person — "System X [12] admits on first reference" — never "our prior system."
• Do not write "reference removed for blind review"; keep the citation, anonymized in phrasing.
• Watch for implicit de-anonymization: an unusual system name, a niche testbed, or a dataset only your group has can identify you as surely as a name. Neutralize the phrasing or note it generically.
• If a comparison genuinely requires your non-anonymous artifact, mirror it behind a blind service (see atc-submission).

Common failure modes

• Adjacent-work blind spot — missing a sibling-venue line a subarea reviewer will know cold.
• Comparison without a measurable delta — claims of superiority not tied to an experiment.
• Strawman baselines in prose — describing prior work as weaker than it is; reviewers who know it will distrust the rest.
• Self-citation leak — first-person references or an identifying system name breaking anonymity.
• Venue misattribution — crediting a flagship result to ATC (or vice versa).

Output format

[Lane coverage] predecessors / alternatives / adjacent subareas / measurement literature: gaps?
[Delta check] each key comparison stated delta-first and mapped to an experiment? yes/no
[Sibling-venue] OSDI/SOSP/NSDI/EuroSys/FAST lines engaged where relevant? misattributions?
[Anonymity] self-citations third-person? identifying names/testbeds neutralized? "removed for review" absent?
[Fix queue] <ordered edits, most reviewer-visible first>