Process Overview
A good submission will typically: motivate a significant problem; propose a practical solution or approach that makes sense; demonstrate the pros and cons of the latter using sound experimental and statistical evaluation methods; disclose what has and has not been implemented; articulate the new contributions beyond previous work; and refrain from over-claiming, focusing the abstract and introduction sections primarily on the difference between the new proposal and what is already available. Submissions will be judged on relevance, novelty, technical merit, correctness, and clarity. An idea or design that the PC deems flawed can be grounds for rejection.
Submissions must not use misleading benchmarks.
Authors of work previously submitted to ATC or another conference are encouraged to describe in a separate note in the submission form the changes since the previous submission(s). This description helps reviewers who may have reviewed a previous draft of the work to appreciate any improvements to currently submitted work. The description will only be visible to the reviewers after they have submitted their reviews.
Papers need to be registered and their abstracts submitted by the abstract registration deadline. Papers with an empty abstract at the time of abstract registration will be rejected.
Papers must be submitted before the aforementioned submission deadline via the USENIX ATC '25 submission site. Submissions must be in PDF format. No extensions will be given. Submissions must strictly adhere to the policies specified below. By submitting, you agree that if the paper is accepted, at least one of the authors will attend the conference. Submissions accompanied by nondisclosure agreement forms will not be considered.
Originality
Submissions must contain original unpublished material that is not under review at any other forum, including journals, conferences, and workshops with proceedings. Submissions that extend your own previous work—in a significant way—are welcome, but you must explain the differences between your current USENIX ATC submission and your prior work. You should also relate your current USENIX ATC submission to relevant submissions of your own that are simultaneously under review for this or other venues. The Anonymizing section discusses how to do so while maintaining anonymity.
Prior or concurrent publication in non-peer-reviewed contexts, such as arXiv, technical reports, talks, and social media posts, is permitted. However, your ATC submission must use a different paper title and an anonymized name for your project or system that differs from any used in such contexts. Also, you should not post on a public forum between two weeks before the submission deadline and the result being released by USENIX ATC.
Simultaneous submission of the same work to multiple venues, submission of previously published work, or other violations of the above policies constitute plagiarism, dishonesty, or fraud. USENIX prohibits these practices and may take action against authors who have committed them; see the USENIX Conference Submissions Policy for additional details.
Submission Type: Full vs. Short
Short submissions are limited to roughly half the space of full-length submissions. Both types are reviewed to the same standards. A short paper is not like a workshop "position" paper—it presents a complete idea that does not require full length to be appreciated. The idea should be concisely formulated and evaluated, and conclusions should be drawn from it. The program committee may, in rare cases, decide to accept a full submission on the condition that it is cut down to fewer pages. Short papers will be included in the proceedings and presented at the conference like full papers during a slightly shorter time slot.
Formatting
Full submissions must not exceed 12 pages, and short submissions must not exceed 6 pages. These page limits include all text, figures, tables, footnotes, etc. Submissions may include as many additional pages as needed for references and for supplementary material in appendices. Because references do not count against the page limit, they should not be formatted using a smaller font, and the names of all co-authors should be specified. The paper should stand alone without the supplementary material, but authors may use this supplementary material space for content that may be of interest to some readers but is peripheral to the main technical contributions of the paper. Note that members of the program committee are free to not read this material when reviewing the paper.
Use US letter paper size (8.5" x 11" or 216 mm x 279 mm), with all text and figures fitting inside a 7" x 9" (178 mm x 229 mm) block centered on the page, using two columns separated by 0.33" (8 mm) of whitespace.
Use a 10-point font (typeface Times Roman, Linux Libertine, etc.) on 12-point (single-spaced) leading. Graphs and figures can use colors but should be readable when printed in monochrome, without magnification. All pages should be numbered, and references within the paper should be hyperlinked. Labels, captions, and other text in figures, graphs, and tables must use reasonable font sizes that, as printed, do not require extra magnification to be legible. Submissions that violate any of these restrictions will not be reviewed. No extensions will be given for reformatting.
LaTeX style files and Word templates are available on the USENIX templates page.
Papers not meeting these requirements may be rejected without a review.
Anonymizing
The USENIX ATC '25 double-blind review process keeps author identities concealed from reviewers and vice versa. You must therefore make a good-faith attempt to anonymize your submissions by avoiding identifying yourself or your institution, either explicitly or by implication, e.g., through references, acknowledgments, online repositories that are part of the submission, or direct interaction with committee members. Do not say "reference removed for blind review." When it is necessary to cite your own studies; cite them as if they were written by a third party.
Related submissions of your own that are simultaneously under review or awaiting publication at other venues should use the same approach.
Publication as a technical report or in an online repository does not constitute a violation of this policy because those works are not peer-reviewed. However, the title of the paper and the name of the system must not be identical in the submitted paper and the technical report.
Papers that are not properly anonymized may be rejected without review.
Public disclosure of excerpts from submitted papers and/or reviews (e.g., those received during the rebuttal process) prior to the announcement of official decisions constitutes a violation of the anonymity policy. All questions or comments about the reviews should be sent exclusively to atc25chairs@usenix.org.
Deployed Systems Track
Submissions in the Deployed Systems Track describe the design, implementation, analysis, and experience with real-world, deployed systems and networks. We encourage submission of papers that disprove or strengthen existing assumptions, deepen the understanding of existing problems, and validate known techniques at scales or environments in which they were never used or tested before. Papers for the deployed systems track need not present new ideas or results to be accepted; indeed, new ideas or results will not influence whether the papers are accepted. However, these papers should convey some practical insights.
The rules regarding submission and anonymization are different for deployed systems track submissions. Since the evaluation requires understanding the real-world use of the system, papers in this track will be reviewed in a more limited double-blind process. Authors' names should be withheld, as usual. However, in contrast to other papers, authors need not anonymize the content of their submission in any other way—they may keep company names, links, real system names, etc. as appropriate for the paper. Please note that you cannot switch tracks for your paper after submission since the submission rules differ.
Authors should indicate on the title page of the paper and in the submission form that they are submitting to this track. Authors should also fill in a box in the submission form briefly indicating why the paper is appropriate for this track. The final program will explicitly identify papers accepted to the deployed systems track to distinguish them from papers accepted to the regular track.
Ethics & Vulnerabilities Disclosure
Authors must, as part of the submission process, attest that their work complies with all applicable ethical standards of their home institution(s), including, but not limited to privacy policies and policies on experiments involving humans. Note that submitting research for approval by one's institution's ethics review body is necessary, but not sufficient—in cases where the PC has concerns about the ethics of the work in a submission, the PC will have its own discussion of the ethics of that work. The PC's review process may examine the ethical soundness of the paper just as it examines the technical soundness.
Papers describing experiments with users or user data (e.g., network traffic, passwords, social media information), should follow the basic principles of ethical research, e.g., beneficence (maximizing the benefits to an individual or to society while minimizing harm to the individual), minimal risk (appropriateness of the risk versus benefit ratio), voluntary consent, respect for privacy, and limited deception. When appropriate, authors are encouraged to include a subsection describing these issues. Authors may want to consult the Menlo Report for further information on ethical principles, or the Allman/Paxson IMC '07 paper for guidance on ethical data sharing.
If the submission deals with vulnerabilities (e.g., software vulnerabilities in a given program or design weaknesses in a hardware system), the authors need to discuss in detail the steps they have already taken or plan to take to address these vulnerabilities (e.g., by disclosing vulnerabilities to the vendors). The same applies if the submission deals with personally identifiable information (PII) or other kinds of sensitive data. If a paper raises significant ethical and legal concerns, it might be rejected based on these concerns.
On the Use of Generative AI
While we acknowledge that generative AI is seamlessly included in many editing packages, e.g., Grammarly, and thus often hard to detect, authors must not submit papers containing sections generated entirely by generative AI. In particular, for papers including sections generated entirely by generative AI, i.e., text, graphs, experiments, etc., the authorship is not clearly that of the authors and may be tantamount to plagiarism. To this end, authors must submit a statement attesting that their paper does not include sections completely created by generative AI as part of the submission process in HotCRP. For more detailed questions about the appropriate use of generative AI, please feel free to contact the ATC co-chairs at atc25chairs@usenix.org
Declaring and Avoiding Conflicts
When registering a submission, all its co-authors must provide information about conflicts with the USENIX ATC '25 program committee (PC) members. You are conflicted with a member if: (1) you are currently employed at the same institution, have been previously employed at the same institution within the past two years (2023 or later), or are going to begin employment at the same institution within a year; (2) you have a past or present association as thesis advisor or advisee (no time limit); (3) you have collaborated on a project, publication, grant proposal, editorship, or co-charing of conferences within the past two years (2023 or later); or (4) you have spousal or first-degree relative relations.
Do not declare a conflict if you discussed your submission with a PC member before the USENIX ATC '25 PC list was publicized. Do not declare a conflict merely because you wish to avoid a review from a specific committee member; such unethical behavior may result in immediate rejection. All conflicts will be reviewed to ensure the integrity of the reviewing process.
Authors and others are prohibited from directly or indirectly communicating with any USENIX ATC '25 PC member about any potentially submitted paper. All inquiries should be made exclusively to atc25chairs@usenix.org. Violations of these guidelines may incur remedies as stipulated in the USENIX Conference Submissions Policy.
Authors' Response Period
USENIX ATC '25 will provide an opportunity for authors to respond to reviews prior to final consideration of the submissions at the program committee meeting according to the schedule detailed above. Authors must limit their response rebuttal to: (1) correcting factual errors in the reviews; and (2) directly addressing questions posed by reviewers. Rebuttals should be limited to clarifying the submitted work. In particular, rebuttals must not include new experiments or data, nor describe additional work completed since submission, nor make promises of additional work to be performed. Rebuttals are optional.
Accepted Papers
Submissions selected by the program committee will be conditionally accepted, subject to revision and approval by a program committee member acting as a shepherd. Conditionally accepted papers can still be rejected before the final version deadline if the set conditions are not fulfilled. Accepted (long and short) papers will be allowed one additional page in the proceedings. One author of each accepted paper must present the work in person at the conference in a designated time slot.
By default, all accepted papers will be made available online to registered attendees before the conference. If your accepted paper should not be published prior to the event, please notify production@usenix.org before the final paper deadline. Accepted papers, however, will be made available online to everyone beginning on the first day of the conference.
If the conference registration fee will pose a hardship for the presenter of the accepted paper, please contact the Conference Department at conference@usenix.org. If your paper is accepted and you need an invitation letter to apply for a visa to attend the conference, please email conference@usenix.org as soon as possible. (Visa applications can take at least 30 working days to process; recently, visas have often taken significantly longer.) Please identify yourself as a presenter and include your mailing address in your email.
Questions?
Please direct any questions to the program co-chairs at atc25chairs@usenix.org or to the USENIX office at submissionspolicy@usenix.org.
Go to Call for Papers.