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

| Finding at audit time | Severity | Real fix |

|---|---|---|

| Body over the page limit / appendix smuggling decision-critical content | Desk-reject-grade | Cut or restructure; the body must be self-contained |

| Template altered or wrong acmart format | Named desk-reject ground | Recompile clean; recover space editorially |

| Missing BBL upload | Processing failure | Generate and upload the BBL |

| Identity leak in PDF, dataset link, or vantage-point description | Anonymity violation | Re-anonymize infrastructure and links; scrub PDF metadata |

| No Ethics section | Named rejection ground | Add a real Ethics section; document IRB/disclosure |

| Human-subjects work without IRB documentation | Ethics failure | Obtain/attach the IRB determination |

| Not registered by the cycle's registration date | No submission slot | Nothing fixes this post-cutoff — calendar it now |

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>