ndss-workflow

NDSS Workflow

One symposium, two entrances. NDSS 2027 accepts papers through a summer cycle and a fall

cycle, each a complete two-round review pipeline, both feeding the same week in Seoul

(22-26 March 2027). Plan against the cycle you can actually win, not the one that arrives

first.

The 2027 skeleton (verified 2026-07-08; always recheck the live CFP)

| Milestone | Summer cycle | Fall cycle |

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

| Paper deadline (AoE / UTC-12) | May 6, 2026 — passed | August 19, 2026 |

| Early-reject notification + Round-1 reviews | June 12, 2026 | September 25, 2026 |

| Rebuttal + interactive discussion | June 24-28, 2026 | October 8-10, 2026 |

| Final notification | July 22, 2026 | November 4, 2026 |

| Camera-ready (both cycles) | January 6, 2027 | January 6, 2027 |

| Symposium (Seoul) | March 22-26, 2027 | March 22-26, 2027 |

As of 2026-07-08 the summer cycle is between rebuttal and notification; the fall deadline is

roughly six weeks out. Registration for Seoul opens in October 2026 (Internet Society

announcement) — for many teams the 2027 edition also means visas and long-haul travel

budgets that San Diego never required. Start that paperwork at acceptance, not at

camera-ready.

Backward plan from a fall submission

Aug 19  paper deadline (AoE)          ── freeze everything
Aug 12  full-draft freeze              ── format, anonymity, ethics-section passes only
Aug 05  internal red-team read         ── someone plays the Round-1 reviewer
Jul 29  evaluation freeze              ── last new experiment; start writing results
Jul 15  disclosure clock check         ── vendor notifications sent early enough that
                                          "we disclosed" is true at submission time
Jul 08  (today) go/no-go               ── fit test done, adversary model written,
                                          headline experiment already running

The item teams misplace is the disclosure clock: responsible disclosure has latency

measured in weeks, and the CFP expects reporting (or a concrete plan) for high-impact

vulnerabilities. A finding made on August 10 forces an uncomfortable choice; a finding made

in July does not.

Choosing the cycle

• Enter the earliest cycle whose backward plan closes with the evaluation done, not

projected. A thin submission is worse than a late one here, because a rejection blocks

major-overlap resubmission in the other 2027 cycle.

• The rebuttal window is short and fixed (Oct 8-10 for fall). Check coauthor availability

during those exact days before committing.

• A Major Revision outcome converts the calendar: you get reviewer-specified revision

tasks and a resubmission window (dates 待核实 — confirm on notification). Budget the

post-notification month as working time, not celebration time.

The big-four year, seen from the NDSS seat

The four flagship deadlines interleave, and NDSS's late-summer fall deadline sits where

papers rejected from the S&P and CCS spring/summer cycles and the USENIX Security year

naturally land. Two honest rules for riding this calendar:

1. Retargeting without revision is re-rejection. Reviewer pools overlap heavily across

the big four; a resubmission that ignores its previous reviews often meets the same

people. Fold in the fixes, and re-frame for NDSS's networked-adversary lens rather than

doing a logo swap.

1. NDSS is a venue, not a fallback tier. Its acceptance bar is a peer of the other

three; a paper that was thin at S&P is thin here too. What legitimately changes is fit

— protocol, web, DNS, and distributed-infrastructure work often reads better to an NDSS

PC than it did wherever it bounced.

Running the year

• Track each paper as a state machine: `drafting → submitted → round-2 | early-reject →

rebuttal → accept | minor-rev | major-rev | reject`, with an owner and a next-action per

state. The review-process skill details what each state means.

• On early reject (with Round-1 reviews in hand): route to the next venue on the

routing table in ndss-topic-selection, after folding in the reviews. The same-edition

door is closed; the 2028 door is not.

• On accept / minor revision: fork immediately into camera-ready (January 6 is far but

the artifact-evaluation opt-in is near — see ndss-artifact-evaluation) and logistics

(registration, visas, who presents).

• Keep the per-author six-submission cap visible on the group's board each cycle; it binds

collaborations with many shared authors sooner than people expect.

Output format

[Cycle chosen] summer / fall / next edition — one-line justification
[Backward plan] table of dated freezes ending at the AoE deadline
[Disclosure clock] green / yellow / red + earliest safe submission date
[Rebuttal window] coauthors confirmed available? yes/no
[Post-decision branches] accept / minor / major / reject → owner + next action each
[Logistics] Seoul registration, visa lead time, presenter