sigmod-review-process

SIGMOD Review Process

A SIGMOD research submission enters a journal pipeline with a conference

cadence: papers submitted to a PACMMOD round are reviewed double-anonymously

through Microsoft CMT, authors get a mid-round feedback window, and the first

verdict is three-valued — accept, reject, or revise. Understanding which

lever moves which outcome is most of review-stage strategy. Mechanics shift

by cycle; reconfirm against the live CFP before relying on any date.

Anatomy of a round (SIGMOD 2027 Round 3 as the concrete case)

Jul 10, 2026   Abstract + conflict declarations close
Jul 17, 2026   Paper deadline (11:59 PM AoE)
Sep 10-17      Author feedback phase: reviews visible, short reply window
Oct 19, 2026   Verdict: accept / reject / major or minor revision
Nov 19, 2026   Revised paper + 4-page letter due (revision cases)
Dec 12, 2026   Final accept/reject on revisions

Roughly three months from PDF to first verdict, five to final — faster than

most journals, slower than a rebuttal-only conference, and repeatable four

times a year.

The three verdicts, decoded

| Verdict | What it means operationally | Author's real decision |

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

| Accept | Into the round's PACMMOD issue; camera-ready port begins | None — execute |

| Revision (minor/major) | A contract: enumerated requirements, +1 page, one month | Can every requirement land in 30 days? |

| Reject | 12-month embargo from SIGMOD research track (≈3 rounds) | PVLDB / ICDE / rework, not a quick resubmit |

Two consequences deserve emphasis. First, a revision verdict is genuinely

winnable — the requirements are written down, and reviewers judge compliance

rather than re-litigating taste. Second, the embargo makes "just resubmit

next round" impossible, so a rejected SIGMOD paper's next stop is usually a

different venue (see sigmod-topic-selection).

Who is reading

The PC is dominated by database systems researchers and industrial engine

builders. Predictable evaluation reflexes:

• They benchmark mentally: the first skim looks for the workload table and

the hardware paragraph before the design section gets full attention.

• They know the baselines personally — sometimes literally, as authors or

maintainers — so an untuned competitor is recognized on sight.

• Architecture claims are audited against systems they have built:

"this cannot be lock-free as described" is a common decisive comment.

• Novelty is measured against both recent PACMMOD/PVLDB output and decades

of systems history; rediscovering a 1990s technique under a new name is a

classic kill.

Feedback phase leverage

The mid-round window is short and asymmetric: reviewers have already scored,

and you are trying to change specific minds before the PC discussion. Highest

expected value, in order: correcting an outright factual misreading;

answering a direct question with a pointer to a specific table; resolving an

apparent contradiction between two of your own sections. Near-zero value:

arguing significance, promising future work, or thanking reviewers at length

inside a tight character budget.

Reading a split panel

• One detailed negative review plus shallow positives → the verdict follows

the detailed one; answer it line by line in the feedback phase.

• Universal "interesting but evaluation thin" → expect major revision;

start the missing experiments before the verdict arrives.

• A correctness objection from a builder of a rival system → treat as the

round's decisive issue even if other scores are high.

• Complaints about clarity of the problem statement → often masks a fit

problem; consider whether the framing buried the data-management core.

Round vocabulary, decoded

Terms that trip up newcomers to the PACMMOD model:

• Round — one of the year's submission batches; your paper lives its

whole life inside a single round unless rejected.

• Issue — the PACMMOD journal number your round's acceptances publish

in; citable independently of the conference.

• Feedback phase — the mid-round reply window; not a rebuttal in the

score-flipping sense, and not the revision.

• Revision — a formal verdict with enumerated requirements, not an

informal second chance; compliance is what gets re-reviewed.

• Embargo — the 12-month bar on returning to the research track after

rejection or late withdrawal.

• Shepherd — when assigned, the PC member who verifies promised

camera-ready changes; treat their notes as binding.

Etiquette with teeth

Confidentiality and anonymity bind for the whole round: no tweeting the

submission, no updating a named preprint mid-round in a way that links to

the anonymous version, no contacting suspected reviewers. Violations here

are policy matters for chairs, not style points.

After the final decision

Close the loop regardless of outcome. On acceptance, archive the full

review thread beside the paper — the shepherding and ARI stages quote it.

On rejection, hold a one-hour post-mortem within a week while memory is

fresh: classify each objection as fixable-evidence, fixable-writing, or

fit, and let that classification pick the next venue rather than pride or

sunk cost. Reviews from a SIGMOD round are unusually actionable input for

a PVLDB or ICDE resubmission precisely because the reviewer pools overlap.

Output format

[Round position] submitted / feedback window / awaiting verdict / revising
[Panel read] per-reviewer stance and the decisive reviewer
[Verdict forecast] accept / revision / reject, with the driving issue
[Feedback plan] top corrections worth the character budget
[Revision feasibility] 30-day workload if a revision lands
[Embargo contingency] next venue if rejected