Atc review process

ATC Review Process

Model the pipeline before interpreting any single review. ATC's process is unusual among systems venues in 2026 because it runs in two rounds gated by a two-page extended abstract, and because acceptance is conditional on a shepherd. The most consequential mental shift for authors arriving from a single-round conference is that round one can end your submission before anyone reads the full paper — the extended abstract is not a formality.

Process model

• Submission and review run on HotCRP (atc26.hotcrp.com) with double-blind anonymity: identities are mutually hidden through reviewing.
• Round one: each two-page extended abstract is read by two experienced reviewers with a broad systems perspective; abstracts below the bar are rejected early. The extended abstract is review-only and not published.
• Round two: papers that advance are read in full by 3-4 reviewers, who weigh the significance and usefulness of the systems contribution, the soundness of the design, the honesty and completeness of the measurements, reproducibility, and clarity.
• Rebuttal / description of changes: authors get a short (about one page) window to correct factual misreadings and, where relevant, summarize revisions relative to a prior submission.
• Decision + shepherding: selected papers are conditionally accepted; final acceptance requires satisfying a shepherd (a PC member) on required revisions. Accepted papers publish in the ACM DL under Open Access.

Reading a decision against the model

Outcome	What it means	Author move
Early reject (round one)	The abstract did not convey a problem, contribution, and result that clear the bar	Reframe the abstract; the paper may be fine but the pitch failed — see atc-writing-style
Full review, then reject	A design or evidence gap survived the full read	Fix the substance, not the framing; consider a sibling venue
Conditional accept	Contribution holds; specific revisions required	Treat the shepherd's list as binding; make or explicitly justify each item
Reject with encouragement	Structural but repairable over a cycle	Rebuild the evidence and resubmit next cycle or reroute

The strategic reading: because round one judges the abstract, the highest-leverage editing on the whole paper is often the two pages a round-one reviewer sees. Write the submission so its problem and result are legible before the details.

How ATC differs from its siblings

• vs. OSDI / SOSP: those flagships are more selective and lean toward larger, novel systems; ATC takes a broader, more practical slice and welcomes solid, useful, well-measured work a flagship might call incremental. A paper bounced from OSDI on "not novel enough" can be a strong ATC paper if the engineering and measurement are real. Neither shares ATC's two-round extended-abstract gate.
• vs. NSDI: NSDI centers networked systems and runs its own multi-deadline model; ATC's scope is all of systems and its 2026 calendar is a single June deadline. Route a networked-systems design there if the network is the contribution.
• vs. EuroSys: EuroSys is the other broad, SIGOPS-affiliated systems conference; the choice is often calendar and community pull. Under SIGOPS, ATC and EuroSys now sit in the same family, so check both deadlines.
• vs. pre-2026 USENIX ATC: the old ATC ran a single-round review on a winter deadline with USENIX-funded open access and no APC. The 2026 SIGOPS edition changed the round structure, the calendar, and the cost model at once — do not carry the old process forward.

Who reads you

Round one: two broad-perspective systems reviewers judging whether the idea and result are worth a full read. Round two: 3-4 reviewers closer to your subarea who open the artifact, check whether the measurements are end-to-end and honest about cost, and probe whether the baselines are fair. Vague design descriptions and average-only results get caught, not skimmed.

Where author leverage actually exists

[Before submission]  topic tags -> reviewer pool; a self-standing abstract -> surviving round one
[Round-one gate]     none after upload — the abstract is your only round-one argument
[Rebuttal]           factual corrections, a missing number a reviewer asked for, misread-claim fixes
[Conditional accept] the shepherd round: make every required change or justify declining it, evidenced
[After reject]       no appeal; reroute to a sibling systems venue or strengthen and resubmit

A rebuttal moves borderline papers when it corrects a factual misreading or supplies a measurement a reviewer said was missing; it does not move papers by arguing taste. In the shepherd round, a silently skipped required change is what turns a conditional accept into trouble.

Misreadings to avoid

• Treating the extended abstract as boilerplate — it is the round-one decision surface.
• Treating conditional acceptance as unconditional — the shepherd can hold the paper until the required revisions land.
• Assuming OSDI-style novelty is required — ATC rewards solid, useful, measured systems work.
• Projecting the old USENIX ATC process — the round structure, calendar, and cost model changed in the SIGOPS transition.

Output format

[Process stage] pre-submission / round one / round two / rebuttal / conditional accept / final
[Decision driver] the criterion carrying the outcome (significance | soundness | evidence | clarity | reproducibility)
[Round-one readiness] does the extended abstract stand alone and clear the bar? yes/no
[Leverage plan] the next-stage action that can actually change the outcome
[Forbidden moves] identity leak / unsupported new claims / skipping a shepherd-required change