Conext submission

CoNEXT Submission

Run this audit before uploading to the CoNEXT HotCRP site. CoNEXT research papers are published as journal articles in PACMNET (Proceedings of the ACM on Networking), so the submission is judged like a journal manuscript that also earns a conference slot. Every number below was read from the CoNEXT 2026 call and the CoNEXT 2025 CFP on 2026-07-09 via search renderings (see ../../resources/official-source-map.md); treat them as a one-cycle snapshot and reopen the live call first.

Pick the cycle first

CoNEXT runs two submission cycles a year, and choosing the wrong one costs months:

• The December cycle (for CoNEXT 2026: registration 5 Dec 2025, submission 12 Dec 2025) gives an earlier notification (31 Mar 2026) and, if you earn a major revision, a spring resubmission path.
• The June cycle (submission 5 Jun 2026) is the later entry point into the same annual program and the same rolling PACMNET volume.

Both feed one conference and one journal volume, so the decision is about readiness and calendar, not prestige — submit to the nearer honest deadline your evidence is actually ready for. See conext-workflow for the full backward plan from each cutoff.

The two-step deadline within a cycle

CoNEXT separates paper registration from paper submission:

• Registration locks in title, abstract, authors, and conflicts a week early (December cycle: 5 December 2025). Miss it and the system will not accept the PDF later.
• Submission uploads the anonymized PDF (December cycle: 12 December 2025).

Register with the real title and abstract, not a placeholder — the abstract drives reviewer bidding, and a registered abstract that diverges from the final paper quietly worsens your TPC match.

Format and page budget

• ACM acmart template, unmodified. This is the ACM path — do not carry an IEEE two-column habit over from a sibling venue's kit.
• Page budget (verify per cycle; 2025 numbers, 待核实 for 2026):
  • Long papers: ≤ 16 pages of text and figures, unlimited references, up to 4 pages of appendices.
  • Short papers: ≤ 10 pages of text and figures, unlimited references, up to 2 pages of appendices.
• Appendices are for material that supports but does not decide the paper; nothing a reviewer must read to accept the paper should live only in an appendix or the artifact (see conext-supplementary).

Double-anonymous sweep

CoNEXT runs double-anonymous review: authors and reviewers are mutually hidden. Because networking papers lean on testbeds, deployments, traces, and operator relationships, the leak surface is wide:

# Mechanical pass on the submission PDF and any anonymized artifact archive
pdfinfo paper.pdf | grep -Ei 'author|creator|producer'
pdftotext paper.pdf - | grep -nEi 'github\.com/[a-z0-9-]+|gitlab|zenodo\.org/record|acknowledg|grant|our (testbed|deployment|university)' | head
unzip -l artifact.zip | grep -Ei '\.git/|\.DS_Store|/home/|/Users/' | head
grep -rniE 'university|@[a-z0-9.]+\.edu|internal hostname|AS[0-9]+ .*our' artifact/ --include='*.md' | head

The networking-specific leaks: a testbed or deployment named after your lab, a topology figure showing internal hostnames or an AS you operate, a trace whose capture point identifies your institution, a data-availability link pointing at a personal GitHub, and commit metadata inside a zipped repository. Re-host artifacts behind an anonymizing service before upload.

Reproducibility opt-in at submission time

The optional ACM reproducibility badges are administered by CoNEXT's reproducibility committee, and the critical timing trap is here:

• You must opt in for ACM badging before the paper submission deadline — it cannot be added later.
• Within a week of acceptance you send a one-page artifact description with pointers to code and other artifacts.
• Even if you skip badging, include a data-availability posture: pinned traces/configs and a runnable artifact strengthen the review (see conext-reproducibility).

Desk-risk triage

Finding at audit time	Severity	Real fix
Main text over the page budget	Desk-reject-grade	Cut or move to the appendix; references are unlimited but do not absorb body text
Template altered (margins, shrunk font, wrong acmart option)	Named desk-reject ground	Recompile clean, recover space editorially
Identity leak in PDF, artifact, topology figure, or testbed name	Anonymity violation	Re-anonymize and re-host; scrub PDF metadata
Abstract/paper not registered by the earlier date	No submission slot exists	Nothing fixes this post-deadline — calendar it now
Wanted a badge but did not opt in before submission	Ineligible for badging	Opt in now, before the cutoff
Same study under review at SIGCOMM/NSDI/IMC	Dual-submission exposure	Withdraw one venue; verify the current concurrent-submission wording

Final-week order of operations

1. Confirm which cycle (December/June) you are targeting and its exact cutoff and time zone.
2. Freeze the body early; references can churn, the argument cannot.
3. Register title/abstract/authors/conflicts well before the registration cutoff.
4. Decide badging and opt in before submission if you want it.
5. Build the anonymized artifact and place its (anonymized) link in the paper.
6. Run the mechanical anonymity checks on the final PDF and the final archive, not drafts.
7. Fill every HotCRP field — topics that match your evidence, conflicts for every coauthor's institution and recent collaborators — a day early; late conflicts are the classic midnight failure.
8. Re-download the uploaded PDF and read it cold to confirm it is the file you meant.

Reverify each cycle

• Both cycles' exact dates and time zones, and which cycle you are entering.
• The page budget and which acmart variant is required.
• Appendix handling, the reproducibility badge set and opt-in deadline, dual-submission wording, and any AI-disclosure rule — all cycle-volatile; none should be assumed stable.

Output format

[CoNEXT submission status] ready / blocked / needs work
[Cycle] December / June, cutoff date + time zone
[Registration] title/abstract/authors/conflicts locked by the earlier deadline? yes/no
[Format] pages used (body/appendix/refs), acmart compliance
[Anonymity] clean / leaks: <where>
[Reproducibility] badge opt-in done before submission? artifact link present?
[Fix queue] <ordered, with owners and dates before the cutoff>