Infocom workflow

INFOCOM Workflow

Use this as the project-management skill for an INFOCOM submission. Replace every date with the current official timetable and work backwards from the abstract/metadata deadline (in late July), which precedes the full-paper deadline by about a week. INFOCOM runs a single annual summer deadline, so a missed cycle costs roughly a year — plan the calendar as tightly as the paper.

INFOCOM is an IEEE ComSoc conference with no standing editor-in-chief and no article-processing charge. Rotating leadership is the per-edition General Co-Chairs and TPC Co-Chairs, appointed under ComSoc; the cost model is conference registration, and at least one author must register for the paper to enter IEEE Xplore. Chairs rotate yearly; re-check the organizing-committee page rather than carrying a name forward.

Milestones

• Venue fit: confirm INFOCOM over SIGCOMM/NSDI/MobiCom and confirm the paper is ready this cycle (infocom-topic-selection).
• Evidence lock: freeze the system model, theorems/proofs, simulator setup, baselines, and the evaluation results.
• Abstract/metadata registration: enter real title, abstract (≤200 words), co-authors, and topic tags into EDAS by the abstract deadline (INFOCOM 2026: 24 Jul 2025; 2027: 24 Jul 2026).
• Full-paper submission: upload the anonymized IEEEtran PDF (INFOCOM 2026: 31 Jul 2025; 2027: 31 Jul 2026), within the 10-page / ≤9-page-of-text budget.
• Early-reject checkpoint (if the cycle runs one): INFOCOM 2027 posts early-reject on 9 Oct 2026 — a mid-cycle signal, not a final verdict.
• Notification: final decision (INFOCOM 2026: 8 Dec 2025; 2027: 8 Dec 2026).
• Camera-ready: eCF copyright, PDF eXpress validation, IEEE Xplore-compliant PDF (INFOCOM 2026: 9 Jan 2026), plus author registration.
• Presentation: at least one author registers and presents at the conference.

Backward plan from the full-paper deadline

Weeks out (heuristic)	Networking-paper milestone
12+	Problem formulated; system model and assumptions fixed; baselines chosen
10	Theorems proved / protocol designed; simulator or testbed built
8	Experiments/simulations complete; seeds and configs logged
6	Analysis done; plots and tables built; proofs written up
4	Full draft in IEEEtran; measured against the 9-page text boundary (refs excluded)
3	Internal mock review by a reader from the other side (theory ↔ systems)
2	Baselines hardened, related-work delta sharpened, page budget met
1	Double-blind sweep on the PDF and metadata; abstract entered in EDAS
0	Full paper on EDAS within the budget; five-paper cap re-checked

These offsets are planning heuristics only — anchor every one to the current Call for Papers, never to a previous cycle's calendar.

The single-summer calendar reality

INFOCOM runs one annual research deadline in late July, with notification in December and the conference the following May. As of 2026-07-09, INFOCOM 2026 (Tokyo) is decided, so the live next target is INFOCOM 2027 (Honolulu; abstract 24 Jul 2026, paper 31 Jul 2026). Two planning consequences:

• A near-miss on the July deadline costs a full year at INFOCOM; a sibling flagship (SIGCOMM/NSDI/MobiCom) or a journal (ToN/JSAC) may have a nearer date — factor that into routing rather than idling.
• There is no rebuttal to plan for (traditionally): budget the pre-submission mock review as the one and only chance to hear "your baseline is unfair" from a friend instead of a reviewer.

Failure modes by stage

• Evidence still moving at week 4 forces last-minute simulation nobody has audited — the classic soundness reject.
• Discovering the paper is a page over at week 1 with appendices counted inside the nine pages — a not-reviewed outcome that editing weeks earlier would have prevented.
• Skipping the cross-side mock review forfeits the chance to catch an unstated assumption (theory reader) or an unrealistic topology (systems reader).
• Forgetting the five-paper cap on a group's submission sprint, so a sixth paper is dropped.

Coordination notes

• Assign one owner for the EDAS metadata/topic tags (they drive automated assignment) and another for the double-blind sweep; shared ownership is how both slip.
• Archive the exact submitted PDF and the simulator/testbed configuration — the camera-ready must match, and any released artifact must reproduce it.

Output format

[Current stage] idea / evidence / writing / abstract-registered / submitted / early-reject / accepted
[Next official deadline] <date and source, or unknown>
[Critical path] <three tasks that determine readiness>
[Risk register] <page budget / double-blind / evidence / baselines / author cap / registration>
[Owner map] <task -> person or role>