Mobisys writing style

MobiSys Writing Style

Use this when revising the main paper. A MobiSys paper needs a compact statement of the on-device problem, the system that solves it, and the measurements that prove it — in the 12-page double-column body.

Revision rules

• Put the mobile-system contribution on the first page: the on-device pain, why current systems fail on the device, the mechanism, and the measured payoff.
• Name the device budget explicitly. MobiSys reviewers are sensitive to hidden compute, energy, latency, memory, and thermal assumptions.
• Pair every major claim with a measurement on real hardware, a design argument, or a reproducibility detail — never a superlative.
• Use the 12-page body for the system's spine; move long protocols, extra device sweeps, and extended ablations to the appendix without making the main paper unintelligible.
• Avoid overclaiming wins when the distribution is unreported or the gain is inside run-to-run spread.
• Maintain double-blind style in self-citations, prior-system references, acknowledgements, funding, screenshots, and artifact descriptions.

System-presentation discipline

• State the operating point: the device, the workload, and the budget the system respects. A latency number without its device and workload is not interpretable.
• Give each design decision a why-on-the-device justification; MobiSys readers audit whether a choice is forced by the mobile constraint or merely convenient.
• Report costs as distributions — p50/p95 latency, energy-per-operation, memory footprint — not single "up to N×" peaks.
• Separate measured from estimated: an energy figure from a power monitor and an energy figure from a model are different claims and must be labeled so.
• Keep the accuracy/quality trade-off honest: a system that is faster or cooler at a cost must state the cost in the same breath.

Sentence-level rewrites

Draft pattern	MobiSys-safe rewrite
"Our system significantly outperforms..."	"cuts p95 latency from X ms to Y ms on <device> over N runs"
"Runs efficiently on mobile devices..."	"holds 30 fps within a 3 W budget on <device>, App. A"
"Saves substantial energy..."	"reduces energy-per-frame by X mJ (p50), measured on <monitor>"
"Achieves real-time performance..."	Claim scoped to the device, workload, and thermal state tested

Vignette: compressing into twelve double-column pages

A draft with a runtime design, five device studies, and a sprawling background section: keep the design, one decision-critical figure (the latency-under-load curve) and one budget figure (energy-per-frame), and the accuracy-cost table; compress background into the specific failures current systems show on the device; move three device sweeps and the full protocol to the appendix with forward references. The test of a good cut: a systems reviewer should reconstruct the whole system and its evidence without opening the supplement.

Output format

[Writing diagnosis] clear / under-measured / overclaimed / overloaded
[First-page fix] <new mobile-system framing>
[Claim discipline] <claim -> measurement/design/limitation>
[Compression cuts] <move/delete/merge>
[Anonymity edits] <phrases, screenshots, or repo strings to rewrite>