Call for papers

Topics

The scope of ATC covers all practical aspects related to computer systems, including but not limited to: operating systems; runtime systems; parallel and distributed systems; storage; networking; ML for systems and systems for ML; security and privacy; virtualization; software-hardware interactions; performance evaluation and workload characterization; reliability, availability, and scalability; energy and power management; and bug-finding, tracing, analyzing, and troubleshooting. We value submissions more highly if they are accompanied by clearly defined artifacts not previously available, including traces, original data, source code, or tools developed as part of the submitted work. We particularly encourage new ideas and approaches.

Papers with a main contribution outside of systems research are beyond the scope of ATC, and such papers may be desk rejected.

Note that papers on quantum systems or quantum architectures are not in scope for ATC.

Submission Criteria

Submissions will be judged on novelty, significance, interest, clarity, relevance, and correctness. A good paper will:

• motivate a significant problem;
• propose and implement an interesting, compelling solution;
• demonstrate the practicality and benefits of the solution;
• draw appropriate conclusions;
• clearly describe the paper's contributions;
• articulate the advances beyond previous work; and
• be accessible to the broader systems community.

We encourage submission of ground-breaking work in significant new directions, with the understanding that the evaluation criteria for papers addressing new problems may be different from those continuing a line of work in a more established area.

Originality

Submissions should contain original, unpublished material. Simultaneous submission of the same work to multiple venues, submission of previously published work, or plagiarism is not allowed.

Submissions that extend the authors' previous work are welcome, but authors must explain the differences between the ATC submission and the prior work, much in the same way that the authors are expected to articulate the contributions of their submission as they relate to prior work by others.

Prior or concurrent workshop publication does not preclude publishing a related paper in ATC. As long as there is significant additional content in the submission compared to the prior workshop publication, the PC will evaluate the submission's entire contribution, not just the delta.

Prior or concurrent publication in non-peer-reviewed contexts, like arXiv.org, technical reports, talks, and social media posts, is explicitly permitted.

Resubmissions

Submitting a paper that is currently under submission at another conference or journal is not permitted. For resubmissions of rejected papers, authors should provide information regarding the previous submission(s) and a summary of the subsequent revisions to the paper. This description, which will be supplied to reviewers after they’ve completed their reviews, helps reviewers who may have reviewed a previous draft of the work to appreciate any improvements to the currently submitted work. Please try to limit the description of changes to one page. All information should be properly anonymized, as described below, and should be uploaded via the submission form.

Per-author Submission CapNew in 2027

Each author must submit at most 2 papers to ATC 2027. The limit applies to individual authors, independently of the email address or affiliation used to submit a paper. The cap applies to every paper on which someone is a co-author, independent of the paper length or track.

After the submission deadline has passed, the PC Chairs will check that each author does not exceed this submission limit. If a violation is discovered, the PC Chairs reserve the right to desk reject all submissions listing that author.

The author list for papers cannot be changed after submission. Please see the ACM Policy for deciding authorship. All authors must have contributed intellectually to the paper; merely funding the work is not enough for authorship. Please see the FAQ for details.

Authors are encouraged to submit their best work to ATC 2027 and thus select the submitted papers accordingly.

Anonymity

ATC uses double-blind reviewing. Authors should make a good faith attempt to anonymize their submissions. Avoid identifying yourself or your institution explicitly or by implication (e.g., through the references or acknowledgments). The first page should use the paper ID assigned during registration in place of the author names. If the name of your project or system is already known to the community (e.g., through arXiv, technical reports, talks, social media posts, or other uses), your submission must use an anonymized name.

Use care in referring to your own related work. Do not omit references to your prior work, as this would make it difficult for reviewers to place your submission in its proper context. Instead, reference your past work in the third person, just as you would any other piece of related work. For example, you might say "Our system modifies the XYZ operating system built by Lee et al. [Lee17]".

For concurrent submissions on related topics, cite an anonymized version of the concurrent submission and discuss the relation between the submissions. Additionally, email the PC chairs with a copy of your other concurrent submission.

Long and Short Submissions

ATC accepts both long and short submissions. Long submissions must not exceed 12 pages, and short submissions must not exceed 6 pages. In both cases, the page limit excludes references but includes all text, figures, tables, footnotes, appendices, etc. Both types are reviewed to the same standards and differ primarily in scope. A short submission presents a complete idea that is properly evaluated, just as a long submission does. Optionally, authors can include an appendix to provide material that may be of interest to some reviewers, such as algorithm details, proofs, and code snippets, but is not central to the contributions of the paper. For further details, see the submission instructions.

Operational Systems Track

ATC solicits papers that describe the design, implementation, analysis, and experience with real-world deployment of systems and networks. Operational Systems Track papers will be judged based on new insights, data, or lessons that they bring to the systems community. As such, these papers are expected to have deep discussion about what is new. Merely reporting on something in production is insufficient for this track.

Note that the rules regarding submission and anonymization are different for this track: papers in the Operational Systems Track may identify the organization behind a system when double-blind anonymization would not be practical. (Please contact the PC Chairs if you have questions before submission.) The final program will explicitly identify papers accepted to the operational systems track to distinguish them from papers accepted to the regular track.

Author Response Period

ATC will provide an opportunity for authors to respond to reviews prior to final consideration of the papers at the program committee meeting. Authors must limit their responses to (a) correcting factual errors in the reviews or (b) directly addressing questions posed by reviewers. In particular, responses must not include new experiments or data, describe additional work completed since submission, or promise additional work to follow. As PC members are not required to review supplementary materials, responses must not rely on the existence of those materials. Authors will have 72 hours to prepare their response.

Review Process

Submissions will undergo two rounds of reviews. Papers that fail the first round of reviewing will not proceed to the second round. Papers that advance to the second round will receive additional reviews. For all submissions, authors will be able to provide an optional author response (see “Author Response Period” above).

The first round will be based on the first two pages of the paper. We strongly encourage authors to make the introduction self-contained. Reviewers will have access to the rest of the paper, but are not obligated to read the entire paper for the first round. Depending on the number of submissions, the first round may involve more pages of the paper.

Papers will be rejected from the first round if it is clear that one of the following apply:

• The paper is not relevant to the ATC community; the main contribution of the paper is not in systems.
• The paper does not motivate the problem clearly.
• The main idea behind the paper or its chief insight is hard to understand.
• The contribution of the paper is too small or incremental over the prior state of the art.
• The paper does not place itself properly in the context of related work.
• The paper does not evaluate the proposed idea rigorously, either using weak or inappropriate baselines, or not using the right workloads.

Formatting

Papers will be submitted electronically in PDF format.

Long submissions must have at most 12 pages, while short submissions must have at most 6 pages, including all text, figures, tables, appendices, etc. Bibliographic references are not included in the 6- or 12-page limits. Use A4 or US letter paper size, with all text and figures fitting inside a 178 x 229 mm (7 x 9 in) block centered on the page, using two columns separated by 8 mm (0.33 in) of whitespace. Use a 10-point font (typeface Times Roman or similar) on 12-point (single-spaced) leading. Graphs and figures should be readable without magnification; they are encouraged to be in color, but should remain readable if printed in grayscale. All pages should be numbered, and references within the paper should be hyperlinked.

Submissions violating these rules may be desk rejected, and there will be no extensions for fixing violations. We encourage you to upload an early draft of the paper well before the deadline to check if the paper meets the formatting rules.

Most of these rules are automatically applied when using the official SIGPLAN LaTeX or MS Word templates from the ACM.

For LaTeX, we recommend you use:

\documentclass[sigplan,10pt]{acmart}
\renewcommand\footnotetextcopyrightpermission[1]{}
\settopmatter{printfolios=true}
...
\begin{document}
\pagestyle{plain}
\maketitle
...
\end{document}

Confidentiality

Reviewing will be done mostly by members of the program committee. Submissions will be treated as confidential; however, papers accompanied by nondisclosure agreement forms will not be considered for review.

Generative AI Use

Authors must take intellectual responsibility for all papers submitted to ATC. All text in the paper must reflect the authors' thoughts and intentions. While the use of AI to aid in editing and framing is allowed, authors must not submit papers produced entirely or substantively by generative AI.

Conflicts

To avoid conflicts of interest in the review process, when you register and submit your paper, we ask that you provide information about conflicts between any of the authors of your submission and PC members. Use the following guidelines to determine conflicts:

Institutional: You are currently employed at the same institution, have been previously employed at the same institution within the past two years, or are going to begin employment at the same institution. Former interns should list their internship supervisor(s) and collaborator(s) as conflicts, not the entire institution where they interned.

Advisor: You have a past or present association as PhD thesis advisor or advisee.

Collaborator: You have a collaboration on a project, publication, grant proposal, or editorship within the past two years.

Personal: You are close family relatives (e.g., spouses, domestic partners, parents, children, or siblings).

The PC chairs will review paper conflicts to ensure the integrity of the reviewing process, adding conflicts if necessary. You should not improperly identify a PC member as a conflict in an attempt to avoid having the individual review your paper. Conflicts might be shared with PC members for resolution.

PC members will not be able to review, read the reviews of, or participate in discussions of papers they are conflicted with. The review process for papers conflicted with both PC chairs will be managed by another PC member designated as the "conflict chair". PC chairs will not submit papers.

Accepted Papers

Papers selected by the program committee will receive conditional acceptance, with the final acceptance subject to revisions and approval by a program committee member acting as a shepherd. Authors of accepted papers will be expected to supply electronic versions of their papers and encouraged to supply source code and raw data to help others replicate and understand their results, as part of an artifact evaluation process. To facilitate broad technical discussion, all accepted papers will be made available online in advance of the conference. The official publication date will be the date the proceedings are made publicly accessible. For more information about the ACM OpenSurround Service, see the ACM free access policy. Papers of particular merit will be forwarded to the ACM Transactions on Computer Systems (TOCS) and the Communications of the ACM's Research Highlights (CACM RH) for possible publication.

All accepted papers will be presented at the conference either orally and/or as a poster. Depending on the number of accepted papers and the logistics at the conference, not all accepted papers may receive an oral presentation slot. One author of each accepted paper must attend the conference to present the talk and/or poster.

ACM Open Access

Starting January 1, 2026, ACM transitioned to Open Access. That means ATC publications are Open Access. Authors have two options for publication: the ACM Open institutional model or by paying Article Processing Charges (APCs). With over 2,600 institutions already part of ACM Open, the majority of ACM-sponsored conference papers will not require APCs. Authors from institutions not in ACM Open will need to pay an APC to publish, unless they qualify for a waiver. Waivers are rare and are based on criteria set by ACM.

Submission Information

Papers must be submitted electronically in PDF format via the HotCRP submission site.

Questions

Any questions about paper submissions can be emailed to the PC chairs.