IEEE ICNP 2021 Call for Papers

*** COVID-19 Update: Due to the current global COVID-19 pandemic 
situation, IEEE ICNP 2021 conference will be held as a full virtual 
conference. ***

ICNP, the IEEE International Conference on Network Protocols, is the 
premier conference covering all aspects of network protocol research, 
including design, analysis, specification, verification, implementation, 
and performance. ICNP 2021 will be held virtually from November 2-5, 2021.

Website: https://icnp21.cs.ucr.edu/

Important Dates
- Title/Abstract registration: May 17, 2021 (8:00 p.m. EDT)
- Full paper submission: May 24, 2021 (8:00 p.m. EDT)
- Notification of acceptance: August 3, 2021
- Camera ready version: August 24, 2021

Scope

The conference is soliciting paper submissions with significant research 
contributions to the field of network protocol research. Both 
experimental studies as well as formal investigations are equally 
welcome. Topics traditionally of interest include, but are not limited to:

- All aspects of network protocol research including design, 
specification, verification, implementation, measurement, testing, and 
analysis.

- Protocols for wireless networks, cellular networks, software-defined 
networks, data center networks, social networks, sensor networks, 
vehicular networks, and Internet of Things.

- Domain-specific solutions, including protocols for network security, 
routing, user privacy, and network management.

- Network protocols meet AI/ML, e.g., application of AI/Machine Learning 
to improve network protocols and operations; networking and protocols 
for improving the performance of AI/Machine Learning systems.

- Contributions to network architecture, e.g., algorithms and protocols 
for network virtualization or future Internet architectures.

- Contributions to other areas of data communications to the extent that 
they articulate a strong connection to network protocols, for example by 
discussing potential implications on the design or performance of 
certain types of network protocols.

Authors who are unsure whether or not their submissions might fit the 
scope of the conference are welcome to contact the Program Committee 
co-Chairs.

Paper Formatting

Paper submissions should adhere to the IEEE Conference formatting 
requirements using the templates available here, and should not exceed 
10 pages excluding references. It is the authors' responsibility to 
produce readable submissions that comply with the formatting 
constraints. Violating the formatting requirements to squeeze in 
additional materials will result in a submission being returned without 
being reviewed.

Submission and Anonymity Policy

Papers submitted to the conference will be reviewed through a 
double-blind review process, where the identities of the authors are 
withheld from the reviewers (and that of the reviewers from the 
authors). Achieving this goal requires some care to, on the one hand, 
preserve the anonymity of your submission, and on the other hand 
ensuring proper coverage of related past work, including your own. While 
this requirement may seem challenging, the few basic steps listed below 
will go a long way towards achieving the desired outcome:

- Remove all authors' identifiers, e.g., names, emails, and 
affiliations, from the title page.
- Remove acknowledgments of and identifiers of funding sources.
- Use anonymous names for your files, as source file names are often 
embedded in the final output you generate, and therefore accessible as 
comments.
- When referring to your own related work, refer to it in the third 
person as you would with any other related work by another author.

Besides anonymizing your submission, double-blind reviewing also imposes 
additional requirements on both authors and reviewers. Specifically, 
while it is permissible for authors to give local talks on their work 
and release their paper on a non-peer-reviewed location, e.g., an 
institutional repository or even arXiv, care should be exercised to 
limit public exposure as much as possible. This requirement includes 
refraining from advertising the work on mailing lists and public forums, 
and in general limiting as much as possible the odds that program 
committee members be exposed to the work and the authors’ identity. 
Conversely, program committee members will be advised to neither 
actively seek to “reverse engineer” the authors’ identity, nor to 
directly share with other program committee members any such information 
they may have acquired. All questions regarding possible breaches of the 
anonymity covenant that underlies the double-blind review process will 
be adjudicated by the Program Committee co-Chairs.

All papers will be provisionally accepted and the final acceptance of 
any paper will be subject to shepherding by a member of the program 
committee.

Submission and Plagiarism Policy

Papers must present original contributions and can neither be previously 
published nor under review by another conference or journal. Papers 
containing plagiarized materials will be subject to the IEEE plagiarism 
policy and possible penalties and will be rejected without being reviewed.

Best Paper Award and Fast-Track Journal Publication

One of the accepted papers will be selected for the Best Paper award, 
and will be fast tracked to the IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, 
with a streamlined journal review process.

Presentation and Registration Requirements

IEEE ICNP requires that at least one of the authors of any accepted 
paper must register for the conference at the full rate and be available 
to present the paper at the conference. Due to ICNP 2021 being held 
virtually because of health considerations, authors of accepted papers 
will be expected to present their papers remotely, and those papers will 
be included in the conference proceedings and in IEEE Xplore. However, 
any paper that is not presented by an author of the paper will be 
withdrawn from the proceedings and thus from IEEE Xplore. At least one 
author from each accepted paper will be expected to register at the full 
rate.

Technical Program Chairs
Y. Charlie Hu (Purdue University, USA)
Xiaowei Yang (Duke University, USA)
IEEE Communications Society Tech. Committee on Computer Communications
http://committees.comsoc.org/tccc/
TCCC Announce: For announcements concerning computer networking and communications.
tccc-announce@comsoc.org
https://comsoc-listserv.ieee.org/