--- name: infocom-review-process description: Use when reasoning about how an IEEE INFOCOM submission is evaluated, covering the large-scale double-blind pipeline, automated paper-reviewer assignment, the two-tier TPC and early-reject phase, the (traditional) absence of an author rebuttal, TPC discussion, and how INFOCOM's process differs from SIGCOMM/NSDI rebuttal-driven reviewing. --- # INFOCOM Review Process Model the pipeline before interpreting any single review. INFOCOM's process is **large-scale and TPC-driven**: thousands of submissions are matched to a broad Technical Program Committee by an **automated assignment system**, screened through an **early-reject** phase, and decided in TPC discussion. The most consequential mental shift for authors arriving from SIGCOMM/NSDI is that INFOCOM has **traditionally offered no author rebuttal** — the submitted PDF must defend itself, because you likely never get a turn to reply. ## Process model - Submission and review run on **EDAS** with **double-blind** anonymity: identities are hidden from reviewers throughout. - **Automated review assignment** matches each manuscript to TPC members by comparing the paper's content to reviewers' representative publications. Your topic tags and abstract are the levers that route you to the right subarea — a mis-tagged paper lands with reviewers who read it as a visitor. - **Early-reject phase.** INFOCOM 2027 posts an **early-reject notification (9 Oct 2026)** weeks before the final acceptance notification (8 Dec 2026). Papers that are out of scope, violate the double-blind/length rules, or draw uniformly weak initial scores are cut here without reaching the full discussion. - **TPC discussion and final decision** (INFOCOM 2026: 8 Dec 2025). Surviving papers are debated by the assigned TPC members, often with an area/vice chair moderating, and accepted or rejected. - Accepted papers publish in the **IEEE INFOCOM Proceedings and IEEE Xplore**. ## Reading a decision against the categories | Decision | What it means | Author move | |---|---|---| | Early reject | Screened out before full discussion: scope, compliance, or uniformly low scores | Do not appeal; diagnose honestly and reroute or substantially rework | | Reject (final) | Survived the screen but lost in discussion: a real weakness the reviewers agreed on | Reframe or reroute (SIGCOMM/NSDI/ICNP or a journal); fix the named weakness before resubmitting | | Accept | Contribution and evidence hold | Camera-ready + IEEE Xplore production; register an author | Because there is usually no rebuttal, the strategic reading runs **before** submission: anticipate the reviewer's first objection (an untuned baseline, an unstated assumption, a proof gap) and close it in the PDF, since you will not get to close it in a reply. ## How INFOCOM differs from its siblings - **vs. SIGCOMM / NSDI:** those are small, highly selective ACM/USENIX venues with a **rebuttal** and a systems-building, artifact-heavy culture. INFOCOM is **large**, IEEE, double-blind on EDAS, with **automated assignment**, an **early-reject** screen, and (traditionally) **no rebuttal** — and it welcomes analytical/optimization contributions that SIGCOMM often routes elsewhere. - **vs. ICNP:** ICNP is a smaller IEEE protocols venue; INFOCOM's breadth and scale are its identity. Do not assume a shared reviewer pool or timeline. - **vs. IEEE/ACM ToN or JSAC:** the journals have no page ceiling and a revise-and-resubmit cycle; INFOCOM is a single-shot conference decision with a hard nine-page budget. A study too long or too incremental for INFOCOM's page limit may belong in the journal. ## Who reads you Expect a handful of TPC reviewers drawn by the assignment system from your declared subarea. In a broad venue they may span pure theory to pure systems, so a paper must be legible to both: an optimization result needs an intuition and a plausible deployment story; a systems result needs its assumptions and a fair comparison. Vague method descriptions and unfair baselines are the classic INFOCOM rejects — reviewers in a crowded pool reward papers that are easy to check and hard to dismiss. ## Where author leverage actually exists ```text [Before submission] topic tags + abstract -> reviewer pool via automated assignment (largest lever) [In the PDF] pre-empt the obvious objection; the paper is your only argument [Early-reject stage] no appeal; treat the cut as signal, not noise [After reject] no rebuttal existed to blame; fix the named weakness, reroute or resubmit next cycle [If a cycle adds a response window] answer only the decision-critical, verifiable points (待核实) ``` Since the traditional process gives no reply turn, the highest-leverage move is **defensive writing**: the threats to a claim, the assumption behind a theorem, and the fairness of a baseline must all be visible in the submitted pages. ## Misreadings to avoid - **Expecting a rebuttal.** Do not hold back an answer "for the response" — there usually is none (verify the current cycle; 待核实). - **Treating early-reject as a fluke.** It is a deliberate screen; a uniform low score means the paper did not read as INFOCOM-ready. - **Under-tagging the topic.** The automated assignment is only as good as your metadata; wrong tags route you to the wrong readers. - **Assuming SIGCOMM norms.** Artifact-heavy, rebuttal-driven expectations do not transfer. ## Output format ```text [Process stage] pre-submission / under review / early-reject / final decision / accepted [Decision category] early-reject / reject / accept, with the criterion driving it [Assignment risk] do topic tags + abstract route to the right subarea? yes/no [Defensive-writing gaps] [If response window exists] ```