---
name: nsdi-submission
description: Use when running the final pre-upload audit of an NSDI submission — the abstract-then-paper week on the per-deadline HotCRP site, 11:59 pm US Eastern cutoffs, the 12-page cap with references and appendices outside it, track-dependent anonymization, the eight-paper author cap, and the resubmission-ban check.
---

# NSDI Submission

The audit below is ordered by irreversibility: calendar errors first, then format,
then blindness, then policy. Numbers are the NSDI '27 cycle as rendered on
2026-07-08; the fall HotCRP `/deadlines` page outranks everything here.

## Gate 0: the right site, the right clock

NSDI runs a **separate HotCRP instance per deadline**
(`nsdi27spring.usenix.hotcrp.com`, `nsdi27fall...`). Uploading to a stale spring site
bookmarked in March is a real failure mode. For the '27 fall gate:

- Abstracts (title, author list, track, conflicts): **September 10, 2026**.
- Full papers: **September 17, 2026**.
- Both **11:59 pm US EDT** — an Eastern-US midnight, not AoE and not the Pacific
  cutoff NSDI '26 used. Same-named deadlines moved time zones between editions;
  compute each coauthor's local equivalent from the HotCRP page, not from memory.

The abstract gate is a prerequisite: no registered abstract, no paper upload a week
later. Register even if 60% sure — withdrawing is free, materializing an unregistered
paper is impossible.

## Gate 1: format

| Item | '27 rule | Audit action |
|---|---|---|
| Body | ≤ 12 pages incl. footnotes, figures, tables | Count on the compiled PDF |
| References | extra pages allowed | Nothing else hiding among them |
| Appendices | extra pages allowed after references | Nothing load-bearing inside (`nsdi-supplementary`) |
| Template/fonts | current USENIX template, unmodified | Diff class options against the distributed file |
| Track | research / operational / frontiers | Matches the evidence actually in the paper |

Page-cap pressure at NSDI is figure pressure — figures count. The fix is content
triage, never `\vspace` surgery or font tricks; production chairs and reviewers both
notice geometry games.

## Gate 2: blindness, per track

Baseline sweep for all tracks — no author names, affiliations, acknowledgments, or
funding numbers; self-citations in third person; references never omitted for
anonymity; concurrent NSDI submissions cited with the CFP's fixed sentence ("Under
submission. Details omitted for double-blind reviewing.").

Then the fork:

- **Research/frontiers:** deployment context must not identify the institution by
  implication. A trace "from our global CDN" plus a author-count and a topology
  detail can triangulate to one company; neutralize to scale-descriptive terms.
- **Operational systems:** the CFP *relaxes* object anonymity — real system names,
  company names, and links may stay because judging real-world use requires them —
  while author names stay hidden. Do not import this exception into a research-track
  paper.

```bash
# Mechanical pass on the exact upload candidate
pdftotext final.pdf - | grep -nEi '(acknowledg|funded by|grant|@[a-z]+\.(com|edu))' | head
pdfinfo final.pdf | grep -Ei 'author|creator'          # PDF metadata identity
grep -rnEi '(github\.com/[a-z0-9-]+|/home/|/Users/)' *.tex figures/ | head
# research track only: search for your institution's giveaway nouns
pdftotext final.pdf - | grep -niE 'ourcorp|internal-codename' | head
```

Mechanical passes catch strings; only a human pass catches implication. Have a
non-author read the PDF asking one question: *who wrote this?*

## Gate 3: policy

- **Dual submission / prior publication / plagiarism:** prohibited by USENIX;
  concurrent review anywhere else is disqualifying, and the ban survives
  notification-date arithmetic ("they'd decide before NSDI" does not help).
- **Resubmission ban:** if this work was rejected (without a revision option) from
  the immediately preceding NSDI deadline, it cannot enter this one. Check the
  paper's own decision history — spring '27 reject means no fall '27 entry
  (`nsdi-review-process`).
- **One-shot revisions** enter with their auxiliary packet complete
  (`nsdi-author-response`); an ordinary-looking resubmission that ignores its issue
  list is terminally rejected.
- **Author cap:** at most **eight submissions per author across all '27 deadlines**
  — reconcile the group's ledger, counting spring entries.
- **AI use:** grammar-and-clarity assistance on human-written text is endorsed;
  anything more, ask the co-chairs before the deadline, not after.
- **Ethics:** measurement of real users or third-party infrastructure needs its
  handling addressed in the paper; the '27 CFP's exact ethics wording is 待核实 —
  read that section live.

## HotCRP form fields deserve the same audit as the PDF

Reviewers meet the form before the paper: title and abstract must match the PDF
verbatim (drift reads as sloppiness and can confuse bidding); topic selections route
the paper toward the sub-community you want reviewing it — choose for the reviewer
profile, not maximal coverage; the full author list is entered at abstract time for
conflict computation even though the PDF hides it, and late author additions after
review assignment are a co-chairs-level incident. Declare conflicts by the site's
definitions, completely and no wider.

## Final sequence

1. T-8 days: fall HotCRP account, abstract fields drafted, conflicts entered.
2. T-7 (Sept 10): abstract registered; track locked deliberately.
3. T-2: content freeze; Gates 1-2 executed on the near-final PDF.
4. T-1: coauthor sign-off; HotCRP title/abstract verbatim-match the PDF.
5. T-0 (Sept 17): upload, status **complete**, then download the receipt copy and
   read it — the uploaded bytes, not the local file, are the submission.

## Output format

```text
[Clock] site URL + local-time cutoffs confirmed from /deadlines
[Gate 1] pages / template / track — pass or blocker
[Gate 2] mechanical findings + human-pass verdict (track-appropriate)
[Gate 3] dual-sub / ban / cap / AI / ethics — each cleared or flagged
[Receipt] uploaded PDF re-read? fields match?
[Blockers] ordered, with owner and time cost
```