ACM Community Meeting
Scribe: Xing Fang (Xiamen University)
SIGCOMM 25
Presenter: Marilia Curado (University of Coimbra)
ACM SIGCOMM 2025 will be held from September 8-12 in Coimbra, Portugal, at the historic and modern Convento São Francisco. The organizing committee includes Marilia Curado from the University of Coimbra and Christian Rothenberg from the University of Campinas. The PC chairs are George Porter from UC San Diego and Srikanth Kandula from Microsoft. Coimbra is easily accessible from Lisbon and Oporto, and it has various lodging options. Attendees are encouraged to save the date and start preparing their submissions.
CoNEXT 2025
Presenter: Ying Zhang (Meta)
ACM CoNEXT 2025 will be held at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) in Hong Kong. The general chairs for the conference are Kai Chen, Jinshu Su, and Lei Yang, while the program chair is Ying Zhang. Participants were encouraged to start preparing their submissions and to look forward to engaging with the global research community in Hong Kong next year.
Membership, Financial Health, and Conference Sponsorship
Presenter： Matthew Caesar (University of Illinois)
Membership Profile: Membership has remained relatively stable but has not reached the peak of over 3,500 members seen in 1994. There is marginal diversity within the community despite various efforts, with women representing 7% of the membership. Geographically, 58% of members are from North America, 22% from Europe, and 15% from Asia, with other regions each below 5%.
Financial Health: SIGCOMM maintains a healthy financial status with a discretionary balance of over $2.67 million. This stability is achieved despite increased expenditures, primarily directed towards grants and awards, including travel and diversity initiatives. The bulk of SIGCOMM’s revenue comes from conference fees, ACM Digital Library (DL) revenue, and membership fees. The organization’s careful financial planning ensures they can support various activities without the risk of going broke
Conference Sponsorship: SIGCOMM sponsors several conferences both independently and in collaboration with other organizations. Solely sponsored events include SIGCOMM, CoNEXT, and HotNets. Jointly sponsored events are IMC, ANCS, SenSys, and ANRW. These sponsorships enable SIGCOMM to significantly contribute to the networking research community while sharing financial responsibilities for some events.
Educational Report
Presenter: Qiao Xiang (Xiamen University)
Mission and Achievements: The mission statement for SIGCOMM Education is to “make network fun to learn!” Key accomplishments include the “Educational Role of SIGCOMM” panel, the launch of the “Everything in SIGCOMM” discourse site, and the SIGCOMM’24 scribing activities.
Next Steps: Planned initiatives include bi-weekly online SIGCOMM paper study sessions, interview videos titled “Why choose systems?”, and research challenges. Additionally, a series of short videos covering fundamental and emerging network topics will be produced. The introduction of Shadow PCs is also on the agenda to engage more students and researchers in the peer review process.
SIGCOMM CARES
Presenter: Sujata Banerjee (VMware)
The SIGCOMM CARES initiative was introduced to ensure a supportive and inclusive environment within the SIGCOMM community. The initiative focuses on addressing issues related to harassment, and discrimination, and ensuring that all members feel welcome and respected. During the talk, Sujata highlighted the importance of these efforts and the mechanisms in place to handle any reports of inappropriate behavior, ensuring confidentiality and support for those affected.
During the Q&A, the SIGCOMM CARES initiative was asked whether it would expand. The response was that the committee decided to keep the initiative’s scope as originally established to maintain its focus and effectiveness. Ensuring committee members have a track record of inclusiveness was also highlighted as crucial for the initiative’s success.
Change Report
Presenter: Keith Weinstein (Stanford University)
Keith highlights the community’s increasing desire for change, such as the proposals received in SIGCOMM 2024. These proposals included rolling submissions, a reviewer pool manager, making SIGCOMM fully reproducible, multiple deadlines, accepting papers if there is an advocate, open reviewing, encouraging interdisciplinary research, and defining a concrete value-set for SIGCOMM
For SIGCOMM 2024, key changes include nudging towards acceptance before the conference, public reviews and discussions after, public scribing, a dual-track program, poster sessions, mentoring, and various non-paper sessions. Additionally, CoNEXT added multiple submission deadlines, HotNets introduced a “nudge towards acceptance” policy, IMC 2025 adopted rolling deadlines, and NSDI implemented multi-layer reviews. The IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking will be renamed “IEEE Transactions on Networking.” ACM Open promotes wider access with tiered pricing and open access incentives.
Keith explained SIGCOMM’s operational structure: 850 members, an Executive Committee (EC) of 5 for high-level decisions, and a Steering Committee (SC) overseeing general and program chairs. These chairs manage conferences like CoNEXT and HotNets, ensuring efficient organization and community feedback integration.
The ACM Open initiative aims to make research more accessible. Keith noted that the ACM Digital Library (DL) is pay-to-access, with significant fees for institutions. Historically, SIGCOMM provided open access to papers through links and PDFs, but this system has issues. The ACM Council decided to open the DL within five years, aiming for sustainable open access with tiered pricing and incentives to promote wider dissemination while maintaining financial sustainability.
Q&A for Change Report
Q1: Why did IEEE end its collaboration with ACM on Transactions on Networking?
Keith: It was IEEE’s decision, allowed by the contract, to retain the rights to the journal and end the collaboration. This decision affected multiple cooperative journals
Q2: What are the motivations behind public reviews before and after the conference?
Vyas: The goal is to provide transparency and educational value. Students and junior committee members wanted more visibility into the decision-making process.
Q3: Concerns about the necessity and impact of archiving reviews
Vyas: Public reviews offer transparency and context for students, showing how feedback influences paper revisions. This experiment aims to balance openness with practical considerations.
Minlan: Public reviews provide additional transparency. We welcome community feedback on which approach is more beneficial.
Q4: Challenges for non-English speaking students to read papers released late
Keith: Agreed with the concern and acknowledged the need for better timing in paper releases to ensure accessibility.
Q5: Why were camera-ready deadlines so early this year?
George: The schedule was tighter this year due to the conference timing. Everything was compressed, and the deadlines had to be set early to meet publication timelines.
Q6: Suggestion to release posters earlier to engage attendees.
Keith: Keith agreed and recognized the importance of timely poster sessions for better conference engagement.
Q7: General concerns and feedback on SIGCOMM changes.
Minlan: We acknowledge the feedback and will consider it for future conferences.
Q8: Has the public review process impacted review quality?
Minlan: Reviewers are aware their reviews will be public, which likely influences them to be more considerate and professional.
Q9: Concerns about the confusion caused by multiple versions of contributions
Keith: Having multiple versions helps in understanding the review process but can also lead to confusion.
Inclusion and Diversity
Presenter: Matthew Caesar (University of Illinois)
During the 2023-2024 period, SIGCOMM focused on initiatives to boost inclusion and diversity, particularly in Southeast Asia, in collaboration with Kanchana Kanchanasut. They introduced remote pods in Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand and supported the annual AINTEC workshop. Additionally, SIGCOMM dedicated travel grants paid in advance to beneficiaries in Southeast Asia and continued to support regional conferences and efforts like N2Women, TMA PhD School, and COMSNETs.
For 2024-2025, SIGCOMM plans to sustain these efforts and introduce new initiatives to improve diversity and inclusion. They aim to establish regional centers, launch a SIGCOMM Student Ambassadors and Executives program, and maintain their focus on Southeast Asia while expanding to Africa by 2025. They are seeking community involvement to join existing initiatives, propose new ones, and contribute ideas to improve diversity and inclusion within SIGCOMM.
Q&A for Inclusion and Diversity
Q1: Last year, there was a suggestion that every student from underrepresented regions who submits a paper should have it automatically considered for the program to incentivize engagement. What is the response to this idea?
Matthew : Agree
Q2: Is there a plan to support more remote participation and interaction for conferences?
Matthew: Yes, we are encouraging universities to host remote sessions, providing funding for food and drinks, and synchronizing these sessions with the main conference. We aim to improve synchronization and interaction for future conferences.
Q3: Can attention be given to the location of SIGCOMM conferences to ensure easier access for attendees from countries with difficult visa situations?
Matthew : Yes, the organizing committee considers ease of access when choosing locations and will take this into account for future planning.
AINTEC & remote pods
Presenter: Kanchana Kanchanasut (Asian Institute of Technology)
Kanchana discussed initiatives to foster a research community in Southeast Asia, focusing on AINTEC and remote pods. AINTEC started in 2005, aims to connect local researchers with international peers, focusing on regional issues. SIGCOMM supports AINTEC with invited speakers, publishing proceedings in the ACM Digital Library, and offering travel grants. This year, AINTEC is co-located with SIGCOMM, enhancing regional and international research collaboration.
The remote pods initiative, part of SIGCOMM’s Inclusion and Diversity program, expanded from three locations in 2023 to seven in 2024, covering five countries. These pods use prerecorded videos and local discussions, culminating in a live Zoom Q&A with authors. This initiative broadens access to SIGCOMM content and strengthens local research networks in Southeast Asia.
Open discussion and Q&A
Q1: The financial burdens and procedural problems of ACM open access
Keith: Please document and send details of your issues via email. We need these specifics to address the problems effectively in discussions with ACM.
Q2: How will future acceptance rates and community growth be managed to ensure inclusivity and diversity?
George: Engaging with controversial and out-of-the-box topics is essential. We aim to accept more papers that spur meaningful discussions, which is useful for authors and the community.
Q3: How can we improve the quality and timeliness of reviews？
George: Late reviews are unacceptable and disrupt the process. We need stricter deadlines and enforcement. Introducing two rounds of review deadlines can help distribute the workload and ensure timely feedback.
Vyas: Better communication and planning are crucial. Reviewers should inform us in advance if they face difficulties.
Minlan: The process has become more stressful post-COVID. We need to make it more predictable and plan better to accommodate reviewers’ schedules
Q4: Why does ACM charge so much for open-access publishing, and how can this be managed?
Keith: ACM’s model aims to make access free while charging for publication. This shift means people pay to publish rather than to access content. We acknowledge the financial strain and are advocating for a more equitable system.
Q5: Suggestion: Senior reviewers should mentor new reviewers by sharing insights and experiences. Clear guidelines on what constitutes a good review should be provided to help improve overall review quality
Q6: Is there a plan to expand the scope of the conference to include more diverse topics and participants?
Sylvia: We are considering various ways to expand the scope and include more diverse research areas.
Vyas: Exploring more ideas for inclusion is necessary to keep the conference relevant and inclusive.
Brighten: There are already many ideas on how to expand. We welcome any further suggestions from the community to ensure we cover the right dimensions for growth.
Personal thoughts
I am very pleased with the changes that SIGCOMM has made this year. Particularly, the innovations such as open review, non-paper sessions, scribe, and dual-track sessions. These changes have not only enhanced the transparency and participation in the conference but also allowed more researchers to engage with and benefit from SIGCOMM.
I personally believe that SIGCOMM can further improve, especially in helping students and researchers who are unable to attend the conference in person due to visa issues or financial constraints. To make participation easier, SIGCOMM could add a special session for researchers who cannot attend in person. This session could gather their concerns and interests through online questionnaires in advance and then discuss them during or after the conference, which would allow the collection and discussion of more interesting ideas.