Research Track

Authors are invited to submit original papers on the DSN’s current thematic areas of emphasis:

• Hardware (e.g., microprocessors, memories, systems on chip, I/O devices, storage systems, trusted computing)
• Software (e.g., applications, middleware, distributed algorithms, operating systems)
• Networks (e.g., wireless networks, mobility, software-defined networking, edge computing, networks on chip, intrusion detection systems, network security)
• Clouds (e.g., cloud storage, computing, platforms, applications, blockchain, cloud security and privacy)
• Cyber-physical systems (e.g., embedded systems, real-time control of critical systems internet of things, smart grid, automotive, aerospace, railways, medical systems)
• Autonomous systems (e.g., resilient AI/Machine Learning based systems, self-driving vehicles, autonomous robots, assured autonomy, explainable decision making, acceptability)
• Models and Methodologies for programming, evaluating, verifying, and assessing dependable and secure systems (e.g., performance and dependability evaluation, analytical and numerical methods, simulation, experimentation, benchmarking, verification, field data analysis)

Submissions can be made in one of the following categories (authors are required to indicate the category as part of the paper’s title). The page limits below are excluding references, for which there’s no page limit.

• Regular papers (11 pages): full paper describing a research contribution, including experimental work focused on implementation and evaluation of existing techniques in the DSN thematic areas.
• Practical experience reports (7 pages): a short paper describing practitioner experiences, innovative applications and implementations or lessons learned applying research advances, tools and techniques to real-world problems.
• Tool descriptions/demonstrations (7 pages): descriptions of the architecture, implementation and usage of substantive tools to aid the research and practice of dependability.

The number of pages indicated above includes everything except the references: title page, text, figures, appendices, etc. Papers that exceed the number of pages for that submission category will be rejected without review.

• DSN is pleased to announce the Best Paper Award, attributed every year to the best accepted scientific paper among all. Please check the relevant page on the DSN web.
• For other awards at DSN, please check out the awards URL of this website.

Innovative papers in other areas of dependable and secure systems and networks will also be considered. Papers will be assessed with criteria appropriate to each category. The conference favors work that explores new territory, contributes to a significant research dialogue, or reflects on experience with (or measurements of) state-of-the-art implementations. Submissions will be judged on originality, significance, correctness and impact.

Research Papers, Practical Experience Reports, and Tool Descriptions will be refereed and included in the Proceedings of the DSN 2020, if accepted.

All contributions must be written in English.

IEEE Computer Society will publish accepted contributions.

At least one author of every accepted paper is expected to register (as a regular registration) for the conference and present the work.

Anonymizing rules

Authors must make a good faith effort to anonymize their paper. As an author, you should not identify yourself in the paper either explicitly or by implication (e.g., through the references or acknowledgments). However, only non-destructive anonymization is required. For example, system names may be left un-anonymized, if the system name is important for a reviewer to be able to evaluate the work. For example, a paper on experiences with the design of .NET should not be re-written to be about “an anonymous but widely used commercial distributed systems platform.”

Additionally, please take the following steps when preparing your submission:

• Remove authors’ names and affiliations from the title page
• Remove acknowledgement of identifying names and funding sources
• Use care in naming your files. Source file names, e.g., Joe.Smith.dvi, are often embedded in the final output as readily accessible comments.
• Use care in referring to related work, particularly your own. Do not omit references to provide anonymity, as this leaves the reviewer unable to grasp the context. Instead, a good solution is to reference your past work in the third person, just as you would any other piece of related work.
• If you have a concurrent submission, reference it as follows: “Closely related work describes a microkernel implementation [Anonymous 2014].” with the corresponding citation: “[Anonymous 2014] Under submission. Details omitted for double-blind reviewing.”
• If you cite anonymous work, you must also send the deanonymized reference(s) to the PC chair in a separate email.
• Submissions that do not conform to the above submission deadline, anonymization and formatting guidelines (e.g., are too long, use fonts or line spacing smaller than what is indicated) or are unoriginal, previously published, or under submission to multiple venues, will be disregarded.

Formatting rules

Submissions must adhere to the IEEE Computer Society camera-ready 8.5″x11″ two-column camera-ready format (using a 10-point font on 12-point single-spaced leading) as implemented by the following LaTeX/Word templates:

• LaTex Package (use bare_conf.tex) (ZIP)
• Word Template (DOC)

Version 1.3 of the IEEE template (available at the IEEE conference template page) is also allowed.

Each paper must be submitted as a single Portable Document Format (PDF) file. All fonts must be embedded. We also strongly recommend you print the file and review it for integrity (fonts, symbols, equations etc.) before submitting it. A defective printing of your paper can undermine its chance of success. Please take a note of the following:

• Submissions should be anonymous.
• The first page must include the title of the paper, the type of the paper (Regular / Practical Experience / Tool), and a maximum 150-word abstract.
• Please take into account that the abstract will be used by the reviewers to bid on papers: describe the paper goals clearly, as well as the means used to achieve them.
• The first page is not a separate page, but is a part of the paper (and thus has technical material in it). Thus, this page counts toward the total page budget for the paper.
• The page limit includes everything except references.
• There is no page limit for references - however, authors must not put any text or figures on the pages for the references - if so, those pages will be included in the page limits above (it is acceptable for the references to start on the last page of the paper as long as it is within the page limit).
• Pages should be numbered.
• The use of color for figures and graphs is encouraged, but the paper should be easily readable if printed in grayscale.
• Symbols and labels used in the graphs should be readable as printed, without requiring on-screen magnification.
• Try to limit the file size to less than 15 MB.

Authors of accepted papers will be expected to supply electronic versions of their papers and are encouraged to supply source code and raw data to help others replicate and better understand their results.

The research track committee will perform double-blind reviewing of all submissions, with limited use of outside referees. Papers will be held in full confidence during the reviewing process, but papers accompanied by nondisclosure agreement forms are not acceptable and will be rejected without review.

Authors must anonymize their submissions (see above for guidelines). Submissions violating the formatting and anonymization rules will be rejected without review. There will be no extensions for reformatting.

Authors will have the opportunity to correct, during the rebuttal period, factual inaccuracies in the reviews. After the papers have been reviewed, but prior to the Program Committee meeting, the reviews will be made available to the authors to provide a forum for responding to any factual errors in the reviews. Please note that this is NOT a forum to add any additional information on the paper, to submit an updated or revised paper, or to list changes the authors promise to include in the final version. Author responses will be made available to all PC members before the paper is discussed for selection in the PC meeting. The submissions website will contain full author-response guidelines.

Papers are submitted via the submission website (https://hotcrp.dsn20.org).

The DSN 2020 Research track is chaired by Kaustubh Joshi, from AT&T Labs Research (USA), and Haining Wang, from Virginia Tech (USA).

Find hereafter the list of all Research Track Committees: