Skills Development Writing Related Work for SoCC Submissions

Writing Related Work for SoCC Submissions

v20260724
socc-related-work
A comprehensive guide for positioning a paper for ACM SoCC. It instructs authors to write the related work section by bridging both systems literature (e.g., OSDI, NSDI) and data-management literature (e.g., SIGMOD, VLDB). Focus must be on stating the 'delta'—the unique difference—rather than merely listing citations, ensuring dual anonymity and covering all relevant technical lanes.
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Overview

SoCC Related Work

Use this to audit novelty and eligibility. SoCC reviewers come from both SIGMOD and SIGOPS, so a credible related-work section reaches both lanes — the systems flagships and the data-management flagships — and states where your paper sits relative to the nearest prior work as a delta, not a list. A bibliography that cites only one community tells a reviewer from the other that the paper may be a visitor. Reopen the current call for dual-submission, anonymity, and prior-publication rules before advising authors.

Positioning checks

  • Separate the cloud novelty from the engineering effort. What is new: a mechanism, a measurement, a benchmark, a deployment lesson, or a cost model — and is it new to both communities or only one?
  • Cover both lanes. SoCC reviewers expect the systems venues (OSDI/NSDI/EuroSys/ATC/SOSP/SoCC) and the data venues (SIGMOD/VLDB) where relevant, not just the papers nearest your mechanism.
  • Write delta-first. Each closely related paper gets one sentence naming what it did and one naming what you do differently — not a summary. Position, don't catalog.
  • Preserve dual anonymity. Cite your own prior work in the third person and never link reviewers to an identity-revealing preprint, repository, deployment, or homepage.
  • Declare overlap with any prior workshop version (e.g., a HotCloud/HotStorage short paper) or concurrent submission; do not re-submit archival work as new.

Cloud literature lanes

Lane Typical venues What SoCC reviewers check
Systems flagships OSDI, SOSP, NSDI, EuroSys, ATC, SoCC Whether the nearest systems mechanism is compared or distinguished
Data management SIGMOD, VLDB, ICDE Whether the data-systems predecessors (storage, query, transactions) are engaged
Cloud + big-data infra SoCC, VLDB, OSDI Whether prior resource-mgmt / serverless / big-data-systems work is credited
Measurement IMC, SoCC, SIGMETRICS Whether prior traces/measurement studies on your workload are acknowledged
Adjacent (when relevant) ML-systems (MLSys), networking Whether borrowed methods are cited to their real origin

A bibliography spanning the systems flagships and the data flagships signals command of SoCC's joint field; one that cites only your own subarea suggests the delta may be smaller than claimed.

Delta-first positioning vignette

Suppose the paper proposes a tail-aware serverless autoscaler and a supporting measurement. Its nearest neighbors: a systems-flagship autoscaler that scales on concurrency (mechanism, no tail target), a SoCC serverless paper on cold starts (adjacent problem, different lever), and a data/measurement study of function invocation traces (characterization, no mechanism). The novelty sentence should name all three contrasts — a tail-SLO controller where the flagship used concurrency, a provisioning lever where the cold-start paper optimized startup, and a built system where the measurement study offered only characterization.

Concurrent and prior-version judgment calls

[Concurrent arXiv work]   cite neutrally, state the technical difference, avoid unverifiable
                          priority claims; keep the citation dual-anonymous
[Your workshop version]   a HotCloud/HotStorage-style short paper is usually citable and
                          non-archival, but confirm against the current CFP and phrase so
                          anonymity survives
[Prior short/poster]      declare the overlap and state what the full paper adds beyond it
[Archival status unclear] declare the overlap in the submission form rather than guessing a
                          chair's interpretation

Eligibility red flags

  • Substantial text overlap with a published paper by the same authors (self-plagiarism risk).
  • A "new" measurement that re-reports a prior trace's numbers without a new question.
  • Citations exclusively to one community (all systems or all data), signaling the paper may be a visitor rerouted without reframing for SoCC's joint audience.

Output format

[Eligibility] clear / needs declaration / risky
[Lanes covered] <systems flagships / data management / cloud-infra / measurement / adjacent>
[Nearest 3 works] <work -> one-line delta>
[Archival-overlap risk] <none / declare: what>
[Novelty sentence] <SoCC-ready contribution contrast against the nearest systems AND data prior work>
Info
Category Development
Name socc-related-work
Version v20260724
Size 4.76KB
Updated At 2026-07-29
Language