Model the pipeline before interpreting any single review. IMC's process is built around two deadlines a year and a distinctive middle outcome — One-Shot-Revision — that is neither a plain reject nor an open-ended major revision. The most consequential mental shift for authors arriving from a single-round conference is that a good-but-incomplete measurement paper has a bounded path to acceptance across deadlines.
| Element | What the call specifies |
|---|---|
| Trigger | At least one reviewer champion advocating the work's relevance and timeliness |
| Scope | Up to 3 additions/changes — a bounded, concrete action list, not "revise broadly" |
| Resubmission | To the next deadline in the two-deadline cycle |
| Re-review | By the same reviewers, against the action points |
The strategic reading: a One-Shot-Revision is a contract. It is granted because someone
believes in the paper, and it is judged narrowly on whether the named action points were done.
Treat it as a near-accept with obligations, not a coin flip (see imc-author-response).
| Decision | What it means | Author move |
|---|---|---|
| Accept | Finding and method hold; shepherding for availability | Deliver the promised artifact; do not reopen scope |
| One-Shot-Revision | A champion exists; a bounded set of gaps (a missing vantage point, a confound to address, an ethics clarification) | Execute exactly the named action points; resubmit next deadline to the same reviewers |
| Reject | Structural: unrepresentative vantage points, no ground truth, thin measurement, ethics failure | Reframe or reroute (SIGCOMM/NSDI/CoNEXT/PAM or a journal); do not lightly resubmit unchanged |
Design the submission so its weakest point is an addressable action item (an extra vantage point, a longitudinal slice, a bounded confound) rather than a structural flaw (a study design you cannot redo before the next deadline).
Expect measurement experts who will interrogate vantage-point representativeness, whether ground truth is real, whether the finding is a snapshot artifact of a moving Internet, and whether the active measurement was safe and ethical. Because IMC spans scanning, DNS, routing, web, security, and social measurement, papers are matched to subarea reviewers — a vague methodology gets caught, not skimmed.
[Before submission] topic tags + vantage-point framing -> reviewer pool (largest lever)
[Initial reviews] factual corrections, clarifying vantage-point coverage, ethics clarifications
[One-Shot-Revision] the strongest lever: execute the bounded action points exactly, for the
same reviewers, and show each one done
[Shepherding] deliver the promised artifact; this is about availability, not new science
[After reject] no appeal; reroute to a sibling venue or a journal
[Process stage] pre-submission / awaiting reviews / one-shot-revision / shepherding / accepted
[Decision category] accept / one-shot-revision / reject, with the criterion driving it
[Champion?] is there a reviewer advocate? which review reads closest?
[Action points] <the bounded list to execute for the next deadline>
[Leverage plan] the next-stage action that can actually change the outcome
[Forbidden moves] identity leak / scope creep beyond the action points / undelivered artifact