INFOCOM Related Work

Use this to audit novelty and eligibility. INFOCOM reviewers are close to the networking literature across both its analytical and systems wings, and they expect to see where your paper sits relative to the nearest prior work — stated as a delta, not a list. Reopen the current call for dual-submission, double-blind, and prior-publication rules before advising authors.

Positioning checks

• Separate the networking novelty from the engineering effort. What is new: a formulation, a bound/guarantee, a protocol/mechanism, a measurement finding, or an evidence regime nobody had covered? A faster implementation of a known scheme is not, by itself, an INFOCOM contribution.
• Cover the networking lanes. INFOCOM reviewers expect the flagships and the journals, not just the papers nearest your method (see the table). A bibliography missing the obvious sibling work reads as unaware in a crowded pool.
• 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 double-blind. Cite your own prior work in the third person and never link reviewers to an identity-revealing preprint, repository, or homepage.
• Declare overlap with any prior workshop/short version or concurrent submission; do not re-submit archival work as new.

Networking literature lanes

A bibliography that cites only your own subarea tells a reviewer the delta may be smaller than claimed; one that reaches the sibling flagships and the journals signals command of the field.

Delta-first positioning vignette

Suppose the paper proposes an online scheduling algorithm for edge offloading with a competitive ratio. Its nearest neighbors: an INFOCOM optimization paper on static offloading (offline, no online guarantee), a SIGCOMM system that offloads with a heuristic (built and measured, no bound), and a ToN queueing analysis of edge delay (analysis, different objective). The novelty sentence names all three contrasts — an online guarantee where the first was offline, a provable ratio where the system had only a heuristic, and a scheduling objective where the journal analyzed delay.

Concurrent and prior-version judgment calls

[Concurrent arXiv work]   cite neutrally, state the technical difference, avoid unverifiable
                          priority claims; keep the citation double-blind
[Your workshop version]   usually citable, but confirm against the current CFP wording and phrase
                          so anonymity survives; state what the full paper adds
[Prior short/poster]      declare the overlap and state the delta beyond it
[Archival status unclear] declare the overlap in EDAS 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" result that re-reports a prior model's numbers without a new question or guarantee.
• Citations exclusively to non-networking venues, signaling a paper rerouted without reframing for the networking reader.

Output format

[Eligibility] clear / needs declaration / risky
[Lanes covered] <flagship / systems / wireless / theory-optimization / journals>
[Nearest 3 works] <work -> one-line delta>
[Archival-overlap risk] <none / declare: what>
[Novelty sentence] <INFOCOM-ready contribution contrast against the nearest prior work>