INFOCOM Submission

Run this audit before the EDAS deadline. INFOCOM is a large IEEE ComSoc flagship — on the order of ~1,400-1,500 submissions per year — so mechanical non-compliance is caught at scale and papers over the length limit are simply not reviewed. Every number below was read from the INFOCOM 2026/2027 Call for Papers and Submission Guidelines on 2026-07-09 via search renderings of the ieee-infocom.org URLs (see resources/official-source-map.md); treat them as a one-cycle snapshot and reopen the live call first.

The two-step deadline (abstract, then paper)

INFOCOM separates the abstract/metadata registration from the full-paper upload, both on EDAS and both AoE:

• Abstract/metadata (INFOCOM 2026: 24 July 2025) locks title, all co-authors, and a ≤200-word abstract into EDAS. This metadata drives the automated review assignment, so it must reflect the real paper.
• Full paper (INFOCOM 2026: 31 July 2025; INFOCOM 2027: 31 July 2026) uploads the anonymized PDF. Miss the abstract step and EDAS will not accept the PDF later.

Register with the real title and abstract, not a placeholder — the assignment system matches your manuscript and abstract to TPC members' publications, and a vague abstract worsens your reviewer fit before a human ever reads the paper.

Format and page budget (hard)

• IEEEtran.cls version 1.8, unmodified, two-column: \documentclass[10pt, conference, letterpaper]{IEEEtran}, 10-point Times, default margins and line spacing. This is the IEEE path, not ACM/USENIX — do not carry an acmart single-column habit over from a sibling venue.
• Page budget: 10 pages maximum. The main text — including figures, tables, appendices, and everything other than references — must be no more than 9 pages; only references may use the 10th page. There is no separate supplementary or appendix channel at review time.
• Papers that violate the length limit are not reviewed — this is a mechanical, non-negotiable screen, not a soft preference. Recover space by editing, never by shrinking the font or margins.

Double-blind sweep

INFOCOM runs double-blind review: author identities are removed from the PDF title page, body, and PDF metadata. Because networking papers lean on testbeds, traces, and released tools, the leak surface is wide:

# Mechanical pass on the submission PDF before EDAS upload
pdfinfo paper.pdf | grep -Ei 'author|creator|producer'   # scrub metadata identity
pdftotext paper.pdf - | grep -nEi 'github\.com/[a-z0-9-]+|our (prior|previous) (work|system)|acknowledg|this work was supported' | head
grep -nEi '\\thanks|\\author\{[^}]*[A-Za-z]' paper.tex | head   # stray author/thanks blocks

The networking-specific leaks: a self-citation phrased as "our previous system," a testbed or university cluster name, a released-tool GitHub URL, a funding/acknowledgement line left in, and identifying dataset names. Cite your own prior work in the third person and defer acknowledgements and grant numbers to the camera-ready.

The five-paper cap

An individual may be listed as author or co-author on at most five papers submitted to a given INFOCOM; if exceeded, only the first five received before the deadline are reviewed. On a large group's submission sprint, confirm nobody crosses the cap before the abstract deadline — EDAS enforces it on receipt order, and a late sixth paper is silently dropped.

Desk-risk triage

Final-week order of operations

1. Freeze the body early; the system model and results cannot churn in the last days.
2. Enter title/abstract/co-authors into EDAS before the abstract cutoff; confirm the ≤200-word abstract matches the paper.
3. Compile with the exact IEEEtran preamble; measure the 9-page text boundary with references excluded, not the 10-page total.
4. Run the mechanical double-blind checks on the final PDF, including pdfinfo metadata.
5. Fill every EDAS field — topics that match your evidence so the automated assignment routes you to the right TPC members, and every coauthor's affiliation — a day early.
6. Re-download the uploaded PDF and read it cold to confirm it is the file you meant.

Reverify each cycle

• The exact abstract and full-paper dates and their AoE/ET cutoffs.
• The page-budget wording (the 9-of-10 text/references split) and which IEEEtran revision is required.
• The per-author paper cap (5 for 2026), dual-submission wording, and any AI-disclosure rule — all cycle-volatile.

Output format

[INFOCOM submission status] ready / blocked / needs work
[Registration] title/abstract/co-authors in EDAS by the abstract deadline? yes/no
[Format] IEEEtran preamble correct? text pages (excl. refs) / total pages
[Anonymity] clean / leaks: <where, incl. PDF metadata and self-citations>
[Author cap] any coauthor at 5 submissions already? yes/no
[Fix queue] <ordered, with owners and dates before the AoE cutoff>