DSN-2025: Research Track Call For Contributions

Society is increasingly dependent on the robust functioning of all types of computing systems. These systems include mobile/edge devices, networks, personal computers, and large-scale systems and critical infrastructures that provide services we use in our everyday lives for many applications and problems. Failure, incorrect operation, or compromise of computing systems and networks can have dire implications for the safety and security of human and other lives and the environment.

The Annual IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN) is devoted to the mission of ensuring that the computing systems and networks on which society relies are robust, i.e., dependable and secure.

DSN, one of the longest-running IEEE conferences organizing its 55th edition in 2025, has pioneered the fusion between dependability and security research under a common body of knowledge, understanding the need to simultaneously fight against accidental faults, intentional (malicious) attacks, design errors, and unexpected operating conditions. Its distinctive approach to both accidental faults and malicious attacks has made DSN the most prestigious international forum for presenting research that pushes the boundaries in the robustness and resilience of a wide spectrum of computing systems and networks.

All aspects of research and practice of computer system robustness (i.e., dependability and security) are within the scope of DSN. Relevant topics include but are not limited to: 1) innovative systems, architectures, protocols, and algorithms for preventing, detecting, diagnosing, eliminating, or recovering from accidental and malicious threats as well as 2) practical experimentation with and assessment of the robustness (dependability and security) of all types of computing systems and networks.

Authors are invited to submit original papers on all topics within this broad scope. Example topical areas include but are not limited to the following:

Important dates

Nov 27, 2024: Abstract Submission Deadline

Dec 4, 2024: Paper Submission Deadline

Jan 27, 2025: Early Reject Notification

Feb 13 - 27, 2025: Author Rebuttal & Revision Period

Mar 19, 2025: Notification to Authors

Apr 28, 2025: Camera Ready Materials

* All dates refer to AoE time (Anywhere on Earth) *

Information to authors

Innovative papers in all areas of robust (dependable and secure) systems and networks will be considered. Papers will be assessed with criteria appropriate to each category. The conference broadly and inclusively favors innovative and insightful research that explores new territory, continues a significant research dialogue, or reflects on experience with (or measurements of) state-of-the-art systems. Submissions will be judged on insight, originality, significance, correctness, and potential impact.

Research Papers, Practical Experience Reports, and Tool Descriptions will be refereed and included in the Proceedings of the DSN 2025, 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 in person.

Paper Categories

When submitting, authors have to select one of the following categories:

Regular papers (11 pages): a full paper describing a research contribution, including experimental work focused on implementation and evaluation of existing techniques in the DSN thematic areas. Papers should clearly describe a novel scientific contribution and a significant advancement of the state of knowledge in DSN-relevant topics. The paper should address a significant problem with a compelling solution whose validity and practical applicability are clearly discussed.

Practical experience reports (7 pages): a shorter paper describing practitioner experiences or lessons learned applying tools and techniques to real-world problems and systems, or based on the empirical analysis of field data using a rigorous scientific approach. A paper in this category is expected to show new insights and experiences informing the research and practice of robust computing system design. Contributions reporting on industry practical experiences and lessons learned are highly encouraged, including studies reporting negative results or challenges about the practical applicability or scalability of research results in industry.

Tool descriptions/demonstrations (7 pages): descriptions of the architecture, implementation, and usage of substantive tools to aid the research and practice of dependability. A tool paper is expected to describe and demonstrate the value that the tool brings to the dependability community. Making the tool publicly available, whenever possible, is strongly encouraged.

The number of pages indicated above includes everything: title page, text, figures, appendices, etc. Only references are not included in the page limit. Papers that exceed the number of pages for that submission category will be rejected without review.

Independently of the paper category, we expect all papers to provide enough detail to enable the reproducibility of their experimental results and encourage authors, whenever possible, to make both the artifacts and datasets related to the paper publicly available.

Artifacts

DSN supports open science, where authors of accepted papers are encouraged to make their code and datasets publicly available to ensure reproducibility and replicability by other researchers. DSN 2025 will offer a separate artifact evaluation track that is open to all accepted papers from all three categories of the research track. The goals of the artifact track are to (1) increase confidence in a paper’s claims and results, and (2) facilitate future research via publicly available datasets and tools.

At the time of the submission, authors must indicate (1) whether they intend to submit an artifact for their submission, (2) the type of artifact (code, dataset, or both), (3) a DOI reserved for the artifact on an open-access repository (Zenodo or Figshare), and (4) the badge(s) they are applying for. For more information about how to reserve a DOI and about the three choices available for the badges, see the Call for Artifacts on the DSN’25 website.

Information about the artifact submission will not be shared with the PC. The artifact does not need to be submitted at the same time as the paper. The artifact can be uploaded at the reserved DOI after the paper submission deadline and can be updated until the artifact submission deadline.

The artifacts will be evaluated by a dedicated Artifacts Evaluation (AE) committee through a single-blind review process, where authors should be available to respond quickly during the artifact evaluation. All artifacts submitted will compete for a “Distinguished Artifact Award” to be decided by that committee.

Anonymization Rules

Authors must make a good-faith effort to anonymize their papers. An author should always refer to their own related work in the third person, just like they would refer to any other related work. As an author, you should not identify yourself in the paper either explicitly or by implication (e.g., through references or acknowledgments).

Anonymization should not be done in a way to hurt the review process. For example, omitting published references or anonymizing them for the purposes of a double-blind process can significantly hurt the review process. As such, 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 rewritten to be about "an anonymous but widely used commercial distributed systems platform."

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

Authors should also avoid broadly advertising their work in a way that reaches the reviewers even if they are not searching for it (for example, presentations in small meetings or seminars are allowed). It is unacceptable to discuss the work with program committee members. Posting the work on ArXiV or a similar site is within the authors’ rights; however, the authors should use a different title than the submission and they should avoid specifying that the work is under submission to DSN. In particular, please ensure that there are not older versions of the paper on ArXiV that have the same title as the submission.

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 LaTeX/Word templates available at the IEEE conference template page (last updated in 2019):

LaTex Package (ZIP)

Word Template (DOC)

Each paper must be submitted as a single Portable Document Format (PDF) file. All fonts must be embedded in the file. 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 acceptance. Please take a note of the following:

Paper Submissions

Papers are submitted via the submission website: https://dsn25.hotcrp.com.

The program committee will perform a double-blind review of all submissions, with help from 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 Anonymization Rules). Submissions violating the formatting and anonymization rules will be rejected without review. There will be no extensions for reformatting.

Awards

DSN gives three Best Paper Awards and one of them, based on the quality of the oral presentation, will also receive a Distinguished Best Paper Award. All of them will be presented in a special Best Paper Session at the conference.

The selection of the candidate papers for the awards is carried out as a three-step process. First, the Program Committee picks 6-7 of the accepted papers based on the review and revision process & committee discussion. Second, the Steering Committee (in consultation with the Program Chairs) chooses among these papers the 3 Best Papers that are to be presented in the Best Paper Session at the conference (all these papers receive the Best Paper Award). Third, and finally, the audience at the conference votes among these Best Papers to select the one that should receive the Distinguished Best Paper Award. Attendees are strongly encouraged to read the Best Papers as well as carefully listen to their presentations, and make their Distinguished Best Paper Award choice based on all information they have about the finalized Best Papers and their presentations at the conference.

DSN also attributes a group of awards based on nominations. These awards are the William C. Carter Ph.D. Dissertation Award in Dependability, the Rising Star in Dependability Award, the Test-of-Time Award, and the Jean-Claude Laprie Award. Please check the relevant page on the DSN website for additional details.

As noted above, there will also be a Distinguished Artifact Award.

Review Process and Author Response

This year, as initiated in DSN 2023, in addition to the rebuttal process, DSN is following a Paper Revision Process. For papers that are not early rejects, the authors will be invited to submit a revised paper (as well as a rebuttal) after receiving their reviews. The major goal of the revision process is twofold:

Through this process, we give the authors the ability to submit both a revised paper (based on the received reviews) and a rebuttal. These two serve different purposes. In particular, the rebuttal remains useful for at least three purposes that cannot be easily accomplished with a revised paper:

The authors of all papers that are invited for revision will be allowed one extra page to properly address reviewer comments. In other words, the revised (and, if accepted, the final) versions of papers will be allowed 12 pages for regular papers and 8 pages for practical experience reports or tool descriptions/demonstrations. The authors will be asked to mark and describe all the changes they made to the submission during the revision process. More information will be provided to authors of papers who are asked to provide a revision as to how to prepare, format, and submit the revised version of the submission. Note that submitting a revised paper does not guarantee acceptance of the paper to the conference and all revised papers will be reviewed and discussed by the Program Committee.

To limit the load on the reviewers, the rebuttal will be strictly limited to 750 words. Any attempt to provide extra information, for example by including images in the rebuttal, will cause the rebuttal material to be discarded.

DSN will continue to employ the Early Rejection Notification Policy. Papers that are rejected in the first reviewing round will receive their rejection notification and reviews by January 27, 2025. As such, the authors may get started earlier on improving their manuscript for a future submission, if they wish to do so.

All accepted papers will be subject to the revision and approval of a PC member acting as a shepherd.

Open Science Policy

After papers are accepted, the authors are encouraged to make all research results accessible to the public and ensure, if possible, that empirical studies are reproducible. In particular, DSN actively supports the adoption of open source and open data principles and encourages all authors to make their prototypes available to the research community and disclose collected data to increase reproducibility and replicability. Note that sharing research data is not mandatory for submission or acceptance. Accepted papers can participate in the artifact evaluation process described above.

Ethical considerations

Submissions describing experiments with data derived from human subjects or presenting results that might have ethical considerations should discuss how ethical and potential legal concerns were addressed and disclose if an ethics review was conducted (e.g. by the author’s institutional ethics review boards if applicable). Also, if the paper reports a potentially high-impact vulnerability, the authors should discuss the steps they have taken or plan to address these vulnerabilities (e.g., by contacting the vendors/manufacturers). The same applies if the submission deals with personal identifiable information or other kinds of sensitive data (e.g., by following applicable privacy protection regulations and rules). The PC’s review process may examine the ethical soundness of the paper just as it examines the technical soundness. The Program Committee reserves the right to reject a submission if insufficient evidence was presented that significant ethical or relevant legal concerns were appropriately addressed.

Contact the program co-chairs dsn25pcchairs@gmail.com if you have any questions.

Conflicts of Interest

Authors and PC members are asked to declare potential conflicts during the paper submission and reviewing process. In particular, a conflict of interest must be declared under any of the following conditions: (1) anyone who shares an institutional affiliation with an author at the time of submission, (2) anyone the author has collaborated or published within the last two years, (3) anyone who was the advisor or advisee of an author, or (4) is a relative or close personal friend of the authors. For other forms of conflict and related questions, authors must explain the perceived conflict to the PC chairs.

Program committee members who have conflicts of interest with a paper, including program co-chairs, will be excluded from any discussion concerning the paper.

Submission policy for Program chairs and Organizing committee members

To avoid potential bias, the DSN Program Committee Co-Chairs are not allowed to (co-)author any submission to the conference. There are no such restrictions for the PC members and other organizing committee members including the General chairs since double-blind anonymization rules and conflict of interest declaration and resolution procedures are enforced. We should emphasize that the DSN General chairs are not involved in any of the processes related to the technical program including the selection of the PC chairs and PC committee and the submission, reviewing, and acceptance of papers.

Program Committee Co-Chairs

Patrick P. C. Lee, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Saman Zonouz, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA

Contact

For further information please send an email to research_track@dsn.org

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