Starting from the 25th MobiCom conference in 2019, we will adopt multiple deadlines and add a one-shot review process to enhance the timeliness and quality of the scientific results from the research community.
For MobiCom'19, we will adopt the following two paper submission deadlines:
Papers accepted through both submission processes will appear in the MobiCom'19 conference. Submission deadlines in subsequent years will be similarly set during similar timeframes in July/August and February/March. We expect no difference in the submission format and conference format.
Each paper will go through the same rigorous reviewing process as in previous MobiCom conferences. We will continue to have in-person PC meetings, and will hold two PC meetings corresponding to the two submission deadlines. Each PC member needs to attend in person at least ONE of the two PC meetings, and join the other through online conferencing.
The review decisions will be one of the following:
Accept: Accepted papers will be presented at the MobiCom conference and appear as part of the proceedings. In the meantime, authors are permitted to talk about these upcoming publications, e.g., listing them on CVs. The publications will also be put on the MobiCom and ACM websites.
Reject: Rejected papers cannot be resubmitted until 12 months have passed since the last MobiCom deadline they were submitted to.
We expect the multi-deadline model will lead to papers with higher quality, because authors would have more flexibility to submit right after their work is ready, and because of the specific guidance to revise their papers (for the one-shot revision paper). We do not, however, intend in any way to lower MobiCom's high expectations for published results.
On the other hand, the new submission model will lead to higher-quality reviews as well, because spreading the reviewing load across multiple deadlines should make it easier for reviewers to find time in their schedules to complete a quality review; and specific to the one-shot revision paper, the randomness of reviews will be reduced as the same set of reviewers will read and supervise the revision.
We may see a slight increase in the acceptance rate, owing to our ability to use the one-shot-revision process to bring a few papers up to our standard that otherwise would not have reached it. But, since we're applying the same standard for publication as in past years, we do not expect any change in the prestige associated with the conference.