Call For Papers

ACM MobiSys 2027 continues the conference’s tradition as a premier forum for innovative and significant research in mobile computing, applications, and services. We invite high-impact technical contributions that advance the design, implementation, and evaluation of mobile systems, with particular emphasis on working and reproducible implementations and rigorous practical evaluation. We also welcome research that investigates emerging mobile use cases, identifies new challenges and opportunities, and shares insights gained from the deployment and operation of real-world systems.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• New software systems for mobile computing (including architectures, operating systems, infrastructure support, and web)
• Energy and resource management for mobile devices
• Machine learning and AI for mobile devices
• Novel human-mobile interaction techniques and experiences
• Security and privacy in mobile systems
• Wearable systems and applications
• Vehicular, robotic, and drone systems
• Virtual, augmented, and mixed reality systems
• Context and location sensing systems
• Application-focused mobile and wireless systems (e.g., systems for health, accessibility, sustainability, climate, buildings, agriculture)
• Mobile and wireless systems in challenging environments (e.g., underwater, space, in-body)
• Novel datasets for mobile and wireless systems
• Wireless communication and sensing systems (including 5G/6G, millimeter-wave & THz, backscatter, LPWAN)
• Experience with mobile applications, networks, and systems
• Non-traditional topics that bring new perspectives to mobile computing

Important Dates

Submission

Please register and submit your paper at https://mobisys27.hotcrp.com/. Detailed guidelines on submission policies and formatting requirements portal are available on the MobiSys 2027 website at https://www.sigmobile.org/mobisys/2027/.

Contact and Questions

• Jun Han (KAIST) — junhan@cyphy.kaist.ac.kr
• Falko Dressler (TU Berlin) — dressler@ccs-labs.org

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Submission Guidelines

Note that titles and abstracts submitted to register the paper by the abstract deadline, albeit not final, must be sufficiently informative, i.e., they must contain a meaningful title and a meaningful abstract of at least 100 words which will reasonably correspond to the final version of the title and the abstract. Abstracts and/or paper titles such as “TBD”, “XXX”, “coming”, “abcabc” or similar will be desk rejected. There will be no extensions to the deadlines listed above.

Author List

All authors of the paper must be declared at the time of paper submission and may not be updated after the paper submission deadline.

For questions about the submission guidelines, please contact the Program Co-Chairs listed under Contact and Questions.

Policy on Concurrent/Previous Submissions

Papers whose contributions overlap with work currently under review elsewhere must not be submitted to ACM MobiSys 2027. Papers whose contributions overlap with an earlier published paper will be considered only if:

• The previous paper was published (not just accepted) at a workshop before the ACM MobiSys submission date, and
• It adds significant new contributions to the previous paper.

Authors uncertain whether their submission meets these guidelines should contact the program chairs. Papers accompanied by non-disclosure agreement forms will not be considered. Accepted submissions will be treated as confidential prior to publication; rejected submissions will be permanently treated as confidential.

All submissions must describe original research not published or currently under review for another conference or journal. It is ACM policy not to allow double submissions, where the same paper is submitted concurrently to more than one conference/journal. Any double submissions detected will be immediately rejected from all conferences/journals involved.

Posted technical reports (ArXiv or similar) do not count as prior publication. However, we encourage the authors to:

• Use different system names in the technical report and ACM MobiSys 2027 submission, and
• Avoid publicizing the technical report on social media, public media, or community blogs and webpages while it is under review by ACM MobiSys 2027.

Resubmission Policy

If your submission was based on work that was previously peer-reviewed and rejected, you are encouraged to provide a short summary of the points raised by the reviewers of your previous submission and how you addressed them. This non-mandatory summary can be submitted to the submission system and should not be part of the paper submission itself. We do not expect a full rebuttal addressing each point, but rather an indication to the reviewers of ACM MobiSys 2027 that you have taken the previous reviewers’ comments seriously and are not simply resubmitting the paper as it was to ACM MobiSys 2027. The summary you have provided will be visible to the reviewers after they submitted their review to avoid any bias against paper resubmissions.

Formatting Guidelines

Submissions must be in Portable Document Format (PDF). We will not accept papers in any other format. Any papers that do not adhere to the following guidelines may be rejected without review:

• Papers must not exceed twelve (12) single-spaced, numbered pages for the main content, including figures and tables.
• Authors may provide additional appendix and reference sections without page limits. The appendix and references will not count toward the 12-page limit, but reviewers are not required to read the appendix and may consult it at their discretion.
• Submissions in which the main content including any material intended for review exceeds 12 pages will not be reviewed, regardless of the length of the appendix or references.
• Font size no smaller than 10 points.
• Double column format with each column having dimensions 9.25 inches x 3.33 inches, a space of 0.33 inches between the two columns, and with no more than 55 lines of text per column.
• Fit properly on US letter-sized paper (8.5 inches by 11 inches).
• Again, submissions must be in PDF. Authors should ensure that they are compatible with Adobe Acrobat (English version). Any other formats, including Postscript and MS-Word, will not be accepted.
• You may find these templates useful in complying with the above requirements. For LaTeX users, please use \documentclass[sigconf,10pt]{acmart}. But as an author, you bear the final responsibility to verify that your submission is format compliant.

Policy on the Use of Large Language Models (LLMs)

Any text in submissions that is generated using large-scale language models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, Claude, or Google Gemini, must be clearly identified by the authors in the submitted paper. This policy does not apply to using LLMs for editing or proofreading the author’s own text. Authors are also not allowed to embed any hidden text or other material in the submission that would encourage LLMs to favorably review their submission. Please carefully review the ACM Policy on Authorship before using these tools.

Ethics Review Board Approval Requirement

As part of the submission process, authors of papers that describe experiments on human subjects, or that analyze non-public data derived from human subjects (even anonymized data), will be asked to certify that their work was vetted by an ethics review (e.g., Institutional Review Board (IRB), Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC) or similar approval). We expect authors to follow the rules of their host institutions around data collection and experiments with human subjects. Papers that will not adhere to this rule will be rejected.

Emerging Ideas Track

The Emerging Ideas track welcomes bold, forward-looking, and potentially high-impact research that may be in early stages of development. Submissions should explore new problems, challenge prevailing assumptions, or introduce conceptual shifts in how we think about mobile systems - even if they are not yet fully validated. The review process will adopt a distinct mindset: priority will be given to originality, clarity of insight, and potential to shape future directions, rather than completeness or technical maturity. Evaluation will focus on whether the idea is sufficiently plausible and compelling, not necessarily deployable or exhaustively proven. Accepted papers will be featured in a dedicated session aimed at sparking discussion and surfacing fresh perspectives in the MobiSys community.

To submit a paper in this track, start your paper title with [Emerging Ideas], and check the “Emerging Ideas Track” checkbox on the HotCRP submission page.

Review Process

Since its inception in 2003, MobiSys had a single-blind review policy where the identities of the reviewers were not revealed to the authors, but the reviewers knew the names, affiliations, and contact information of the authors. In 2017, this policy was modified: in addition to the identity of the reviewers not being revealed to the authors, the identities of the authors were not revealed to the reviewers during the initial review of the paper.

Over the past several years, we have witnessed a remarkable increase in the pace and volume of research within our community. The number of papers being submitted has soared, leading to the expansion of Technical Program Committees (TPCs), which has inadvertently increased the probability of mistakes. Additionally, many authors are now releasing the code associated with their research, they are writing blogs, and publishing their papers on arXiv before submission, and there has been a noticeable reduction in self-policing due to author anonymity.

In light of these developments, we are once again revising our paper review policy. Starting in 2026, MobiSys reverted to a single-blind review process. Consequently, authors are now required to include their names, affiliations, and contact information on the manuscripts they submit for review.

This change will allow reviewers to identify any potential conflicts of interest that might otherwise go unnoticed. This is essential to maintaining the integrity of the review process and ensuring that all evaluations are fair and unbiased. Moreover, knowing the authors’ identity can help address any issues caused by false assumptions about the authorship of a paper. This also enables referees to ask more appropriate and targeted questions. This makes it easier to compare new results with the authors’ previously published work, ensuring that a true advance is being reported and it removes the burden authors face in anonymizing their previous research results.

We believe that this change will promote transparency and accountability, ultimately improving the quality of our conference proceedings. We appreciate your cooperation and understanding as we implement this still new policy.

Conflict of Interest

To ensure a fair review process, PC members who have a conflict of interest with any author of the submission will not review or participate in the discussion of the submission. It is the author’s responsibility to mark conflict of interests in the submission website.

ACM MobiSys will follow the ACM policy and add and extend rules on specific relationships to explicitly define conflicts of interest of one submission as:

• Any program committee member who works/worked at the same organizational affiliation with any co-author in the last 24 months or reasonably expected within the next 12 months;
• Any program committee member who has co-authored any book, article, report, abstract or paper with collaboration in the last 24 months or reasonably expected within the next 12 months;
• Any program committee member who has collaborated on projects, such as funded grants, research or others with any co-author in the last 24 months or reasonably expected within the next 12 months;
• Any program committee member who is/was the advisor or advisee of any co-author; These include your BSc advisor(s), MSc advisor(s), PhD advisor(s) and/or postdoctoral host(s).
• Any program committee member who graduated from the same research group and/or was under the same advisor/supervisor/manager in the last 48 months;
• Any program committee member who is exposed to the full or partial authorship of the work being submitted here on any public or private channel (including but not limited to interview talks, campus visits, research discussion, conversations);
• Any program committee member who has family, marriage, blood, or heritage relationships;
• Any program committee member who has a close personal friendship or business relationship beyond professional settings that could affect the review process with any co-author; Others perceivable conflicts.

Cases that do not require conflict of interest notification include:

• Reviewers that are working on the same topic as you.
• Collaborations with the reviewers on program committees, open-source projects, etc.
• A potential conflict of interest must be identified at the submission and can be updated at any point during the review process, but, when possible, potential conflicts should be determined before acceptance decisions are made.

The author(s) must identify every conflict of interest out of all program committee members (including chairs) with any author of the submission and indicate the type of conflict during the submission process. The authors should not mark any reviewer as a conflict unless they fall in one of the above conflict of interest categories; the authors are expected to be ready to justify any marked conflict if asked by the PC chairs. For other forms of conflicts (item 8), the authors must contact the program chairs and explain the perceived conflict.

Knowingly hiding or falsifying a stated conflict of interest, and knowingly and falsely asserting a conflict of interest, e.g., to prevent or alter peer-reviewing, to discourage appropriate reviewing, or to seek disadvantage of another are both considered as a violation of this conflict of interest policy. We will return the violated submissions with no reviews. Please contact program committee chairs if you have any doubts regarding declaring conflicts of interest.

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Post Submission Information

Mandatory Registration

At least one author of an accepted paper is expected to register for the ACM MobiSys 2027 conference (at a non-student rate) and present the paper in person.

Open Access Publishing Model

Open Access publishing information for ACM MobiSys 2027 will be announced.

Artifact Evaluation and Paper Results Reproducibility

The authors of accepted papers to ACM MobiSys 2027 will have the option to opt for an artifact evaluation. By doing so, they commit to providing the implementations, models, test suites, benchmarks, and data used to derive the results presented in the paper to the artifact evaluation committee. Based on the evaluation, the papers will be awarded the appropriate artifact evaluation badge. The artifact evaluation will be conducted after paper acceptance decisions.

Irrespective of taking part in the artifact evaluation, we encourage all authors to do their best to provide enough information in the paper allowing non-authors to replicate results presented in the paper.

Early Rejection Notification, Rebuttal, and Shepherding

ACM MobiSys 2027 will have early rejection notifications and a rebuttal phase. The authors of the papers that do not advance to the second round of review will be notified of the rejection of their paper. This allows the authors to plan for another submission and not have to wait for the ACM MobiSys 2027 review process to come to an end. The papers that do advance to the second round of review will get a chance to submit a rebuttal after the second round comes to an end. In the rebuttal, the authors will be asked to respond to the questions raised by the reviewers.

We ask the authors to limit their responses to correcting factual errors in the reviews or responding to specific questions posed by the reviewers. Responses may only include new experiments or describe additional work completed since submission if they directly address reviewer feedback; alternatively, the authors are allowed to promise additional results if they are expected to be available by the camera-ready deadline. To lower the amount of effort for both the authors and reviewers, ACM MobiSys 2027 limits the rebuttal to 500 words.

Every accepted paper will receive a conditional acceptance at the notification stage. Final acceptance will be granted after an anonymous shepherding process. During this process, the shepherd may request additional evaluation results, not limited to editorial changes. These requests can be critical for the final acceptance decision.

One Page Public Review

Each accepted paper will be accompanied with a one-page public review, which will appear both on the MobiSys website and in the proceedings. The review will be compiled by a TPC member and will summarize the strengths and weaknesses of the paper as evaluated by the TPC.

Pitch Video for Accepted Papers

Pitch video requirements for accepted papers will be announced.

Papers Preview Session

Information about the Papers Preview Session will be announced.