Only papers submitted through the official submission site prior to November 17th at 8:59 PM will be considered for SIGMOD '05.
The submission site will also request information about conflict of interest with program committee members. The conflict of interest procedure has changed from previous years. A crisp definition of conflict of interest has been established, and it is the full responsibility of all authors to identify all and only their potential conflict-of-interest reviewers among the program committee members, according to this definition. It is imperative that authors allocate sufficient time in their submission process to identify and enter their conflict-of-interest reviewers.
Papers with incorrect or incomplete conflict of interest information as of the submission closing time will be rejected without review.
"I understand that the paper being submitted must not contain substantial overlap with any other paper submitted elsewhere now or during the review process. Furthermore, previously published papers with any overlap are cited prominently in this submission."
Questions about this policy or how it applies to your work should be directed to the program chair: Jennifer Widom
Authors of accepted papers must sign an ACM copyright release form. The online conference proceedings may be published as early as April 15, 2005, so any patent applications must be resolved before that time. By submitting a paper to SIGMOD '05, authors implicitly agree to public release of the paper as of the above date -- no papers will be withheld from the online proceedings.
Length: All submitted papers must be formatted according to the instructions below, and must be no more than twelve US letter pages. This page limit includes all parts of the paper: title, abstract, body, bibliography, and appendices.
File type: Papers are to be submitted as a single PDF file, formatted for 8.5" x 11" paper, and no more than 5MB in file size. (Larger files will be rejected by the submission site.) It is essential that submitted papers print without difficulty on a variety of printers, using Adobe Acrobat Reader. It is the absolute responsibility of the authors to ensure that their submitted PDF file will print easily on simple default configurations.
Formatting: Papers must use the ACM proceedings format, using one of the templates listed at the ACM SIG Proceedings Templates web site. It is not permissible under any circumstance to change the template's font size, margins, intercolumn spacing, or line spacing. Templates are available in Word, WordPerfect, and LaTeX (versions 2.09 and 2e). For the LaTeX formats, you may use either the standard style or the SIG-alternate style. Note: Although the ACM templates include headings for "Categories and Subject Descriptors," "General Terms," and "Keywords," these are not used by SIGMOD and can be omitted from your submitted paper.
Any submitted paper violating the length, file type, or formatting requirements will be rejected without review.All research papers submitted to SIGMOD '05 will undergo a "double-blind" reviewing process: the program committee members and referees who review the paper will not know the identity of the authors. To ensure anonymity of authorship, authors must prepare their manuscript as follows:
You must also use care in referring to related past work, particularly your own, in the paper. For example, if you are Jane Smith, the following text gives away the authorship of the submitted paper:
In our previous work [1,2], we presented two algorithms for .... In this paper, we build on that work by ...
Bibliography
[1] Jane Smith, "A Simple Algorithm for ...," Proceedings of ACM SIGMOD 1997, pp. 1 - 10.
[2] Jane Smith, "A More Complicated Algorithm for..," Proceedings of ACM SIGMOD 1998, pp. 34 - 44
The solution is to reference your past work in the third person (just as you would any other piece of work that is related to the submitted paper). This allows you to set the context for the submitted paper, while at the same time preserving anonymity:
In previous work [1,2], algorithms were presented for ... In this paper, we build on that work by ...
Bibliography
[1] Jane Smith, "A Simple Algorithm for ...," Proceedings of ACM SIGMOD 1997, pp. 1 - 10.
[2] Jane Smith, "A More Complicated Algorithm for..," Proceedings of ACM SIGMOD 1998, pp. 34 - 44
Despite the anonymity requirements, you should still include all relevant work of your own in the references, using the above style -- omitting them could potentially reveal your identity by negation. However, self-references should be limited to the essential ones, and extended versions of the submitted paper (e.g., technical reports or URLs for downloadable versions) must not be referenced.
Common sense and careful writing can go a long way toward preserving anonymity without diminishing the quality or impact of a paper. The goal is to preserve anonymity while still allowing the reader to fully grasp the context (related past work, including your own) of the submitted paper. In past years this goal has been achieved successfully by hundreds of papers.
It is the responsibility of authors to do their very best to preserve anonymity. Papers that do not follow the guidelines here, or otherwise potentially reveal the identity of the authors, are subject to immediate rejection.