Call for Papers

Our rapidly digitizing world is undergoing a transformative change on a scale of the industrial revolution. The digital platform has increased the opportunities for ever larger actors to attain economies of scale that are inaccessible to all but the very largest. The distortions created by these small number of dominant digital giants in the business and technology landscape has resulted not only in unparalleled efficiencies of the production of goods and services but also with the downside risks of technology monocultures, monopolies, and critical points of vulnerability.

What does this workshop aim for?

This one-day workshop aims to offer everyone, who is interested in the causes and the nature of risk and reward trade-offs of consolidation, an opportunity to share results and insights. The workshop takes a broad, interdisciplinary view of the Internet consolidation trend and decentralization efforts, which may have implications on current and emerging network technologies. Topics include but are not limited to:

Measurement, simulation, or analytical results from recent or ongoing efforts that show quantifiable evidence of the trend of centralization and consolidation in the Internet infrastructure, services, and applications, together with the insight into the driving forces for this trend.
Results from investigations into building decentralized services and applications, together with the insights into the most critical factors that enable such decentralized designs in today’s pervasively consolidated deployment environments, and the factors that may have contributed to unintended outcomes that further reinforced service aggregation.
Analysis of existing or experimental decentralization protocols and applications, with insights into (a) their most critical factors that should lead to cost effective operations, and/or (b) potential road bumps, technical or non-technical, that may block them from reaching their intended goals.
Recent discussions suggest that multiple factors have driven the deployed Internet into today’s consolidation: economy of scale, big data advantages, and in particular the lack of security in general outside the iron castle. We welcome position papers that brainstorm/articulate whether viable countermeasures (can) exist, provided that they clearly articulate how these countermeasures directly address the causes of centralization.

What type of submissions this workshop is looking for?

We welcome two types of submissions:

Work-in-progress research results (6 pages, excl. references), which clearly articulate a problem, a proposed solution, and preliminary results.
Position papers (2 pages, excl. references), which reflect consolidation trends in the Internet or potential solutions to overcome the current state based on sound arguments. Out-of-the-box thinking as well as thoughts outside of the computer science field (e.g., social or legal aspects) are highly appreciated.

Paper should follow the ACM SIGCOMM format (10pt font, sigconf option for acmart style), and should convey the results of mature research.

Submission Instructions

If your paper is accepted, we will provide further information for the camera-ready version.

If you have any questions about submitting papers to CoNEXT 2021 IWCI workshop or encounter problems with the paper submission site, contact the TPC chairs before the deadline.

What can you expect by participating?

We want to identify and understand critical and effective factors that overcome consolidation in the Internet and its services. In addition to presentations of individual contributions, the workshop plans to organize two panels, with the following proposed topics:

As the report of IAB Workshop on Design Expectations vs. Deployment Reality in Protocol Development (RFC8980) identified, security (or the lack of it) seems a critical factor that has driven services and apps that used to be distributed into centralization today. What kind of new security solutions may be needed to make decentralized services and apps feasible?
There is clearly a gain from economy of scale in centralized systems and applications. Would a decentralized Internet still be able to benefit from economy of scale?

Submission Compliance

Papers submitted for consideration must not have been already published elsewhere and must not be under review or submitted for review elsewhere during the consideration period. Specifically, authors are required to adhere to the ACM Policy and Procedures on Plagiarism and the ACM Policy on Prior Publication and Simultaneous Submissions.

Like other conferences and journals, CoNEXT 2021 IWCI prohibits violation of the above ACM Policies and may take action against authors who violate them. In some cases, the program committee may share information about submitted papers with other conference chairs and journal editors to ensure the compliance of papers under consideration. If the TPC discovers a violation of these principles, sanctions may include, but are not limited to, contacting the institutions of the authors and publicizing the details of the case.

Paper Anonymity

All submitted papers will be judged based on their quality and relevance through single-blind reviewing.

Conflicts of Interest

Both authors and TPC members must identify conflicts of interest according to the following general principles.

A program committee member (including the chairs of the committee) is considered to have a conflict of interest on a submission that has an author in any of the following categories: the person himself or herself; a past or current student or academic advisor; a supervisor or employee in the same line of authority within the past four years; a member of the same organization (e.g., company, university, government agency, etc.) within the past four years or in the near future (six months); a co-author of a paper appearing in publication within the past four years; someone with whom there has been a financial relationship (e.g., grants, contracts, consultancies, equity investments, stock options, etc.) within the past four years; someone with whom acceptance or rejection would further the personal goals of the reviewer (e.g., a competitor); a member of the same family or anyone considered a close personal friend; or someone about whom, for whatever reason, their work cannot be evaluated objectively. If there is no basis for the TPC conflicts provided by authors, however, those conflicts will be removed. Do not improperly indicate conflicts simply to prevent some TPC members from reviewing your paper.

Important dates

Friday, 24 September, 2021 (extended)

Paper Submission Deadline
Monday, 18 October, 2021

Acceptance Notification
Tuesday, 7 December, 2021

Workshop date

AUTHORS TAKE NOTE: The official publication date is the date the proceedings are made available in the ACM Digital Library. This date may be up to two weeks prior to the first day of the conference. The official publication date affects the deadline for any patent filings related to published work.