Calls for Contribution > Main Track

   The society today is increasingly dependent on the correct functioning of computer systems, edge devices and networks for systems and services we use every day, such as aviation, energy production&power grids,intelligent/autonomous vehicles, medical devices & electronic health records, and many others.

  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 dependable and secure.

  DSN, one of the longest running IEEE conferences organizing its 51st edition in 2021, 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 cyber-attacks, design errors, and unexpected operating conditions. Its distinctive approach to both accidental and malicious faults made DSN the most prestigious international forum for presenting research furthering robustness and resilience of today’s wide spectrum of computing systems and networks.

  All aspects of the research and practice of dependability and applied security are within the scope of DSN. Relevant topics include innovative architectures, protocols, and algorithms, for preventing, detecting, recovering, diagnosing or eliminating accidental and malicious threats as well as experimentation with and assessment of dependable and secure systems and networks.

Authors are invited to submit original papers on the  current thematic areas of DSN:

● Hardware (e.g., microprocessors, memories, system on chip, I/O devices, storage systems, trusted computing)

● Software (e.g., applications, middleware, distributed algorithms, operating systems, blockchains)

● Networks (e.g., wireless networks, mobility, software-defined networking, edge computing, networks on chip,     network security)

● Clouds (e.g., cloud storage, computing, platforms, applications, cloud security and privacy)

● Cyber-physical systems (e.g., embedded systems, real-time control of critical systems, internet of things,smart
   grid, automotive, aerospace, railway, medical    systems)

● Autonomous systems (e.g., resilient AI/Machine Learning based systems, self-;driving vehicles, autonomous    robots, assured autonomy, explainable decision making,    acceptability)

●Models and methodologies for programming, evaluating, verifying, and assessing dependable and secure  systems (e.g., performance and dependability evaluation, analytical and numerical methods, simulation,   experimentation, benchmarking, verification, field data analysis)

Important dates:

  Dec. 11, 2020: Abstract submission deadline

  Dec. 11, 2020: Paper submission deadline (hard)

  Feb. 17 – 19, 2021: Author rebuttal period

  Mar. 8, 2021: Notification to authors

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

Information to authors:

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

  Research Papers, Practical Experience Reports, and Tool Descriptions will be refereed and included in the Proceedings of the DSN 2021, 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.

Paper Categories:

  Submissions can be made in one of the following categories (authors are required to indicate the category as part of the paper’s title).

  Regular papers (11 pages): full paper describing 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 on this category is expected to show new insights and experiences informing the research and practice of dependability and resilient computing. 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 except the references: title page, text, figures, appendices, etc. 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 reproducibility of their experimental results and encourage authors, whenever possible, to make both the software developed in the experiments or datasets publicly available.

Anonymization Rules:

  Authors must make a good faith effort to anonymize their paper. As an author, you should not identify yourself in the paper either explicitly or by implication (e.g., through the references or acknowledgments). However, 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 re-written to be about “an anonymous but widely used commercial distributed systems platform.”

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

● Remove authors’ names and affiliations from the title page.

● Remove acknowledgement of identifying names and funding sources.

● Use care in naming your files. Source file names, e.g., Joe.Smith.dvi, are often embedded in the final output as    readily accessible comments.

● Use care in referring to related work, particularly your own. Do not omit references to provide anonymity, as    this leaves the reviewer unable to grasp the context. Instead, a good solution is to reference your past work in    the third &person, just as you would any other piece of related work.

● If you have a concurrent submission, reference it as follows: “Closely related ;work describes a microkernel   implementation [Anonymous 2014].” with the corresponding citation: “[Anonymous 2014] Under submission.   Details omittedfor double-blind reviewing.” This is, for example, the case for extended versions of ;the paper    available online.

● If you cite anonymous work, you must also send the deanonymized reference(s) to the;PC chair in a separate    email.

  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. 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 success. Please take a note of the following:

● Submissions should be anonymous.

● The page limit includes everything except references.

● The first page must include the title of the paper, the type of the paper (Regular / Practical Experience / Tool),    and a maximum 150-word abstract.

● Please take into account that the abstract will be used by the reviewers to bid on papers: describe the paper    goals clearly, as well as the means used to achieve them.

● The first page is not a separate page, but is a part of the paper (and thus has technical material in it). Thus,    this page counts toward the total page budget for the paper.

● There is no page limit for references - however, authors must not put any text or figures on the pages for the    references - if so, those pages will be included in the page limits above (it is acceptable for the references to    start on the last page of the paper as long as it is within the page limit).

● Pages should be numbered.

● The use of color for figures and graphs is encouraged, but the paper should be easily readable if printed in    grayscale.

● Symbols and labels used in the graphs should be readable as printed, without requiring on-screen magnification.

● Try to limit the file size to less than 15 MB.

Paper Submissions:

   Papers are submitted via the submission website.

  The program committee will perform double-blind reviewing of all submissions, with limited use of 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.

Review Process and Author Response:

  Authors will have the opportunity to correct, during the rebuttal period, factual inaccuracies in the reviews. After the papers have been reviewed, but prior to the Program Committee meeting, the reviews will be made available to the authors to provide a forum for responding to any factual errors in the reviews. Please note that this is NOT a forum to add any additional information on the paper, to submit an updated or revised paper, or to list changes the authors promise to include in the final version. Author responses will be made available to all PC members before the paper is discussed for selection in the PC meeting.

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

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 pc_chairs@dsn.org 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 with in 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.

  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.

Awards:

  DSN 2021 will announce a Call For Nominations, attributed every year to the best accepted scientific paper among all. Please check the relevant page on the DSN website for additional details and other awards.

  Program Committee Co-Chairs
        Alysson Bessani , Universidade de Lisboa
        Giuliano Casale , Imperial College London
        pc_chairs@dsn.org