Guidelines for Submissions to MICRO 2015

This document is intended to serve as a sample for submissions to the 48th International Symposium on Microarchitecture (MICRO), 2015. We provide some guidelines that authors should follow when submitting papers to the conference. This format is derived from the ACM sig-alternate.cls file, and is used with an objective of keeping the submission version similar to the camera ready version.

Introduction

This document provides the formatting instructions for submissions to the 48th Annual IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Microarchitecture, 2015. In an effort to respect the efforts of reviewers and in the interest of fairness to all prospective authors, we request that all submissions to MICRO-48 follow the formatting and submission rules detailed below. Submissions that (grossly) violate these instructions may not be reviewed, at the discretion of the program chair, in order to maintain a review process that is fair to all potential authors.

An example submission (formatted using the MICRO-48 submission format) that contains the submission and formatting guidelines can be downloaded from here: Sample PDF. The contents of this document are the same as the contents of the submission instructions that appear on Submission Page (this webpage), where the paper submission site will be linked online shortly.

All questions regarding paper formatting and submission should be directed to the program chair.

Format Highlights 

Note that there are some changes from last year.

    • Paper must be submitted in printable PDF format.
    • Text must be in a minimum 10pt (not 9pt) font.
    • Papers must be at most 11 pages, not including references.
    • No page limit for references.
    • References must include complete author lists to facilitate the reviewing process (no et al.).
    • Authors may optionally suggest reviewers.
    • Authors of all accepted papers will be required to give a lightning presentation (about 90s).

Paper Evaluation Objectives 

The committee will make every effort to judge each submitted paper on its own merits. There will be no target acceptance rate. We expect to accept a wide range of papers with appropriate expectations for evaluation — while papers that build on significant past work with strong evaluations are valuable, papers that open new areas with less rigorous evaluation are equally welcome and especially encouraged. Given the wide range of topics covered by MICRO, every effort will be made to find expert reviewers, including providing the ability for authors’ to suggest additional reviewers.Note that there are some changes from last year.

Paper Preparation Instructions 

Paper Formatting

Papers must be submitted in printable PDF format and should contain a maximum of 11 pages of single-spaced two-column text, not including references. You may include any number of pages for references, but see below for more instructions. If you are using LATEX to typeset your paper, then we recommend that you use the template available here: micro48-latex-template.tar.gz. (This document was prepared with that template.) Please use the default font that comes with the template and avoid changing it to a narrower font (Times, Times Narrow etc.).


If you are using a different software package to typeset your paper, then please adhere to the guidelines mentioned in Table 1. To ensure consistency across all submissions, please use the "Computer Modern" font if it is available with your software package (otherwise, please use a font that is closest to "Computer Modern").  Please avoid squeezing out more space by specifically opting for a narrower font. 

Please ensure that you include page numbers with your submission. This makes it easier for the reviewers to refer to different parts of your paper when they provide comments.Please ensure that your submission has a banner at the top of the title page, similar to this one, which contains the submission number and the notice of confidentiality. If using the template, just replace XXX with your submission number.

Content

Author List.  Reviewing will be double blind; therefore, please do not include any author names on any submitted documents except in the space provided on the submission form. You must also ensure that the metadata included in the PDF does not give away the authors. If you are improving upon your prior work, refer to your prior work in the third person and include a full citation for the work in the bibliography. For example, if you are building on your own prior work in the papers [1, 2, 3], you would say something like: "While the authors of [1, 2, 3] did X, Y, and Z, this paper additionally does W, and is therefore much better.” Do NOT omit or anonymize references for blind review. There is one exception to this for your own prior work that appeared in IEEE CAL, workshops without archived proceedings, etc. as discussed later in this document.

Figures and Tables. Ensure that the figures and tables are legible. Please also ensure that you refer to your figures in the main text. Many reviewers print the papers in gray-scale. Therefore, if you use colors for your figures, ensure that the different colors are highly distinguishable in gray-scale.

References. There is no length limit for references. Each reference must explicitly list all authors of the paper. Papers not meeting this requirement will be rejected. Authors of NSF proposals should be familiar with this requirement. Knowing all authors of related work will help find the best reviewers. Since there is no length limit for the number of pages used for references, there is no need to save space here.

Paper Submission Instructions

Guidelines for Determining Authorship

IEEE guidelines dictate that authorship should be based on a substantial intellectual contribution. It is assumed that all authors have had a significant role in the creation of an article that bears their names. In particular, the authorship credit must be reserved only for individuals who have met each of the following conditions:

1. Made a significant intellectual contribution to the theoretical development, system or experimental design, prototype development, and/or the analysis and interpretation of data associated with the work contained in the article;

2. Contributed to drafting the article or reviewing and/or revising it for intellectual content; and

3. Approved the final version of the article as accepted for publication, including references.

A detailed description of the IEEE authorship guidelines and responsibilities is available here. Per these guidelines, it is not acceptable to award honorary authorship or gift authorship. Please keep these guidelines in mind while determining the author list of your paper.

Declaring Authors

Declare all the authors of the paper upfront. Addition/removal of authors once the paper is accepted will have to be approved by the program chair, since it potentially undermines the goal of eliminating conflicts for reviewer assignment.

Areas and Topics

Authors should indicate these areas on the submission form as well as specific topics covered by the paper for optimal reviewer match. If you are unsure whether your paper falls within the scope of MICRO, please check with the program chair – MICRO is a broad, multidisciplinary conference and encourages new topics.

Conflict Responsibilities

Authors must register all their conflicts on the paper submission site. Conflicts are needed to ensure appropriate assignment of reviewers. If a paper is found to have an undeclared conflict that causes a problem OR if a paper is found to declare false conflicts in order to abuse or “game” the review system, the paper may be rejected

We use the NSF conflict of interest (COI) guidelines for determining the conflict period for MICRO’15. Please declare a conflict of interest  with the following people for any author of your paper:

1. Your Ph.D. advisor(s), post-doctoral advisor(s), Ph.D. students, and post-doctoral advisees, forever. Ph.D. advisor, post-doctoral advisor, and Ph.D. students.
   
   
2. Family relations by blood or marriage, or their equivalent, forever (if they might be potential reviewers).
   
   
3. People with whom you have collaborated in the last FOUR years, including
   • co-authors of accepted/rejected/pending papers.
   • co-PIs on accepted/rejected/pending grant proposals.
   • funders (decision-makers) of your research grants, and researchers whom you fund.
   
   
4. People (including students) who shared your primary institution(s) in the last FOUR years.
   
   
5. Other relationships, such as close personal friendship, that you think might tend to affect your judgment or be seen as doing so by a reasonable person familiar with the relationship.

“Service” collaborations such as co-authoring a report for a professional organization, serving on a program committee, or co-presenting tutorials, do not themselves create a conflict of interest. Co-authoring a paper that is a compendium of various projects with no true collaboration among the projects does not constitute a conflict among the authors of the different projects.

On the other hand, there may be others not covered by the above with whom you believe a COI exists, for example, an ongoing collaboration which has not yet resulted in the creation of a paper or proposal. Please report such COIs; however, you may be asked to justify them. Please be reasonable. For example, you cannot declare a COI with a reviewer just because that reviewer works on topics similar to or related to those in your paper. The PC Chair may contact co-authors to explain a COI whose origin is unclear.

We hope to draw most reviewers from the PC and the ERC, but others from the community may also write reviews. Please declare all your conflicts (not just restricted to the PC and ERC). When in doubt, contact the program chair.

Optional Reviewer Suggestions 

Authors may optionally mark (non-conflicted) PC and ERC members that they believe could provide expert reviews for their submission. If authors believe there is insufficient expertise on the PC and ERC for the topic of their paper, they may suggest alternate reviewers. The program chair will use the authors’ input at his discretion. We provide this opportunity for input mostly for papers on non-traditional and emerging topics.

Concurrent Submissions and Workshops

By submitting a manuscript to MICRO’15, the authors guarantee that the manuscript has not been previously published or accepted for publication in a substantially similar form in any conference, journal, or the archived proceedings of a workshop (e.g., in the ACM digital library) – see exceptions below. The authors also guarantee that no paper that contains significant overlap with the contributions of the submitted paper will be under review for any other conference or journal or an archived proceedings of a workshop during the MICRO’15 review period. Violation of any of these conditions will lead to rejection.

The only exceptions to the above rules are for the authors’ own papers in (1) workshops without archived proceedings such as in the ACM digital library (or where the authors chose not to have their paper appear in the archived proceedings), or (2) venues such as IEEE CAL where there is an explicit policy that such publication does not preclude longer conference submissions. In all such cases, the submitted manuscript may ignore the above work to preserve author anonymity. This information must, however, be provided on the submission form – the PC chair will make this information available to reviewers if it becomes necessary to ensure a fair review. As always, if you are in doubt, it is best to contact the program chair.

Finally, we also note that the ACM Plagiarism Policy (http://www.acm.org/publications/policies/plagiarism_policy) covers a range of ethical issues concerning the misrepresentation of other works or one's own work.

Acknowledgements 

This document is derived from previous conferences, in particular MICRO 2013 and ASPLOS 2015. We thank Christos Kozyrakis and Sandhya Dwarkadas for their inputs.

Submission Site:  http://micro2015.gatech.edu/submission/

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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ):

1.  The default ordering of citations is in terms of appearance, can I can it to order by last name?
Yes, the default IEEETR ordering is in terms of appearance.  However, you can choose the ordering per your preference.  So, if you like the ordering by last name better, please feel free to use it.  However, in either case ensure that each reference explicitly states the names of all authors.  

2.  I see a lot of white space near the Title, what is that for?  And, can I remove it?
We are striving to have a submission template that is close to the camera ready version.  As you may have guessed, this space is reserved for author names and affiliation in the camera ready version, should the paper get accepted.  You can remove this space for your submission, however, should the paper get accepted you will have to find extra space to accommodate the author names and affiliation.

3.  I am using LaTex with the provided template, but prefer using Times font. Can I use the Times package?
No.  The default font with the provided template derived from ACM is Computer Modern (CM).  The Times font is about 10-15% denser compared to the default font, and can give a submission almost one extra page of content.  In order to ensure fairness for all submissions, we are insisting that the default font from the template be used instead of the Times font.

4.  I am using MS Word, and do not have CM fonts.  Can I use the default "Times New Roman" font ?
Short answer is No.  The Times New Roman font is about 10% denser compared to the CM font with the provided LaTex template.  Therefore, to ensure fairness to authors who will use the provided template, we are insisting that authors using editors other than LaTex also use a font that is similar to the default font from the ACM template.   

5.  How can I download the CM fonts for MS Word?
Thanks to Nam Sung Kim for the following instructions to download CM fonts:   You may download CM font set (True Type) from https://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/fonts/cm/ps-type1/bakoma/ttf/?lang=en

There are a bunch of font types, select cmr10.ttf (Computer Modern Roman).  Close all MS Word Windows.  Download cmrr10.ttf into any temporary directory and right click the file name.  You will see "install".  Click it and rerun word.  

6.  I tried but cannot run CM fonts on MS Word. Is there any recommendation for a font that is closest to CM fonts, and widely available with MS Word?
Try Palatino, which is the closest in terms of both space and look-and-feel to the default CM font of the template (thanks to Chris Batten for doing the font similarity analysis).  

7.  I heard you are going to do a word frequency analysis on ALL submissions to detect gross format violations.  If my paper has shorter words, will I be penalized?
The aim of the word count script is to simply detect outlier papers that have significantly more words that the median paper.   These are the candidates that will be manually checked for gross format violations.   Only after a manual check confirms that the paper has grossly violated formatting guidelines it will be dealt with separately.   The best way to avoid this trouble is to stay within the specified formatting guidelines (default font type, default font size, no tweaking the margins etc.), that way even if your paper has more words, it will still go through the normal process.

8.  What's with all-caps words not wrapping around properly in columns with this template?
This is an issue with LaTex, and not with the template (the template we provide is from the ACM camera-ready version, and we have simply commented out the author names/affiliation etc.).  The following webpage describes the problem of all-caps word-break with LaTex and how to fix it:    http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/184447/latex-doesnt-break-lines-with-capitalized-words-to-the-end-properly