Papers Review and Submission

**Technical Program Paper Submissions are now closed.**

SC14 Review Process

The SC14 Technical Papers Committee will rigorously review all submissions with the goal of selecting the best technical contributions across both established and emerging areas of HPC. SC14 will continue the tradition of author rebuttals of reviews. The review process acceptance criteria will concentrate on originality, technical soundness, presentation quality, timeliness, impact and relevance to SC. Papers that focus on the context of a single node, core, thread, or GPU should clearly establish how the work will impact supercomputing.

The SC14 Technical Papers Committee is divided into nine subcommittees (or area committees). The nine area committees correspond to the nine areas of contribution: Algorithms; Applications; Architectures and Networks; Clouds and Distributed Computing; Data Analytics, Visualization and Storage; Performance; Programming Systems; State-of-the-Practice; and System Software. This division helps to ensure that each submission is reviewed by the committee members most qualified to judge its originality, technical soundness, timeliness, impact and relevance. The area of contribution that authors select at submission time will serve as the primary mechanism to determine the subcommittee to which a submission is assigned.

The review process follows several stages. First, the Technical Papers Committee Co-chairs review each submission to ensure that it is assigned to the appropriate subcommittee. As stated above, the selected area of contribution is the primary guidance for this step. However, the Co-chairs, in consultation with the Co-chairs of each subcommittee, review abstracts to ensure that the selected area of contribution is appropriate. They also consider the relative balance across subcommittees. Thus, some papers are assigned to a subcommittee other than the one that corresponds to the selected area of contribution. In addition, any submissions from any Area Committee Co-chair is automatically assigned to a different subcommittee to avoid any appearance of undue influence.

In addition to reviewing the area of contribution to which each submission is assigned, the Technical Papers Committee Co-chairs and the Area Committee Co-chairs identify conflicts of interest (COIs) for members of the Technical Papers Committee. These initial conflicts are determined based on the COI information provided by authors, the institutional affiliations of the authors and the committee members, and information provided by committee members on potential COIs.

Once submissions are closed and all papers are assigned to subcommittees, each Technical Program Committee member reviews the abstracts to all papers assigned to his or her subcommittee. Based on the abstracts, the subcommittee members indicate which submissions they are qualified to review, and of these, which they would prefer to review. This process helps to ensure that each submission is reviewed by the committee members most qualified to judge its originality, technical soundness, timeliness, impact and relevance. In addition, Technical Program Committee members review COI designations from authors to identify any additional COI and to ensure that no COIs were incorrectly or inappropriately identified.

Once all committee members have completed their bids, the Area Committee Co-chairs use an automated algorithm to assign papers to committee members. Each paper is assigned to four committee members, who are expected to review the papers themselves. Committee members are expected to complete all of these “first round reviews” prior to the rebuttal period. Committee members can solicit assistance from additional experts, but they are expected to read all papers that are assigned to them and to “own” their reviews. To facilitate this requirement, SC14 employs a large overall committee that should ensure no reviewer is assigned more than ten first round reviews (the expected number of first round reviews per committee member is eight).

After the first round review period, the authors are notified that the rebuttal period is open. Authors should follow the guidance about rebuttals on the FAQ. Submissions for which the first round review scores are ambiguous require additional reviews. Several factors can lead to ambiguity. For example, ambiguity may arise from a wide variance in scores or from scores that do not strongly indicate either acceptance or rejection. SC14 solicits additional reviews of papers as needed. Each committee member is expected to provide two second round reviews on average. These reviews typically are not available for rebuttal.

Following the rebuttal period and the second review round, each area committee meets in person to discuss the final disposition of each submission. This face-to-face meeting allows committee members to clarify their reviews and to reach agreement about the originality, technical soundness, presentation quality, timeliness, impact and relevance to SC of each submission. The face-to-face meeting determines the final disposition of each submission.

Dispositions are typically either to accept or to reject the submission. In unusual cases, the committee can choose to provide a shepherd for a submission. This disposition is used to ensure that the authors enact specific changes that the committee deemed necessary for acceptance. The shepherd acts as the representative of the committee. If the authors are uncomfortable with the requested changes then they are permitted to withdraw the submission. Once the shepherd determines that the authors have satisfactorily implemented the changes then the paper will be accepted. Failure to enact the changes will result in rejection of the submission.

Important Dates

Poster deadline is extended to August 7, 2014

Submissions Open: February 14, 2014
Abstracts Submissions Close: April 4, 2014 (No extensions on abstract submissions will be made) Technical Paper Submission are now closed for SC14.
Full submissions Close: April 11, 2014 (up to a one week extension from this date is automatic)
Review Rebuttal Period: June 5-9, 2014
Notification Sent: June 30, 2014
Conference Dates: November 16-21, 2014

Web Submissions: https://submissions.supercomputing.org/
Email Contact: papers@info.supercomputing.org

Tech Papers Committee