Guidelines for
Authors Intending to Submit a Paper to WIESS '02
A good paper should:
- be informative. The readers of your paper should learn something
from it. It should be clear whether readers can apply your work to
their own environment, and how they would go about doing so.
"Negative results," which contradict the conventional wisdom, are
often more important than positive results, especially when backed
up by solid evidence.
- demonstrate, to others in the field, the value of the work being
discussed. Successful product sales or freely-redistributable
source code alone do not necessarily make an idea valuable to the
audience. The innovations or techniques that you discuss need not
be major breakthroughs in their fields, but should at minimum
demonstrate something new, potentially useful, and non-obvious.
Your paper should clearly demonstrate any improvements over the
previously published work in the field.
- include sufficient references to prior publications or products,
along with an explanation of how your paper builds upon or improves
upon the related work. The Program Committee expects you to make a
substantial effort to find related work, as part of the process of
documenting what makes your paper interesting.
- not be marketing literature. While it might be appropriate to
show how your product differs from, and improves on, other products
on the market, this must be done as even-handedly as possible. The
goal of your paper should be to inform other people working in the
field, not to sell your product to customers. The Program
Committee will be strict about this.
- demonstrate the maturity of the work. The work you describe
should be well under way. Most of the design, implementation, and
testing should be accomplished by the submission date, since you
will not have much additional time before the final deadline. If
it makes sense for your paper, you should provide results
demonstrating the performance of the work described. The
appropriate metrics might include speed, reliability, cost, or
something else that people will find useful. However, do not focus
on quantitative results to the exclusion of other useful
understanding.
- be clearly written. Submissions should clearly describe the
ideas, work already accomplished, and work to be completed. We
encourage you to use some of the available online writing style
guides, if you need guidance in this area. Good examples include:
https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~hgs/etc/writing-style.html,
https://telin.rug.ac.be/~pds/thesis/sci.html, and especially
https://gatekeeper.dec.com/pub/DEC/SRC/publications/levin/SOSPhowto.html.
If you are a potential author in need of more guidance, we encourage
you to contact the Program Chair at
wiess02chair@usenix.org, or any
member of the Program Committee.
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