Special Workshop Session on Science of Security

April 2-3, 2019 | Nashville, Tennessee, USA

  O V E R V I E W  

We invite full-length, technical research paper submissions to a new *** Special Workshop Session *** to be held at the Symposium and Bootcamp on the Science of Security (HotSoS).

The Special Workshop Session at the HotSoS symposium aims to provide authors and the security community with early, in-depth feedback on new research. The session consists of up to one-hour of in-depth discussion of an unpublished manuscript. Authors are expected to incorporate session feedback into revisions of their manuscript prior to their next submission for publication. Manuscripts accepted for discussion will not be published at the symposium, and access to the submissions will remain confidential and be restricted to session attendees.

  S U B M M I S I O N   E L I G I B I L I T Y   

Each author must assert that the manuscript is unpublished and revisions can be incorporated into the manuscript prior to their next submission for publication. Prior publication includes the appearance in a proceeding, online or in print, of any version of the work that received peer review, including short papers. Posters and online, pre-submission non-archival versions of non-peer reviewed papers will not be considered prior publication. Pre-submission non-archives include arXive.org and CiteSeerX. A short paper version of a submission may not immediately disqualify the submission, however, and the committee will consider the differences in the versions prior to making final decisions. Thus, authors are encouraged to briefly disclose in a cover page to their submission any prior submissions and/or publications related to the submission.

  S E L E C T I O N   P R O C E S S   

Within days of the submission deadline, a small program committee will lightly review manuscripts for acceptance. Acceptance is determined by the following criteria: (1) is the manuscript topic appropriate for the Science of Security; (2) is the manuscript sufficiently clear about the problem, approach, evaluation and results to engage an audience in productive discussions; (3) has the manuscript been previously published in any format; and (4) does the manuscript complement the overall program. Manuscripts that are not accepted may be invited as posters for presentation in a separate poster session.

  W O R K S H O P   F O R M A T   

One month prior to the workshop session and symposium, registered attendees will be provided confidential access to accepted manuscripts. Because the manuscripts are unpublished, all attendees are expected to keep the research results and discussions confidential. Registered attendees to the special session are expected to read the manuscripts prior to attendance and they are encouraged to participate in discussions. There are no formal presentations of the work.

Each manuscript will be assigned up to a one-hour, in which a non-author discussant will present the manuscript for up to 10-15 minutes. The discussant will identify the strengths and weaknesses along multiple dimensions:

• Is the problem framing clear, is this the right problem given the approach? Is the threat model described, the right model? 
• Is the chosen analysis appropriate for the claims being made? Is there an alternative analysis better suited to the research questions or hypotheses? Do threats to internal validity exist, if so, how can those be appropriately acknowledged and/or mitigated?
• Are the results being presented clearly, what alternative presentations exist?
• Is the scope of impact consistent with the results, are connections to a broader impact missing or available for further research?

Following the discussant questions and author reactions, the remaining 30-50 minutes will be used by the audience to raise their own questions and to engage in audience discussion. It is expected that audience members will prepare their own questions in advance, when reading the manuscript prior to attending the workshop. The discussant and author can moderate the discussion by choosing audience members to speak and by asking audience members follow-up questions. The ultimate goal for each session is to provide authors with detailed actionable feedback, which they will then use to improve their manuscripts prior to submission for publication at a different venue.

  M A N U S C R I P T   S U B M I S S I O N   

1. Manuscripts may be submitted in any format, including IEEE, ACM and Springer conference and journal formats, as long as the font size is no smaller than 10-point for main text and no smaller than 8-point for figures and tables.
   
    
2. Page limits. There are no page limits on submitted manuscripts, because the workshop targets unpublished manuscripts that are intended for venues with different page limit requirements. 
   
    
3. Submit manuscripts through the HotSoS Easy Chair link, below. When submitting, select “Workshop” to ensure the submission is promptly received for evaluation in this session.

https://easychair.org/my/conference.cgi?conf=hotsos2019

     I M P O R T A N T   D A T E S   

  Q U E S T I O N S  

Please contact the Special Workshop Session organizing chair Travis Breaux <breaux[at]cs.cmu.edu> for any additional information.