RTSS 2023

Double-Blind Submission Requirements

Since 2019, RTSS follows a double-blind peer-review process. This means that:

  1. Author identities and affiliations are not disclosed to reviewers during the review process.
  2. Authors prepare and submit suitably blinded manuscripts that do not reveal author information. Specific requirements to this end are discussed below.
  3. Authors and reviewers alike make an honest effort to avoid accidentally de-blinding any submission.

Submitted papers must comply with all of the rules below. Any violation may result in an automatic rejection.

Additionally, it should be noted that a double-blind peer-review policy can only succeed if the authors strive to comply with the spirit of the policy. Authors are thus requested to carefully review these instructions and the double-blind policy FAQ, and to do their best to ensure that the submitted documents are suitably blinded.

Document Preparation

  1. Authors must submit PDFs without author names and affiliations. Submitted PDFs must also not contain any metadata that could reveal author identities or affiliations.
  2. Authors should aim to avoid copy-paste of substantial amounts of text from their own prior publications, as such text blocks may be readily recognized by experts familiar with the state of the art and recent papers in the area.
  3. Similarly, authors should not directly reuse figures from their own prior publications without attribution. Ideally, “fresh” figures should be prepared and used whenever possible. If that is not a viable option, that is, if a figure must be reused, then a citation should be included giving credit to the original paper from which the illustration has been adapted.
  4. Authors must refrain from using any specific formatting tricks, linguistic mannerisms, figure styles, or other stylistic idioms that could hint at or disclose author identity or affiliation.
  5. Submitted papers should not include any acknowledgments (including funding), since it can indicate the country of residence of (some of) the authors. (Such acknowledgments, of course, may be added to the camera-ready version.)

Own Prior Work, Well-Known Projects, and Research Artifacts

  1. When discussing their own prior work, authors must refer to the relevant publications as if they were discussing prior work of other authors (i.e., do not use “we” or “our” when referring to prior work).
  2. No reference should be blinded, that is, the title and authors of all references must be present, to ensure that reviewers can obtain and consult all cited publications.
  3. If a paper depends on or extends a significant software project, dataset, or other research artifact that is well known to the community (i.e., which is easily recognizable), then the paper must plausibly explain how the software/dataset/artifact was obtained without giving away author identities or affiliations. Specifically:
    1. ideally, in the case of an open-source project (or if the artifact is freely obtainable), the paper can plausibly claim to be extending or using the public version;
    2. alternatively, if the paper relies on software or a research artifact from own prior work that is not publicly available, then the authors should include a statement thanking the original authors for making the software, dataset, or research artifact available to the authors of the present paper. (This statement should obviously be removed in the camera-ready version.)
  4. As an exception to the prior rule, if a paper depends on custom hardware or software that cannot be plausibly obtained by a third party (e.g., a prototype processor or SoC of a major chip vendor), then all identifying strings (e.g., processor model number and name, architecture, manufacturer, etc.) should be consistently replaced by anonymous placeholders.
  5. Finally, in rare cases where a project or system that could not plausibly have been obtained by a third party can also not be reasonably blinded by using placeholder names, or if doing so would elide essential information, then the authors should contact the Program Chair prior to submission to obtain case-specific instructions (e.g., permission to submit the paper without blinding the underlying system or project).

Preprints, Paper Announcements, and Prior Workshop Papers

  1. Authors should not upload their manuscript to preprint servers (such as arXiv) or their personal websites while the paper is under review, or otherwise publicly reveal their authorship of the manuscript under review.
  2. As an exception to the previous rule, if a prior version of the manuscript has already been uploaded to a public preprint server prior to submission (e.g., if the paper is a re-submission of a paper previously rejected at another single-blind conference), then the paper may still be submitted to RTSS 2022. However, such papers must be blinded when submitting to RTSS.
  3. In exceptional circumstances that force a violation of the above two rules (e.g., a technical report or thesis must be filed in order for a student to graduate), the authors should contact the Program Chair prior to publicizing their manuscript content to avoid misunderstandings.
  4. When submitting or extending a prior workshop publication, the workshop paper is treated as an online preprint for the purpose of the double-blind peer-review process. However, authors must proactively disclose the existence of a prior workshop version of a submitted paper. Such information should be emailed to the Program Chair. Failure to disclose a prior workshop publication is considered self-plagiarism.
  5. After communicating with the Program Chair, submissions with conditions 2., 3., or 4. above are recommended to add a headline (or footer) on the first page with the following information: “This submission is based on Preprints, Paper Announcements, and Prior Workshop Papers. The information has been communicated with the Program Chair. The author(s) and the Program Chair request the reviewers not to actively search for the author names to ensure fairness of the double-blind review process.” Please contact the Program Chair at least 24 hours before the submission deadline if this may apply to your submission. If the paper is accepted, the above text should be removed and appropriate citations if any should be added (e.g., citation for prior workshop paper, technical report or thesis and its relation to the accepted paper).
  6. If your submission is an extended version of a workshop paper with DOI, you will be asked to provide a blinded version of the workshop paper as supplementary material. This will be used by the reviewers to verify that there is sufficient amount of new material in the extended version to warrant a publication at RTSS. (See the submission guidelines for details.)

Supplementary Materials

  1. Authors who seek to refer to supplementary materials (e.g., technical report, source code, videos, etc.) may still do so. However, instead of directly providing a URL or technical report number, authors should include a note that the supplementary materials in question are available from the Program Chair upon request.
  2. Authors must provide all supplementary materials that a submission refers to in blinded form and prior to the submission deadline. Such supplementary materials should either be submitted directly in the submission system (if the material is a PDF file) or should be emailed to the Program Chair (otherwise).
  3. The Program Chair will retain a copy of all submitted materials for the duration of the review process. Any such provided supplementary materials are not subject to review and may be consulted by the reviewers at their own discretion.

Further Questions

Please consult the FAQ and contact the Program Chair in case of further questions.