Submission instructions

Artifacts must be packaged to ease evaluation and include an artifact appendix. Packaging is not only about evaluation but about future use of the artifact by other researchers who may want to build on top of it or use it as a baseline. In addition, consider how you plan to distribute your artifact.

Please see our tips page for insights on how to build great research artifacts.

Finally submit your artifact and its appendix via HotCRP:

If you have any questions about how best to package your artifact, contact the AEC chairs.

Destructive Artifacts: Some artifacts may attempt to perform malicious or destructive operations by design. These cases should be boldly and explicitly flagged in detail at artifact submission time so the AEC can take appropriate precautions before installing and running these artifacts. Please check the relevant box in the submission form, and contact the AEC chairs if you believe that your artifacts fall into this category.

Camera-Ready Submission Instructions: After the artifact evaluation is concluded, we will collect a camera-ready version of all artifacts receiving at least one badge. This includes information about the artifact location, the appendix, and similar supplemental material. The instructions will be shared via email when the badge decisions are announced.

Packaging

Your artifact package must include an obvious “read me” document containing suitable instructions and documentation. A tool without a quick tutorial is generally very difficult to use. Similarly, a dataset is useless without some explanation on how to browse the data. Please see the badges page for more details on what the instructions should contain.

Authors should consider one of the following methods to package the software components of their artifacts (although the AEC is open to other reasonable formats as well):

  • Source code: If your artifact has few dependencies and can be installed easily on several operating systems, you may submit source code and build scripts. However, if your artifact has a long list of dependencies, please use one of the other formats below.

  • Container/virtual machine: We recommend using a format that is easy for evaluators to work with, such as Docker images. In any case, the Dockerfile or script used to initialize the virtual machine should be available. Consider preparing the right toolchain and runtime environment.

  • Live instance on the web: Ensure that it is available during the artifact evaluation process.

  • Internet-accessible hardware: If your artifact requires special hardware (e.g., SGX or another trusted execution environment), or if your artifact is actually a piece of hardware, please make sure that evaluators can access the device. VPN/SSH-based access to the device might be an option (in that case, please provide the SSH private access key directly in your submission to reduce time to gain access to hardware). Use the “Artifact access type” item on the submission form to indicate whether you will make compute resources available.

Artifact Storage

Great artifacts are easy to find and stored for a long time. The archived copy of the artifacts (necessary to qualify for the Artifacts Available badge) must be accessible via a stable reference or DOI. For this purpose, we recommend Zenodo, but other valid hosting options include institutional and third-party digital repositories (e.g., FigShare, Dryad, Software Heritage, GitHub, or GitLab. For repositories that can evolve over time (e.g., GitHub), a stable reference to the evaluated version (e.g., a URL pointing to a commit hash or tag) rather than the evolving version reference (e.g., a URL pointing to a mere repository) is required. Note that the stable reference provided at submission time is for the purpose of Artifact Evaluation. Since the artifact can potentially evolve during the evaluation to address feedback from the reviewers, another (potentially different) stable reference will be later collected for the final version of the artifact.

Artifact Appendix

The artifact appendix is a self-contained document which describes a roadmap for evaluators. This includes a description of the hardware, software, and configuration requirements, as well as the major claims made by the paper and how to reproduce each claim through your artifact. Linking the claims of the paper to the artifact is a necessary step that ultimately allows artifact evaluators to reproduce your results. It is of foremost importance that you state your paper’s key results and claims clearly. This is especially important if you think that these claims differ from the expectations set up by your paper. If possible, the appendix should also describe how to compare the results of a reproduced experiment to the ones found in the paper (e.g., by providing access to the underlying dataset of the results).

The intention for the artifact appendix is to be published in conjunction with your artifact. A template for the artifact appendix can be found here: LaTeX Template and PDF Example.

Artifact Appendices are recommended to be at most 3 pages.

usenixbadges.sty — affix USENIX Artifact Evaluation badges

The usenixbadges LaTeX style file affixes USENIX Artifact Evaluation badges to the front page of a USENIX-formatted paper (or standalone Appendix). You must use it to add badges to your final (camera-ready) artifact appendix. You may also want to use it to add the badges to a self-hosted USENIX Security paper as well (which we recommend has the artifact appendix appended at the end). Download the usenixbadges package and follow the instructions below.

Installation

Put usenixbadges.sty and the usenixbadges-*.pdf graphics files in the directory that contains the LaTeX source for your paper. (Really, you can put them anywhere in LaTeX’s search path, but the simplest thing is to put the files in the same directory as your paper’s LaTeX source files.)

Usage

In the preamble of your LaTeX document, insert a line like this:

  \usepackage[<options>]{usenixbadges}

In the options, list the badges that have been awarded to your paper. The possible badges are:

  • available — affix the “Artifacts Available” badge
  • functional — affix the “Artifacts Functional” badge
  • reproduced — affix the “Results Reproduced” badge

Example:

  %% Affix the indicated badges to the paper.
  \usepackage[available,functional]{usenixbadges}

Tips:

  • In your LaTeX document, the \usepackage[...]{usenixbadges} directive must come after \documentclass and before \begin{document}.

  • If your LaTeX document has many \usepackage directives, put \usepackage[...]{usenixbadges} near the end of those. This may avoid problems relating to conflicting options for the graphicx package.