Author Information


Paper Format

A paper template is available in LaTeX and Word. Do not modify the formatting provided in the templates. Any change to font sizes, page dimensions, line spacing, etc. may delay the publication of your paper. Please do not include any additional markings such as Draft or To appear in… on the pages. Make sure your paper does not contain page numbers.

We only accept submissions in PDF format. Delays in the production of proceedings are usually caused by PDF file submissions that do not embed all fonts.

Before submitting your PDF file, please open it in Acrobat Reader. In the File menu under Document Properties, you will find information on the fonts used by your document. The PDF file must only contain Type-1 fonts (and Embedded True Type fonts if prepared under Word). On Linux, you may also use pdffonts. Below are instructions to embed PDF fonts for various typesetting systems:

Paper Length

RSS 2022 has no page length requirements on papers. Paper lengths have been typically around 8 pages in the past, and we expect that most submitted papers will have a similar length.

The main PDF should contain a concise and lucid presentation of the merits of the paper, including a discussion of its contributions, prior work, and a description of key technical ideas and methods used. The paper should be self-contained and include all the material necessary for an expert to verify the central claims in the paper. Additional supplemental text, such as appendices, data listings, or expanded proofs, should be included as supplementary material (see below). Reviewers will review supplemental material at their discretion.

Authors should anticipate that their papers may be rejected if the key technical result is not concisely presented. Reviewers may perceive a paper as too long if it is verbose, repetitive, or belabors obvious points. A paper that is 15 pages long is not necessarily going to be rejected, but the authors must make a compelling case to that the length is essential to the key ideas in the paper. Moreover, the aesthetics of a paper also make the case for conciseness, since too much whitespace and poorly cropped figures are detrimental to the “feel” of a high-quality paper. Conversely, reviewers may perceive a paper as too short if it omits important details.

Note: We were inspired to make this decision following other conferences, such as SIGGRAPH and FOCS. Researchers have wasted untold hours massaging formatting rules, figure sizes, and trimming paragraphs to fit page limits. Although the nominal reason for page limits in the electronic era is an upper bound on reviewers’ effort since they are expected to review “all the material” in the submission, it is inevitable that reviewers do not review material uniformly and will skim over text that is uninteresting or too dense; hence, page length is a poor proxy for reviewer effort. We will trust that authors will recognize that respecting reviewers’ time is a necessary condition to get published.

Double Blind Submission

RSS 2022 continues the tradition of double-blind reviews. Authors should not list their names on the title page, and reasonable anonymity should be maintained in the paper. Authors are asked to take particular care when referencing their own work — careless use of self citations can easily violate the requirements for double blind reviewing and this will result in papers being rejected.

The following general principles should be applied in submissions:

  • Authors names and affiliations should not be cited in the title or text of the submission.
  • Acknowledgments to people or funding agencies should not appear in the submission.
  • Citing of web links to the authors or author’s institute should be avoided.

In self citing authors previous work, avoid expressions such as “In the authors earlier work…”, rather use alternative expressions such as “In previous work…” or “In related work…”, in a manner that does not distinguish their own work from the work of others. Authors should otherwise cite work, including their own, as required for the completeness of the submission.

In presentation of experimental work, avoid logos in pictures, or overt references to an individual laboratory. Use expressions such as “The experimental equipment…” rather than “The University of XYZ’s Robby the Robot…”. Otherwise, authors should include photographs, graphics and other presentation material as in the normal manner for a paper submission.

Supplementary Materials

Authors may submit supplementary material such as a video or an expanded version of a proof. The deadline for supplementary material is the same as for paper submission. Note that reviewers are not required to view this material and include it in their assessment of the paper. Lastly, if authors feel they must link to additional supplementary material, they are cautioned to ensure that their identities are not revealed.

Multiple Submissions

Submissions that are identical (or substantially similar) to versions that have been previously published, or accepted for publication, or that have been submitted in parallel to other conferences are not appropriate for RSS and violate our dual submission policy.

Exceptions to this rule are the following:

  1. Submission is permitted of a short version of a paper that has been submitted to a journal, but has not yet been published in that journal. Authors must declare such dual-submissions via email to the program chair. It is the authors’ responsibility to make sure that the journal in question allows dual concurrent submissions to conferences.
  2. Submission is permitted for papers presented or to be presented at conferences or workshops that do not have published proceedings, or with only abstracts published.
  3. It is acceptable to submit to RSS work that has been made available as a technical report (or similar, e.g. in arXiv) without citing it.

None of the above should be construed as overriding the requirements of other publishing venues. In addition, keep in mind that author anonymity to RSS reviewers might be compromised for authors availing themselves of exceptions 2 and 3.

Plagiarism

RSS is intolerant of plagiarism. Submitted papers are expected to contain original work executed by the authors with adequate, proper, and scholarly citations to the work of others. It is the job of the authors to clearly identify both their own contribution(s) and published results / techniques on which they depend or build. RSS reviewers are charged to ensure these standards are met. In cases of alleged plagiarism, the program chair will be guided by Section 8.2.4 Allegations of Misconduct as laid out by the IEEE in this document.

Uploading files

Paper submission and review will occur in the Conference Management Toolkit (CMT) system at the following link: https://cmt3.research.microsoft.com/RSS2022/

  • Logging into the system: If you already have a CMT account, use those credentials to login. If you do not, sign up as a new user.
  • Conflict domains: When you login for the first time, CMT will prompt you to enter your conflict domains. You will not be allowed to start the submission process without finishing this step.
  • Paper submission: Make sure your role is “Author”. Enter title, abstract, and authors. Select your primary and secondary subject areas. Your paper may now be uploaded. Papers must be in the accepted conference style format and must be submitted as a PDF. Papers may be edited, updated and replaced up to the full paper final submission deadline.
  • Paper ID: After clicking the Submit link, your paper will be assigned an ID. To make sure your PDF submission is reviewer-friendly, enter this ID at the end of your title as instructed in the paper template.
  • Supplementary material: Authors may submit supplementary material such as a video or an expanded version of a proof (50MB max, accepted formats: avi, mov, mp4, mpg, pdf, tar, tgz, zip). Please note that the link to upload supplementary material becomes active only after the paper submission is complete.