ATC Review Process

Model the pipeline before interpreting any single review. ATC's process is unusual among systems venues in 2026 because it runs in two rounds gated by a two-page extended abstract, and because acceptance is conditional on a shepherd. The most consequential mental shift for authors arriving from a single-round conference is that round one can end your submission before anyone reads the full paper — the extended abstract is not a formality.

Process model

• Submission and review run on HotCRP (atc26.hotcrp.com) with double-blind anonymity: identities are mutually hidden through reviewing.
• Round one: each two-page extended abstract is read by two experienced reviewers with a broad systems perspective; abstracts below the bar are rejected early. The extended abstract is review-only and not published.
• Round two: papers that advance are read in full by 3-4 reviewers, who weigh the significance and usefulness of the systems contribution, the soundness of the design, the honesty and completeness of the measurements, reproducibility, and clarity.
• Rebuttal / description of changes: authors get a short (about one page) window to correct factual misreadings and, where relevant, summarize revisions relative to a prior submission.
• Decision + shepherding: selected papers are conditionally accepted; final acceptance requires satisfying a shepherd (a PC member) on required revisions. Accepted papers publish in the ACM DL under Open Access.

Reading a decision against the model

Outcome	What it means	Author move
Early reject (round one)	The abstract did not convey a problem, contribution, and result that clear the bar	Reframe the abstract; the paper may be fine but the pitch failed — see atc-writing-style
Full review, then reject	A design or evidence gap survived the full read	Fix the substance, not the framing; consider a sibling venue
Conditional accept	Contribution holds; specific revisions required	Treat the shepherd's list as binding; make or explicitly justify each item
Reject with encouragement	Structural but repairable over a cycle	Rebuild the evidence and resubmit next cycle or reroute

The strategic reading: because round one judges the abstract, the highest-leverage editing on the whole paper is often the two pages a round-one reviewer sees. Write the submission so its problem and result are legible before the details.

How ATC differs from its siblings

• vs. OSDI / SOSP: those flagships are more selective and lean toward larger, novel systems; ATC takes a broader, more practical slice and welcomes solid, useful, well-measured work a flagship might call incremental. A paper bounced from OSDI on "not novel enough" can be a strong ATC paper if the engineering and measurement are real. Neither shares ATC's two-round extended-abstract gate.
• vs. NSDI: NSDI centers networked systems and runs its own multi-deadline model; ATC's scope is all of systems and its 2026 calendar is a single June deadline. Route a networked-systems design there if the network is the contribution.
• vs. EuroSys: EuroSys is the other broad, SIGOPS-affiliated systems conference; the choice is often calendar and community pull. Under SIGOPS, ATC and EuroSys now sit in the same family, so check both deadlines.
• vs. pre-2026 USENIX ATC: the old ATC ran a single-round review on a winter deadline with USENIX-funded open access and no APC. The 2026 SIGOPS edition changed the round structure, the calendar, and the cost model at once — do not carry the old process forward.

Who reads you

Round one: two broad-perspective systems reviewers judging whether the idea and result are worth a full read. Round two: 3-4 reviewers closer to your subarea who open the artifact, check whether the measurements are end-to-end and honest about cost, and probe whether the baselines are fair. Vague design descriptions and average-only results get caught, not skimmed.

Where author leverage actually exists

[Before submission]  topic tags -> reviewer pool; a self-standing abstract -> surviving round one
[Round-one gate]     none after upload — the abstract is your only round-one argument
[Rebuttal]           factual corrections, a missing number a reviewer asked for, misread-claim fixes
[Conditional accept] the shepherd round: make every required change or justify declining it, evidenced
[After reject]       no appeal; reroute to a sibling systems venue or strengthen and resubmit

A rebuttal moves borderline papers when it corrects a factual misreading or supplies a measurement a reviewer said was missing; it does not move papers by arguing taste. In the shepherd round, a silently skipped required change is what turns a conditional accept into trouble.

Misreadings to avoid

• Treating the extended abstract as boilerplate — it is the round-one decision surface.
• Treating conditional acceptance as unconditional — the shepherd can hold the paper until the required revisions land.
• Assuming OSDI-style novelty is required — ATC rewards solid, useful, measured systems work.
• Projecting the old USENIX ATC process — the round structure, calendar, and cost model changed in the SIGOPS transition.

Output format

[Process stage] pre-submission / round one / round two / rebuttal / conditional accept / final
[Decision driver] the criterion carrying the outcome (significance | soundness | evidence | clarity | reproducibility)
[Round-one readiness] does the extended abstract stand alone and clear the bar? yes/no
[Leverage plan] the next-stage action that can actually change the outcome
[Forbidden moves] identity leak / unsupported new claims / skipping a shepherd-required change