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Authors’ Instructions

The following instructions apply to all paper types accepted by the IEEE CSR 2021 conference and its associated workshops: regular research papers, Systematization of Knowledge (SoK) papers providing insights in conference’s or workshop’s areas, as well as industrial papers promoting contributions on technology development, innovations and implementations. Please, make sure that the guidelines are read carefully before your work is submitted.

The IEEE CSR conference (including workshops) proceedings will be published by the IEEE and will be included in IEEE Xplore.

All the submissions must be original work of sufficient detail to be evaluated by expert reviewers in the field. Overlaps with previously published or simultaneously submitted papers, from any of the authors, should be clearly documented in the manuscript. All the submissions are expected to present the prior state-of-the-art in the field and clearly discuss the paper’s significant and novel contributions. This is imperative for regular research papers, and involves highlighting how the current contributions differ from and advance the state-of-the-art.

Conference Management System


The IEEE CSR 2021 conference and all the workshops utilize the same conference management system (CMS) to handle all submissions and the reviewing process. Submitting authors will have to provide the paper’s details before uploading their manuscript (see details below). Please, ensure the correctness of the authors’ Participant Type (IEEE member, IEEE student, etc.) since this will be later used in order to automatically compute the registration fees of the participants.

When submitting your manuscript, please make sure that it is submitted to the intended venue (main conference or a workshop) by selecting the proper item in the Topic Areas drop down list. In accordance to the call for papers (CFP), the main conference provides three distinct tracks

  • 1T1 Cyber security;
  • 1T2 Cyber resilience; and
  • 1T3 Complex CPS security

whereas each workshop is associated with a unique track identifier 2Tx. If you are not sure which venue or track you should submit your paper, you can use the list of topics as a general guideline. Submitted papers should have an abstract not exceeding 150 words and be assigned a list of keywords, typically between five to eight; these are also provided into the conference’s CMS during the paper submission process, where the paper’s Submission Type has to be defined

  • Regular papers;
  • SoK papers;
  • Industrial papers; and
  • Other.

The last option should be used for demos or participants attending the conference without presenting a paper. The reviewers will take the paper’s type into account when conducting their reviews.

The submitting author is responsible for obtaining the appropriate publication clearances before the manuscript’s submission. Manuscripts received after the submission deadline or failing to conform to the conference’s guidelines, risk rejection without a review. In any case, you can contact the Program Chairs (PC) for matters related to the technical program.

New Paper Submission


Authors will have to access the IEEE CSR conference management system in order to submit their papers. Once this is done, please follow the steps below:

  1. Follow the Register participant or New Submission link if you are accessing the system for the first time; otherwise go to step 4.
  2. Fill-in the details (authors, title, abstract, keywords, etc.) related to the paper and submit the form; it is important to select a strong password.
  3. You will receive an email with a unique paper ID; this will be used for completing the submission process and also during registration. Please check your spam folder if you didn’t receive an email.
  4. Use your paper’s ID and password to login to the system and complete the submission; you may also edit already available information about the paper.
  5. Click on the Upload File menu and the Paper_PDF option; you will be presented with a form to upload the manuscript (16MB limit); also upload any required supplementary material (see next).
  6. A confirmation email will follow after submission; you can check the paper’s review status at any time by clicking the Check Status menu.

The above process is repeated for each paper; note that the submission deadlines are in Anywhere on Earth (AoE) timezone. If you face any issues with the conference management system, please e-mail us at info@ieee-csr.org.

Formatting and Page Length


Manuscripts submitted to IEEE CSR 2021 conference and workshops must not exceed 6 pages, including tables, figures, references and appendices, plus 2 extra pages being subject to overlength page charges (100 EUR per page); the same applies to camera-ready papers. The reviewers should not be required to read appendices. Manuscripts can be less than 6 pages, but should make a similar contribution to a full length paper.

The manuscripts must be formatted for US letter (8.5″ x 11″) size paper, in two-column layout, with 10pt Times font and 11pt line spacing. The authors should pay attention to unusual fonts (they should all be embedded), images, and figures that could cause problems to the reviewers. Your document should render correctly in the latest version of the Adobe Reader and when printed in grayscale. The authors are encouraged to use the IEEE conference proceedings templates and follow the Manuscript Preparation Guidelines, which are applicable to the IEEE CSR 2021 conference and workshops.

All submissions must be in Portable Document Format (.pdf); they will be checked for conformance to the preparation guidelines. Failure to adhere to page limit and formatting requirements can be grounds for rejection without a review. High-quality submissions with correct English spelling and grammar will be appreciated by the reviewers.

Supplementary Material


Supplementary material should be used for uploading the source/editable files of a paper; these include all the LaTeX files and figures, or the MS Word file, needed to produce the PDF file and they could be uploaded to the conference’s CMS in a single ZIP file. The LaTeX or MS Word source files are not required at the initial submission of a manuscript, but are mandatory during the camera-ready submission of an accepted paper.

Supplementary material can also include optional cover letters; these are primarily used to communicate information about special circumstances of a paper or resubmission of a previously rejected paper.

The submission of code, data, or other supplementary material increasing the scrutinizability of a work is encouraged. Authors are urged to make salient parameter settings of pertinent algorithms available and ideally obtain their results using open source data. If specific datasets are employed, we ask that a version of these be made available where possible.

Whilst most reviewers take supplementary material into account when conducting their reviews, the authors should ensure that their submission stands on its own even without this extra material.

Review Process


The IEEE CSR 2021 conference and all workshops follow the same review processes, which are facilitated by the IEEE CSR conference management system. More precisely, all papers will undergo a rigorous (single-blind) peer review process involving at least three reviewers with high expertise in the field. All submissions will be treated as confidential communications during their review, and thus submission does not constitute public disclosure of any ideas therein.

Papers could be desk rejected by the PC —i.e. rejected before entering the review process— if they determine that the submission is clearly out of the conference’s scope, it is written using poor English language that precludes effective communication, it does not follow manuscript formatting guidelines, or it is otherwise not appropriate. The scores assigned by the reviewers are:

  1. Reject
  2. Probable reject
  3. Marginal tend to reject
  4. Marginal tend to accept
  5. Clear accept
  6. Must accept

All the decisions obtained via the review process are either (conditional) acceptances or rejections; the conditionally accepted papers are those with an overall review score less than or equal to 4 (marginal tend to accept) and come with requirements for their final acceptance. Effectively addressing these requirements in the final submission of a paper is essential, and is the authors’ responsibility to adequately document in a response letter how the reviewers’ feedback was adequately addressed. Such responses will be at the disposal of the reviewers.

Manuscripts submitted to IEEE CSR 2021 conference and workshops must be formatted for US letter (8.5″ x 11″) size paper, in a two-column layout with columns no more than 9.5″ tall and 3.5″ wide, and margins no less than 0.75″ (top) x 1″ (bottom) x 0.625″ (left/right sides). The text must be in 10pt Times font or larger and 11pt minimum line spacing. To provide a consistent format for papers appearing in the conference proceedings, authors are strongly encouraged to use the IEEE conference proceedings templates available at

https://conferences.ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org/write-your-paper/authoring-tools-and-templates

Templates for both LaTeX and MS Word are available. In particular, LaTeX users should use the IEEEtran class version 1.8b (dated 2015/08/26) in conference mode, which is also available in Overleaf at

https://www.overleaf.com/latex/templates/ieee-bare-demo-template-for-conferences/ypypvwjmvtdf

Note that affiliation in IEEE conferences is listed under the author’s name, unlike IEEE transactions; do not add any page numbering, header or footer (other than the copyright information discussed next). LaTeX users should have the following as the first line in the manuscript’s source file:

\documentclass[10pt,conference]{IEEEtran}

All submissions must be in Portable Document Format (.pdf); compliance to the formatting guidelines is checked during the initial submission of a paper, but is enforced in the submission phase of the final manuscripts.

Please follow the steps below to prepare the camera-ready version of your accepted paper.

1. Copyright Clearance Code


The appropriate copyright clearance code notice is to appear at the bottom of each paper’s first page as per the guidelines set forth in the cataloging/copyright instructions for IEEE conference proceedings. Details can be found at https://www.ieee.org/publications/rights.

  • For papers in which all authors are employed by the US government, the copyright notice is: U.S. Government work not protected by U.S. copyright
  • For papers in which all authors are employed by a Crown government (UK, Canada, and Australia), the copyright notice is: 978-1-6654-0285-9/21/$31.00 ©2021 Crown
  • For papers in which all authors are employed by the European Union, the copyright notice is: 978-1-6654-0285-9/21/$31.00 ©2021 European Union
  • For all other papers, the copyright notice is: 978-1-6654-0285-9/21/$31.00 ©2021 IEEE

Latex users may add the following lines before the \begin{document} statement for the copyright notice to show up (this is as an example for the last case above):

\IEEEoverridecommandlockouts
\IEEEpubid{\makebox[\columnwidth]{978-1-6654-0285-9/21/\$31.00~\copyright{}2021 IEEE \hfill} \hspace{\columnsep}\makebox[\columnwidth]{ }}

MS Word users can use: ‘Insert’ → ‘Text box’, insert the appropriate copyright notice in the textbox, and then place the box (without border) at the bottom left on the first page.

2. IEEE PDF eXpress


When submitting the camera-ready version of their accepted paper, authors are required to use IEEE PDF eXpress for checking if their final PDF file is Xplore-compliant. The website can also be used to convert source files into an IEEE Xplore-compliant PDF file; LaTeX users can upload a ZIP with all source files and supported image files for the system to produce a compliant PDF file, while MS Word users only need to upload the Word file.

  • Go to IEEE PDF eXpress website: https://ieee-pdf-express.org;
  • Login or create an account using 51186X as conference ID;
  • Upload the PDF file for checking or the source file(s) for conversion;
  • You will receive an email stating that PDF has passed or failed the check;
  • Review the PDF to ensure it looks as it did if source files were provided.

The validated PDF file obtained from PDF eXpress is the one that must be uploaded as the final version; it includes a label in the PDF metadata that certifies compatibility with IEEE Xplore. Papers that are not compliant will not be included in the proceedings nor published.

3. IEEE Copyright Form


The authors of accepted papers must complete the electronic IEEE Copyright Form (eCF) for digitally transferring ownership rights of the intellectual property to IEEE. The steps to be followed by the authors are shown below:

  • Visit the conference management system (CMS) to get access to the account linked to your paper.
  • Enter your paper’s unique ID in the Submission ID field and your Password; then press Enter or click the Login button to access the account.
  • From the main author’s menu, which is presented once you login, select the Submit Copyright option.
  • You may be asked once more to verify your identity before being redirected to an IEEE server to start the copyright submission process.
  • The CMS will automatically provide to IEEE the metadata relevant to your accepted paper, and the email address of the author initiating the process; these will have to be subsequently verified by the author.
    • Please ensure that the details shown here match exactly those in the camera-ready paper; changes to the paper’s information are not allowed at this stage.
  • The IEEE eCF website will walk you intuitively through the process to ensure that the correct copyright form is signed.
  • A PDF copyright document will be created and stored on the IEEE file system; you will have the ability to download the document, a copy of which will also be sent to you via email.

The signed copyright form should also be uploaded on the IEEE CSR conference management system using the Upload File option from the main author’s menu.

4. Conference Registration


To publish an accepted paper in IEEE CSR 2021 conference and workshop proceedings and submit it for inclusion in IEEE Xplore, as well as other Abstracting and Indexing (A&I) databases, at least one author is required to register for the conference. Non-refundable registration fees must be paid in due time by the registration deadline. Note that for all Participant Types:

The above hold for the IEEE CSR 2021 conference and all workshops. The paper registration process is made available through the conference management system and the Fee Payment menu. Students and IEEE members must upload (using the Upload File menu) the necessary IDs for proving their status and allow verifying the correctness of the registration fee calculation.

Accepted papers must be presented by one of the authors in order to be published in IEEE CSR 2021 conference and workshop proceedings and included in IEEE Xplore. For more information, please refer to IEEE CSR Policies.

5. Camera-Ready Paper Upload


The final camera-ready paper produced by IEEE PDF eXpress (see the instructions above in Section 2) must be uploaded via the IEEE CSR 2021 conference management system by selecting the Upload File menu and the Camera_Ready option. At this stage, uploading as supplementary material the LaTeX or MS Word source files of your accepted paper is mandatory; please see the guidelines for authors.

Please, double check the information that is provided during the final submission, including the paper’s title and abstract as well as the name, affiliation, and e-mail address of the authors; please, list authors in order of authorship. Be aware that in addition to any corrections proposed by the reviewers, only minor changes to the title and abstract are accepted, whereas no changes to the authors’ list are allowed. In case of conditional acceptance, the authors also need to provide a response letter as supplementary material.

If you have any questions on creating and submitting the final camera-ready paper, please contact the publication chairs at info@ieee-csr.org.

The subsequent steps need to be followed by all participants of IEEE CSR 2021 conference and its associated workshops in order to complete the registration fees payment process. Registration fees will be charged in EUR and are summarised as follows (VAT inclusive):

Membership and Participant Type

Before June 14, 2021

After June 14, 2021

Authors of accepted papers

IEEE Member

320€

360€

IEEE Student

180€

220€

IEEE Life / retired

260€

320€

Non-IEEE Member

360€

400€

Non-IEEE Student

220€

260€

Non-authors (attendees)

IEEE Member

180€

180€

IEEE Student

110€

110€

IEEE Life / retired

160€

160€

Non-IEEE Member

200€

200€

Non-IEEE Student

130€

130€

Invited speakers / panelists

0€

0€

Overlength page charges of 100€ per page (max 2 extra pages) are applicable to camera-ready papers exceeding 6 pages and are added to the above fees. Registration of authors and attendees includes access to IEEE CSR conference and workshops proceedings.

1. Authors of accepted papers


This includes the authors of accepted papers (including co-authors) of IEEE CSR 2021 conference and its associated workshops.

  • Visit the conference management system (CMS) to get access to the account linked to your paper.
  • Enter your paper’s unique ID in the Submission ID field and your Password; then press Enter or click the Login button to access the account.
  • From the main author’s menu, which is presented once you login, select the Fee Payment option.
  • In the authors’ information group, select the author paying the registration fees by pressing the “Click here to participate and pay conference fees” button, which is located at the bottom of each author’s information.
  • Then, you are asked to declare additional charges (in the form of extra page charges) and select the payment’s type; please make sure that extra pages, if any, are correctly stated based on the camera ready manuscript. Since IEEE CSR 2021 is a virtual conference, no accompanying persons should be added.
  • The Payment Type can be either “bank transfer” or “credit card (PayPal)”
  1. If the Bank Transfer option is selected, then you are directed to the page showing the details of Logos Ricerca e Innovazione (Logos RI) where the bank transfer should be sent to.
    • Please, make sure that the paper’s ID and the author’s (paying the registration) information are included in the bank transfer’s details to allow correct processing of the payment.
  2. If the Credit Card (PayPal) option is selected, you have the ability to securely pay either directly via PayPal or via debit/credit card; in both cases, the security of the transaction is ensured by PayPal.
    • Likewise, include information about the paper’s ID and the author’s (paying the registration) details in the payment’s comments.
  • Any changes made to payment options, including the payment’s type, are applied by clicking the Submit Changes button; this permanently locks the author’s choices and also directs to the page associated with the selected payment method.
    • Should there be a need to unlock a payment choice, please contact us at info@ieee-csr.org.
  • Once completed by the author, the status of the payment process can be monitored using the Check Status/View Reviews option from the main author’s menu. Note that “Payment Status: pending” will be shown until the payment is received and processed, in which case the text becomes “Payment Status: processed”.
  • Note that students and IEEE members must upload (using the Upload File menu) the necessary IDs for proving their status and allow verifying the correctness of the registration fee calculation; read also the Conference Registration guidelines.

2. Non-authors (attendees)


This includes the non-authors (attendees, including committee members with no paper, session chairs, etc.) of IEEE CSR 2021 conference and its associated workshops.

  • Visit the conference management system (CMS) and follow the Register participant or New Submission link.
  • Go to the Author 1 group and select your Participant Type from the drop-down menu; the available options include:
    • IEEE Member (only attend)
    • IEEE Student (only attend)
    • IEEE Life/retired Member (only attend)
    • Non-IEEE Member (only attend)
    • Non-IEEE Student (only attend)
  • Please, ensure the correctness of the above information since it is used to automatically compute the registration fees.
  • Fill-in the rest of the details, i.e. first/last name, organisation, address, country, and email (biography is also needed in case of speakers or panelists) and submit the form.
  • The default password is ieee123456 but it is strongly suggested to be changed, since it is later used to manage your registration.
  • Once the email sent by the CMS is received, visit again the registration website and enter your unique ID in the Submission ID field and your Password; then press Enter or click the Login button to access the account.
  • The rest of the registration fee payment process is the same as in Section 1.

3. Invited speakers


This includes the invited/keynote speakers and panelists of IEEE CSR 2021 conference and workshops. The process is the same as in Section 2, with the difference of the Participant Type selected from the drop-down menu, where “Invited” should now be chosen.

The IEEE CSR conference fully complies with the IEEE policies and bylaws; please read the IEEE Terms and Conditions applicable to all IEEE events as well as the policies presented next. Should there be any questions, please contact the conference chairs at info@ieee-csr.org.

Plagiarism Policy


All submitted papers in IEEE CSR 2021 conference and workshops must be original and must not have been published previously in archived conference proceedings, magazines or journals. Related previous works of the authors must be cited and differences to the work included in the submitted manuscript must be clearly explained as per the IEEE Submission Policies. Manuscripts extending previously published work may be submitted to the conference provided that they include substantial additional new material. The re-use of images from published works is allowed if properly cited and the authors have obtained the rights to re-publish the images.

Concurrent submissions (i.e. the same paper being under review in more than one publication venues at the same time) are strictly forbidden. If an identical or substantially similar manuscript is found to be simultaneously under consideration at another publication venue, then the manuscript will be rejected at an early stage of the review process. All submissions at IEEE CSR conference are routinely checked for plagiarism using the IEEE CrossCheck Portal and potential cases will be inspected thoroughly by the PC chairs. Plagiarism of any form is unacceptable and will lead to a removal of the submission from the review process.

For more information, please see the IEEE Publication Services and Products Board Operations Manual.

Vulnerability Disclosure Policy


In case where any kind of software vulnerability or design weakness is identified by a research paper in deployed systems, researchers are expected to act in a way that avoids gratuitous harm to affected users and, where possible, affirmatively protects those users. Disclosing the vulnerability to the vendors of the affected systems and other stakeholders will help protect end-users. It is typically assumed that a vulnerability disclosure window of 45–90 days prior publication is consistent with the authors’ ethical obligations; see e.g. ENISA’s good practice guide on this matter. The version of the paper submitted for review must discuss in detail all steps that the authors have taken or plan to take for addressing these vulnerabilities; however, consistent with the above timelines, the authors do not have to disclose vulnerabilities prior submission.

No-Show Policy


In offering a paper for presentation at IEEE CSR, or accepting an invitation to present a paper, at least one of the authors must be present at the meeting to deliver the paper. The conference management system allows any of the authors to be chosen as the presenter; this may be defined at any stage until the submission of the final camera-ready paper. In the event that circumstances unknown at the time of a paper’s submission preclude its presentation by the authors, the IEEE CSR program chairs should be notified well in advance, via email at info@ieee-csr.org, so as to examine the particular no-show case and make any proper arrangements.

In extraordinary cases, the program chairs could grant permission for a substitute presenter, arranged well in advance of the event, and who is qualified to both present the paper and answer any questions. Authors should be aware that failing to present their paper at the IEEE CSR conference (or workshop), will lead to the exclusion of the paper from IEEE Xplore.

The IEEE strongly discourages changes and withdrawals of papers once submitted and included in the conference program. In order to avoid the likelihood of this, authors are strongly encouraged to get all the necessary company or government approvals prior to submitting their papers to IEEE CSR. If under any circumstances it becomes necessary for an author to withdraw or change a paper, the IEEE policy dictates that the request to do this must come directly from the author and not from any third party. IEEE policy also states that, in such cases, the author will be held liable for all costs incurred.