CHES 2021

Paper Submission

Instructions for Authors

Format

A paper submitted to TCHES must be written in English and be anonymous, with no author names, affiliations, acknowledgements, or any identifying citations. It should begin with a title, a short abstract, and a list of keywords. The introduction should summarise the contributions of the paper at a level appropriate for a non-specialist reader. Submissions should be typeset in the LaTeX style (more information about style specifics available here), noting that TCHES only accepts electronic submission in PDF format. Please use the draft mode (\documentclass[draft]{iacrtrans}) that displays line numbers. This facilitates the review process.

TCHES accepts two forms of paper, termed short and long; the page limit (excluding bibliography) is 20 and 40 pages respectively. In either case, authors are encouraged to include supplementary material needed to validate the content (e.g., test vectors or source code) as an appendix: this material will not be included in the page count. In allowing long papers, the goal is to support cases where extra detail (e.g., proofs, or experimental results) is deemed essential. Long papers need to be marked as such by checking the respective box in the submission system. Authors of long papers should be aware that the review process may take longer: a decision may, at the discretion of the editors-in-chief(s), be deferred to the subsequent volume.

Regulations

The review process for TCHES, Volume 2021, Issues 1-4, will be governed by the following regulations:

• There are no longer restrictions on the number of papers members of the TCHES editorial board may submit per deadline (co-authored or otherwise); editor(s)-in-chief may not submit papers during their tenure.
• TCHES follows IACR policy with respect to irregular submissions: any submission deemed to be irregular (e.g., which has been submitted, in parallel, to another conference with proceedings), will be instantly rejected. IACR reserves the right to share information about submissions with other program committees and editorial boards to ensure strict enforcement of the policy.
• TCHES follows IACR policy with respect to conflicts of interest that could prevent impartial review. This policy is covered in more detail below.
• Full transparency is of utmost importance, authors and reviewers must disclose to the chairs or editor any circumstances that they think may create bias, even if it does not raise to the level of a CoI. At the time of submission, authors are required to:
  1. make a declaration regarding any conflicts of interest (including reasons for the conflict), and
  2. guarantee they will deliver a presentation at the associated CHES conference if their submission is accepted for publication in TCHES.
• Each paper will be double-blind reviewed by at least four members of the TCHES editorial board.
• In order to improve the quality of the review process, authors are given the opportunity to submit a rebuttal (between the indicated dates) after receiving the associated reviews.
• The review process outcome is either an outright accept or reject decision, or one of two deferred decision types. Specifically, "minor revision" means the paper is conditionally accepted, and assigned a shepherd to verify the revision is adequate, "major revision" means the authors are invited to submit a revision of their article to one of the following two submission deadlines; a later re-submission will be treated as a new paper.
• When submitting a major revision, follow the instructions in the submission system to indicate that the paper is a major revision and to provide the ID of the earlier submission.
• To ensure consistency, the reviewers assigned for a revised paper are ideally the same as for the original.
• Resubmission of papers that have previously been rejected from TCHES is only allowed after major modifications and approval by the Editors-in-Chief prior to submission.
• Authors of submitted papers are also highly encouraged to check the TCHES FAQ for answers to questions related to policy and procedures governing CHES.

Submissions not meeting these guidelines risk rejection without consideration of their merits.

Conflicts of Interest

Authors, program committee members, and reviewers must follow the IACR Policy on Conflicts of Interest, available from https://www.iacr.org/docs/.

In particular, the authors of each submission are asked during the submission process to identify all members of the Program Committee who have an automatic conflict of interest (COI) with the submission. A reviewer¹ has an automatic COI with an author if:

• one is or was the thesis advisor to the other, no matter how long ago;
• they shared an institutional affiliation within the prior two years²;
• they published two or more jointly authored works in the last three years³; or
• they are immediate family members⁴

A reviewer has an automatic COI with a submission if:

• the reviewer has an automatic COI with any of its authors;
• the reviewer is authoring a paper (in submission⁵ or in preparation) whose content substantially overlaps with that of the submission;
• the reviewer has made a contribution to the submission (i.e. the submission is the result of a collaboration that did not result in the reviewer's authorship)

Any further COIs of importance should be separately disclosed. It is the responsibility of all authors to ensure correct reporting of COI information. Submissions with incorrect or incomplete COI information may be rejected without consideration of their merits.

COIs are not restricted to automatic ones, others being possible. COIs beyond automatic COIs could involve financial, intellectual, or personal interests. Examples include closely related technical work, cooperation in the form of joint projects or grant applications, business relationships, close personal friendships, instances of personal enmity. Full transparency is of utmost importance, authors and reviewers must disclose to the chairs or editor any circumstances that they think may create bias, even if it does not raise to the level of a COI. The editor or program chair will decide if such circumstances should be treated as a COI.