Guest Editorial: Special Section on Outstanding Papers from MobiSys 2012

Abstract

It gives us great pleasure to introduce this special section on outstanding papers from the ACM MobiSys 2012 conference, for which we were honored to be the program committee cochairs. The conference was held in June 2012 and included 32 high-quality papers selected from 182 submissions, a record high for both paper submissions and paper acceptances. The conference's call-for-papers informed authors that a few outstanding papers would be considered for a fast-tracked special section in the IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing (TMC). The selection process for the papers included in this special section was a byproduct of the selection process for the MobiSys 2012 Best Paper Award. Immediately after the MobiSys 2012 program committee meeting, we asked the committee members to nominate accepted papers for the Best Paper Award. Based on the responses we received, five papers with the most nominations were selected as candidates for the award. Their nominations were kept confidential until the opening of the conference. We then asked the program committee and external reviewer panel members to volunteer for the Best Paper Award committee to determine the final best paper and select three out of the five nominated papers for this special section. Based on the responses and conflicts of interest, four members of the program committee and one member of the external reviewer panel formed the Best Paper Award committee. At the conference, this committee selected the best paper and the three papers to be fast-tracked for this special section. The paper review process for the selected papers followed the standard procedure for fast-tracked TMC special sections. The authors were asked to submit a journal version with an explanation of how they addressed the reviews and feedback received at the conference. Note that each of these three papers received five or more conference reviews and had gone through a shepherding process to address reviewer comments for the final, camera-ready version. As required by the TMC fast-tracking procedure, we invited at least two reviewers for each submission. At least one reviewer was a MobiSys program committee member who reviewed the corresponding conference submission and another was not a member of program committee. In the end, the review process produced three very highquality papers that we are proud to present to the readers of TMC.