Call for Workshops

Call for Workshop Proposals

We are happy to announce that the 27th edition of the International Conference on Distributed Computing and Networking (ICDCN 2026) will be held at Nara, Japan, from 5th – 8th January 2026.

The Organizing Committee invites proposals for one-day or half-day workshops affiliated with the conference. Workshops should emphasize current topics of interest within the broader areas of Distributed Computing and Communication Networks. While ICDCN workshops cover all the topics which are part of the main conference tracks, we encourage topics which are futuristic while in the broader scope of distributed computing and networking, however focused towards the interest of a subset of the participants attending the conference. The objective of these workshops is to enable stimulating discussions on state-of-the-art, emerging, visionary, and perhaps controversial topics. 

The workshops may include a mix of regular papers, invited presentations and panels that encourage the participation of attendees in active discussion. As mentioned, the purpose of these workshops is to provide a platform for presenting new ideas in a generally more focused area than the main conference. Workshops should be organized to promote such lively interaction. Plans to promote interaction and discussion should be clearly addressed in workshop proposals. It is expected that workshop papers will be published in a companion proceedings along with the main conference proceedings. Workshop organisers should follow ACM Peer Review Policy (https://www.acm.org/publications/policies/peer-review) while accepting papers.

The workshop organizers should also take into account the following practical considerations:

• ICDCN 2026 will follow a single registration fee for the entire 4 days event. There will be no workshop-only registration fee. 

• All of the Workshops for ICDCN 2026 should have the same deadlines (e.g. notification of acceptance and camera-ready deadlines), to facilitate coordination with other aspects of the conference organization. Deadline extensions should be coordinated with the Workshop and Publication chair(s). The notification and camera ready dates will be shared with organizers of selected workshops in due time.

• All workshops are planned to be held in person, in Nara, Japan. At least one author of an accepted paper must register and present their paper at the workshop in person.

• For greater interactions, we will require all workshops to have identical start, end and break times.

• Individual Workshop organizers will be responsible for setting up the paper submission site and review process, as well as for their individual web page design in coordination with the ICDCN 2026 Web chair(s).

• Individual Workshop organizers are expected to manage their workshop and coordinate with the local chair for facilities at the venue and with the publications chairs for camera-ready papers.

• Individual Workshop organizers are welcome to invite keynote speakers. Regularly, no financial support will be available by ICDCN to cover workshop keynote speakers costs and the organizers should seek by themselves for sponsoring options, if necessary.

• In order to ensure the quality of the accepted papers in ICDCN, the ICDCN steering committee set an upper limit of 40% on the acceptance rate for ICDCN Workshop papers. Hence, it is desirable for the organizers of the accepted workshops to adhere to that acceptance rate for their respective workshops. 

• Workshop organisers should declare the potential conflict of interests (CoI) of the submitted papers to their own workshop. Note that a CoI paper is - (i) where at least one of the organisers is a co-author of the paper, and (ii) All the workshop organizers who are handling the submitted papers, have a CoI with the authors of the submitted papers. Such CoI papers will be handled by the workshop chairs directly. In case there is at least one workshop organizer who does not have a CoI, then the non-CoI organizers can handle the papers. Confidentiality and fairness should be maintained strictly for such cases. For any confusion about CoI, the workshop organizers should contact the workshop chairs. 

New Open Access Publishing Model for ACM

We will publish ICDCN 2026 workshop proceedings as a companion volume along with the main conference proceedings. However, please note that ACM has moved to a new open access publishing model for all conference proceedings to be published via ACM ICPS. The authors have to pay an Article Processing Charge (APC) to ACM (which is beyond the regular conference registration fee) if the corresponding author’s organization is not a member of the ACM Open program. Please check the details through this link: https://www.acm.org/publications/icps/author-guidance. Several institutes across the globe are already members of the ACM Open program. The authors can use the following link to check if their organization is a member under the ACM Open program: https://libraries.acm.org/acmopen/open-participants. For any clarifications, please contact icps-info@acm.org. 

Format of the Proposal

Each workshop proposal (maximum 5 pages) must include

• Title of the workshop

• Description of the technical issues covered, emphasizing the timeliness of the proposed workshop (1-page maximum)

• Workshop Organizers (names, affiliation and contact information), limiting up to 2 workshop chairs for a half-day workshop and 3 workshop chairs for a full-day workshop

• A short biography of the organizers (up to 200 words)

• Names of potential participants, such as program committee members and invited speakers (an indication that speakers accepted to participate is a plus)

• Planned format of the workshop, including:

  • Duration of the workshop: Half-day, Full-day and tentative schedule

  • Preferred day of the workshop: Before or after the conference

  • Number of refereed papers, hot topic sessions, keynotes, panels

Unique, creative and novel workshops formats are strongly encouraged

• Draft Call for Papers

• A description of the publicity and promotion plan

• Workshop potential website address (if available at the time of the proposal - will be required later if the workshop proposal is accepted)

• If appropriate, a description of past versions of the workshop, including the number of submitted and accepted papers, number of attendees, etc.

Timelines for the Workshop

The proposals should be submitted (in PDF format) no later than July 10, 2025, to the ICDCN 2026 Workshop chairs (Sandip Chakraborty (sandipc@cse.iitkgp.ac.in) and Takuya Yoshihiro (tac@wakayama-u.ac.jp). ) with “ICDCN 2026 Workshop Proposal” in the subject.

• Proposal Deadline: July 10th, 2025

• Notification of Selection: July 15th, 2025

• Deadline for Workshop Papers: September 15th, 2025

• Decision on Acceptance/Rejection of the Workshop Papers: October 25th, 2025 (hard deadline)

• Camera-Ready Papers Version Due: November 15th, 2025 (hard deadline)

For further queries please write to Sandip Chakraborty (sandipc@cse.iitkgp.ac.in) and Takuya Yoshihiro (tac@wakayama-u.ac.jp).