Call for Papers: PETS 2025

The 25th Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS 2025) will be held from July 14–19, 2025, in Washington, DC and Online.

About PETS

The annual Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS) brings together experts from around the world to present and discuss recent advances and new perspectives on research in privacy technologies. The 25th PETS will be a hybrid event with a physical gathering held in Washington, DC, USA, and a concurrent virtual event.

Papers accepted for PETS are published in the journal Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PoPETs), a scholarly, open-access journal that is self-published and has no article processing charges or article submission charges.

Submission Guidelines

• Authors can submit papers to PoPETs four times a year, with decisions typically made within two months of submission. Papers can be accepted, receive a "revise" decision, or be rejected. Authors receiving a "revise" decision are guided by a revision editor and have up to four months to complete revisions. Rejected papers require skipping a full issue before resubmission.
• The href="authors-2025.php#submission-guidelines" - submission guidelines contain important information, including instructions for anonymizing submissions, ensuring ethical research, and using AI in writing or editing manuscripts.
• Papers must be submitted via the PETS 2025 submission server: href="https://submit.petsymposium.org" - https://submit.petsymposium.org/

Important Dates for PETS 2025

All deadlines are 23:59:59 Anywhere on Earth (UTC-12)

Issue 1

• Paper submission deadline: May 31, 2024
• Rebuttal period: July 16–19, 2024
• Author notification: August 1, 2024
• Revision deadline: September 1, 2024
• Camera-ready deadline: September 15, 2024

Issue 2

• Paper submission deadline: August 31, 2024
• Rebuttal period: October 15–18, 2024
• Author notification: November 1, 2024
• Revision deadline: December 1, 2024
• Camera-ready deadline: December 15, 2024

Issue 3

• Paper submission deadline: November 30, 2024
• Rebuttal period: January 14–17, 2025
• Author notification: February 1, 2025
• Revision deadline: March 1, 2025
• Camera-ready deadline: March 15, 2025

Issue 4

• Paper submission deadline: February 28, 2025
• Rebuttal period: April 15–18, 2025
• Author notification: May 1, 2025
• Revision deadline: June 1, 2025
• Camera-ready deadline: June 15, 2025

Review Process (New for 2025)

Authors invited to revise their submissions will receive specific revision criteria. Revisions are guided by a revision editor, and accepted revisions for the current issue must be completed within 1 month of notification; revisions accepted between 1-4 months will appear in the following issue. Papers not adequately revised by the following issue's revision deadline will be rejected. More details are available on the href="reviews-2025.php" - review process page.

Resubmission of Rejected Papers (New for 2025)

Authors of rejected papers must skip one full issue before resubmitting to a future issue of PoPETs.

Scope (New for 2025)

Papers submitted to PETS/PoPETs should present novel practical and/or theoretical research into the requirements, design, analysis, experimentation, or fielding of privacy-enhancing technologies and their contexts. Interdisciplinary research is welcome if it clearly impacts privacy technology design, development, or deployment. Relevance to privacy applications in real systems is crucial; highly theoretical contributions without clear ties to practical privacy are unlikely to be accepted.

Suggested Topics

• Anonymous communication and censorship resistance
• Blockchain privacy
• Building and deploying privacy-enhancing systems
• Cloud computing and privacy
• Compliance with privacy laws and regulations
• Cryptographic tools for privacy
• Data protection technologies
• Defining and quantifying privacy
• Differential privacy and private data analysis
• Economics and game-theoretical approaches to privacy
• Forensics and privacy
• Genomic and medical privacy
• Human factors, usability, and user-centered design of privacy technologies
• Information leakage, data correlation, and abstract attacks on privacy
• Interdisciplinary research connecting privacy to economics, law, psychology, etc.
• Internet of Things privacy
• Location privacy
• Machine learning and privacy
• Measurement of privacy in real-world systems
• Mobile devices and privacy
• Policy languages and tools for privacy
• Profiling and data mining
• Social network privacy
• Surveillance
• Traffic analysis
• Transparency, fairness, robustness, and abuse in privacy systems
• Web privacy

Systematization of Knowledge (SoK) Papers

SoK papers are also solicited. They should synthesize existing knowledge, provide novel insights, or identify research gaps. Submissions must include "SoK:" in their title.

Awards

• Caspar Bowden Award for Outstanding Research in Privacy Enhancing Technologies: For significant contributions to privacy enhancing technologies, presented annually. Nominations are open for papers published between April 1, 2023, and March 30, 2025.
• Andreas Pfitzmann Best Student Paper Award: For papers written and presented primarily by a student.
• Artifact Award: For outstanding digital artifacts submitted with accepted papers.

HotPETs and FOCI

Part of the symposium will be devoted to HotPETs (exciting research ideas in formative stages) and FOCI (Free and Open Communication on the Internet workshop).

Contact Information

• General Chair: Adam Aviv (GC Chair) ( href="mailto:gc25@petsymposium.org" - gc25@petsymposium.org )
• Program Chairs/Co-Editors-in-Chief: Zubair Shafiq, Rob Jansen ( href="mailto:pets25-chairs@petsymposium.org" - pets25-chairs@petsymposium.org )
• Safe Spaces Chairs: Susan McGregor, Kovila Coopamootoo ( href="mailto:safe-spaces-pets@petsymposium.org" - safe-spaces-pets@petsymposium.org )