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How international are international computing conferences? -- An exploration with systems research conferences

Pedro Garcia Lopez, Marina López Alet, Usama Benabdelkrim Zakan, Anwitaman Datta

Abstract

In recent years, Asia's rapid growth in research output has been reshaping the computing research landscape. What was once a two-block system (America and Europe) is evolving into a multipolar world with three major hubs: America, Europe, and Asia. To study these pivotal changes and evaluate international diversity, we have analyzed the past 13 years of 13 international systems research conferences: ASPLOS, NSDI, OSDI, SIGCOMM, ATC, EuroSys, ICDCS, Middleware, SoCC, CCGRID, IC2E, IEEE Cloud and EuroPar. Our analysis focuses on accepted papers and participation in the Program Committee, grouping the results by region (America, Europe, and Asia). Surprisingly, we find a pronounced historical imbalance in international diversity among top-tier systems conferences (ASPLOS, OSDI, NSDI, SIGCOMM). While most other conferences have progressively reflected Asia's growing research presence over the past decades, this group has shown a noticeable adjustment only in the recent four years. We also identify persistent rigidities in how program committee (PC) diversity adapts to shifts in accepted paper origins, with a consistent under-representation of researchers from Asian organizations in many PCs.

How international are international computing conferences? -- An exploration with systems research conferences

Abstract

In recent years, Asia's rapid growth in research output has been reshaping the computing research landscape. What was once a two-block system (America and Europe) is evolving into a multipolar world with three major hubs: America, Europe, and Asia. To study these pivotal changes and evaluate international diversity, we have analyzed the past 13 years of 13 international systems research conferences: ASPLOS, NSDI, OSDI, SIGCOMM, ATC, EuroSys, ICDCS, Middleware, SoCC, CCGRID, IC2E, IEEE Cloud and EuroPar. Our analysis focuses on accepted papers and participation in the Program Committee, grouping the results by region (America, Europe, and Asia). Surprisingly, we find a pronounced historical imbalance in international diversity among top-tier systems conferences (ASPLOS, OSDI, NSDI, SIGCOMM). While most other conferences have progressively reflected Asia's growing research presence over the past decades, this group has shown a noticeable adjustment only in the recent four years. We also identify persistent rigidities in how program committee (PC) diversity adapts to shifts in accepted paper origins, with a consistent under-representation of researchers from Asian organizations in many PCs.
Paper Structure (7 sections, 2 equations, 5 figures, 1 table)

This paper contains 7 sections, 2 equations, 5 figures, 1 table.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. The crawler and the data
  3. The increasing participation of Asia
  4. International diversity
  5. Geographical Disparities Between Program Committees and Accepted Papers
  6. Tech Companies in academic research
  7. Conclusions

Figures (5)

  • Figure 1: Distribution of Asian publications.
  • Figure 2: Continent diversity in accepted papers divided into two ranges of years (2012-2019) and (2020-2024).
  • Figure 3: Continent diversity in Committee Members divided into two ranges of years (2012-2019) and (2020-2024).
  • Figure 4: Program Committee vs. Accepted Papers—Continent Gap (2020–2024). Values are in percentage points (pp). Red indicates higher PC representation relative to accepted papers, blue indicates the opposite.
  • Figure 5: Papers with authors belonging to a big tech company vs papers with authors exclusively academic.