OFC Technical Submissions

OFC

The goal of the OFC technical program is to facilitate the dissemination of the latest information in the field of fiber optic communications and related technologies. Topics cover a wide range of areas and include materials, devices, systems, networks and applications. OFC also solicits papers on subjects related to fiber optic communication that have a significant overlap in technology, such as fiber sensors, fiber lasers, optical signal processing and free-space communications. To maintain the technical and geographical diversity that OFC attendees have come to expect, we seek submissions from around the world and from industry as well as academia. Authors with new techniques or devices that represent first-rate discoveries are encouraged to submit their work even if it has not yet been fully implemented or exhaustively characterized.

The difference between OFC and NFOEC

At first sight, many of the topics covered at OFC and NFOEC appear to overlap (for example, both conferences solicit papers on devices, systems, networks and applications). However, OFC and NFOEC focus on these topics from the different perspectives associated with different audiences with different timescales.

When submitting papers to the OFC/NFOEC conference, it is important to recognize the following:

OFC provides feedback to the R&D community with a longer-term relevance. This means that submissions to OFC should focus on fundamental and evolving topics that one would expect to take a few years before becoming commercially viable.
NFOEC provides feedback to the network operator community with a shorter-term relevance. This means that submissions to NFOEC should focus on the immediate needs of engineering and operating a network, where commercial concerns are of high importance.

All submissions are judged based on a variety of criteria including: originality, technical content, relationship to other published work, degree of applicability, accuracy, perceived degree of interest, supporting evidence for claims, degree of disclosure of related information, clarity and sufficient progress in the field. Each paper should contain a brief statement (35-word abstract) describing how the work relates to current activity in the field. Putting the work in context is especially important for incremental advances in mature fields. Authors are discouraged from submitting papers that are little more than product announcements with minimal technical detail.

Claims of performance should be well documented and will be judged on how well they compare with accepted norms. For example, a paper reporting a "Terabit" system should include convincing evidence that all 10- and/or 40-Gb/s channels (or tributaries) meet the specified performance target, rather than claims based on the performance of a few selected channels. Measurement conditions that affect performance should be fully specified, for example, pseudorandom pattern length.

We recognize that recent technological advancement, improvements in understanding, and the overall maturity of optical fiber communications has led to increased expectations for OFC papers. In an effort to meet these expectations, the technical committees will closely examine the correlation between what is claimed, what is convincing, and what is demonstrated in submitted papers. The task of fairly weighing all these merits is the responsibility of the members of the OFC 2008 Technical Program Committee who have been selected for their expertise and leadership in their respected fields and their willingness to dedicate their time to ensure the quality of the accepted papers.

Authors are reminded that related technical information should be approved for public distribution by all controlling organizations. OFC is a public forum for the exchange of information. For all reasonable questions (including technical detail), presenters are encouraged to have answers approved for distribution prior to the presentation. Authors not interested in properly discussing their work with attendees in a conference setting are encouraged to submit their work to journals.

Papers accepted for presentation during the technical sessions of the 2008 Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exposition should be considered archival and may be cited in other publications. As the 2008 OFC/NFOEC Technical Digest CD-ROM is an archival publication, papers appearing in the Technical Digest CD-ROM may not appear in other publications or journals.

Please keep these considerations in mind while preparing manuscripts and presentation material for the OFC 2008 Technical Program.

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