SOUPS 2025: Call for Papers

The Twenty-First Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS 2025) will take place from August 10–12, 2025, at the Seattle Convention Center in Seattle, WA, USA. SOUPS 2025 is co-located with the 34th USENIX Security Symposium.

Overview

The symposium brings together an interdisciplinary group of researchers and practitioners in human computer interaction, security, and privacy. The program will feature technical papers, workshops, tutorials, a poster session, and lightning talks.

Important Dates

All dates are at 23:59 AoE (Anywhere on Earth) time. These are firm deadlines; no extensions will be granted.

• Mandatory Paper Registration Deadline: Thursday, February 6, 2025
• Paper Submission Deadline: Thursday, February 13, 2025
• Early Rejection Notification: Thursday, March 20, 2025
• Author Response Period: Thursday, April 17–Thursday, April 24, 2025
• Paper Notifications: Monday, May 12, 2025
• Final Papers Files Due: Monday, June 9, 2025

Technical Papers

We invite authors to submit previously unpublished papers describing research or experience in all areas of usable privacy and security. We welcome a variety of research methods, including both qualitative and quantitative approaches.

Topics Include (but are not limited to):

• Innovative security or privacy functionality and design
• Field studies of security or privacy technology
• Usability evaluations of new or existing security or privacy features
• Security testing of new or existing usability features
• Longitudinal studies of deployed security or privacy features
• Studies of administrators or developers and support for security and privacy
• Organizational policy or procurement decisions and their impact on security and privacy
• Lessons learned from the deployment and use of usable privacy and security features
• Foundational principles of usable security or privacy
• Ethical, psychological, sociological, or anthropological aspects of usable security and privacy
• Usable security and privacy implications/solutions for specific domains (e.g., IoT, medical, vulnerable populations)
• Replicating or extending important previously published studies and experiments
• Systematization of knowledge papers that integrate and systematize existing knowledge to provide new insight into a previously studied area

Paper Registration and Submission

• Paper Registration: Mandatory for all papers by February 6, 2025. Registering a paper requires filling out all fields of the online form. Placeholder, incomplete, or inaccurate titles and abstracts may result in rejection without review.
• Paper Submission: Upload as PDFs by February 13, 2025. Download Call for Papers PDF
• Submission System: https://soups2025.usenix.hotcrp.com/

Format and Page Limits

• Template: Use the SOUPS formatting template (available for MS Word or LaTeX).
• Submission Format: PDF.
• Page Limit: No more than 12 pages for the main body (excluding acknowledgments, bibliography, and appendices). Brevity is appreciated.
• Appendices: Allowed for supplementary material, but reviewers are not required to read them. Accepted papers will be published online with their appendices.
• Final Camera-Ready Limit: 12 pages (excluding acknowledgments, bibliography, and appendices) and a total of 20 pages including references and appendices.

Paper Content Requirements

• Papers must describe the purpose and goals of the work.
• Cite related work.
• Show how the work effectively integrates usability or human factors with security or privacy.
• Clearly indicate innovative aspects, lessons learned, and contributions to the field.
• Abstracts should contain a sentence summarizing the contribution.
• All submissions must clearly relate to the human aspects of security or privacy. Papers on security or privacy without usability or human factors, or vice versa, will not be considered.

Special Paper Types

• Systematization of Knowledge (SoK) Papers: Prefix the title with "SoK:" and check the SoK checkbox on the submission form. These papers should integrate and systematize existing knowledge to provide new insight.
• Replication Papers: Prefix the title with "Replication:". These papers should aim to replicate important or influential findings, clearly stating the rationale, methodological differences, and comparing findings.

Anonymous Submission

• Reviewing is anonymous. Do not include names or affiliations on the title page or in the body of the paper. Remove acknowledgments and avoid revealing author identities in the text, PDF metadata, appendices, or figures (e.g., logos, contact info, identifying URLs).
• References to your own work should be in the third person.
• Submissions that violate anonymity requirements may be rejected without review.

Overlap with Previous Papers

• USENIX policy prohibits simultaneous submission of the same work to multiple venues, submission of previously published work, and plagiarism.
• SOUPS further prohibits the submission of substantially similar work to multiple venues. Document any overlap in an explanatory note sent to the chairs.
• Technical reports (e.g., arXiv) are exempt.
• Self-plagiarism (verbatim reuse of one's own published work without citation) is generally not acceptable. Rewriting is preferred.

Conflicts of Interest

Authors must identify any potential conflicts of interest with program committee members according to the provided definition (e.g., shared affiliation, advisor/advisee, collaboration, close personal relationship).

Ethical Research

• User studies should adhere to ethical principles (beneficence, minimal risk, voluntary consent, respect for privacy, limited deception).
• Papers are expected to discuss ethical considerations. Institutional clearance for research with human subjects may be required.

Early Rejections and Appeals

Papers with substantially negative initial reviews may be rejected early. Authors of such papers will receive initial reviews and have the option to appeal concrete disagreements with the reviews.

Response Period

Authors will have a short period (April 17–24, 2025) to provide a response to reviews, which will be considered in subsequent discussions.

Presentation Requirements

At least one author of an accepted paper must attend the conference and present the work. Remote presentations are permissible with permission from the PC Co-Chairs.

Contact Information

• Program Chairs: soups25chairs@usenix.org

Grant Opportunities

• Application Deadline: Monday, July 7, 2025

Workshops

See the Call for Workshops Submissions page for details on workshops held on Sunday, August 10:

• Workshop on Societal and User-Centered Privacy in AI (SUPA 2025)
• Workshop on Developing Research Transparency Guidelines in Human-Centered Privacy and Security
• 2nd Gender, Online Safety, and Sexuality Workshop (GOSS 2025)
• 4th Annual Workshop on Privacy Threat Modeling