| title | Computer Science Conferences Should Require Nonrepudiable Experimental Results |
|---|---|
| authors | Mamadou K. Keita, Christopher Homan |
| date | 2026-05-09 |
| venue | arXiv (preprint, not peer reviewed) |
| id | arXiv:2605.08586 |
| links | abs pdf hf |
| abstract | This position paper argues that computer science conferences should require tamper-evident, nonrepudiable attestations of experimental results. We name the underlying problem experiment nonrepudiation: a compliant protocol must bind the numbers in a paper to an actual executed computation in a way the author cannot later alter or deny. The current system relies on self-reported checklists, optional code sharing, and author-controlled logging. None of these mechanisms answer the question a reviewer cannot check: did the code the paper describes produce the numbers the paper reports? We define the problem formally, state the security properties any compliant protocol must satisfy, and describe a threat model that includes attacks current approaches do not prevent. To show that the problem is solvable, we built K-Veritas, a reference implementation in Go that produces signed reports without accessing training data. K-Veritas is a testbed, not a finished answer. We call on conferences and the community to treat nonrepudiation as a first-class requirement and to help build an open, independent standard for it. |
cite
@misc{keita2026computer,
title={Computer Science Conferences Should Require Nonrepudiable Experimental Results},
author={Mamadou K. Keita and Christopher Homan},
year={2026},
eprint={2605.08586},
archivePrefix={arXiv},
url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.08586}
}