Five decades of the ACM special interest group on data communications (SIGCOMM): a bibliometric perspective

The ACM Special Interest Group on Data Communications (SIGCOMM) has been a major research forum for fifty years. This community has had a major impact on the history of the Internet, and therefore we argue its exploration may reveal fundamental insights into the evolution of networking technologies around the globe. Hence, on the 50th anniversary of SIGCOMM, we take this opportunity to reflect upon its progress and achievements, through the lens of its various publication outlets, e.g., the SIGCOMM conference, IMC, CoNEXT, HotNets. Our analysis takes several perspectives, looking at authors, countries, institutes and papers. We explore trends in co-authorship, country-based productivity, and knowledge flow to and from SIGCOMM venues using bibliometric techniques. We hope this study will serve as a valuable resource for the computer networking community.