Association

In looking over the list of published works Nick Feamster has a large number of them appear in the Proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM. What is this?

ACM stands for the Association for Computing Machinery and according to their website is "the world's largest educational and scientific computing society" which "delivers resources that advance computing as a science and a profession. ACM provides the computing field's premier Digital Library and serves its members and the computing profession with leading-edge publications, conferences, and career resources."

ACM's web page on Rights and Responsibilities does a good job describing the expectations that readers, authors, reviewers, editors, program chairs and committees, and even libraries have of (and from) each other. This page describes what everyone can expect in ACM's publication process, a confidential review process.

What about the SIGCOMM part?

SIGCOMM is one of the many special interest groups that make up ACM. "ACM's special interest groups off er a wealth of conferences, publications, and activities on the local to global scale, providing unlimited opportunities for sharing technical expertise and first-hand knowledge of the latest development trends."
In this case SIGCOMM is the Special Interest Group on Data Communication which includes the areas of network research, standards, and history.

So with Nick's work being primarily in the network area it makes sense that his group's work appears mostly within SIGCOMM. However since the field is so interconnected there is no doubt that they are keeping up with the proceedings of other groups.