The goal of the Emerging Researchers’ Forum (ERF) at TechDebt is to inspire and bring together emerging researchers in the field of Technical Debt. The ERF provides a place for discussing ongoing and potential research at any stage, from ideas to results. The TechDebt ERF offers a friendly environment for emerging researchers (students and recent graduates) to get feedback on their work, exchange experiences, ask questions, and propose research visions and themes. Furthermore, the ERF stimulates interactions between emerging researchers and experienced researchers.

Call for Papers

Goal

The goal of the Emerging Researchers’ Forum (ERF) at TechDebt is to inspire and bring together emerging researchers in the field of Technical Debt. The ERF provides a place for discussing ongoing and potential research at any stage, from ideas to results. The TechDebt ERF offers a friendly environment for emerging researchers (students and recent graduates) to get feedback on their work, exchange experiences, ask questions, and propose research visions and themes. Furthermore, the ERF stimulates interactions between emerging researchers and experienced researchers.

Participation

Participation is open to research students (undergraduate research students, masters (research) students, PhD students) and those within the first two years after obtaining their PhD. The participation will help researchers improve their visibility among researchers, experts, and industry professionals in the field, offering valuable exposure and recognition for their work in addition to providing opportunities for feedback and collaboration. The participating researcher will engage with fellow researchers, potential collaborators, and mentors, fostering connections that can shape the trajectory of their academic journey.

Topics

Topics of interest include all aspects of the TechDebt conference.

Publication and presentation

All accepted submissions will be included in the conference proceedings. The accepted submissions’ authors will be invited to present their work at the TechDebt main conference.

Types of submissions

The ERF accepts multi-author submissions, but the first author must be the Emerging Researcher.

There are three ways of contributing to the ERF:

• Ongoing research papers (4 pages) presenting previously unpublished motivations, goals, preliminary results, and potential industrial impact of ongoing research
• Research abstracts (2 pages) outlining unpublished outcomes of ongoing research
• Research vision (4 pages) outlining unpublished proposed research theme building upon the researcher’s own previous work highlighting potential impact. A research theme is a collection of interconnected projects toward a potentially impactful goal.

All submissions will undergo a peer-review process, ensuring the selection of high-quality contributions. Evaluation criteria include relevance, novelty, soundness, potential impact, and presentation quality.

Submission process

Papers must be submitted electronically via the TechDebt 2024 ERF HotCRP site (https://techdebt2024erf.hotcrp.com/). The paper format of TechDebt2024 must follow the ACM formatting guidelines, see also http://www.acm.org/publications/proceedings-template for both Latex and Word users. LaTEX users must use the provided acmart.cls and ACM-Reference-Format.bst without modification, enable the conference format in the preamble of the document (i.e., \documentclass[sigconf,review,anonymous]{acmart}), and use the ACM reference format for the bibliography (i.e., \bibliographystyle{ACM-Reference-Format}). To that end, the following LaTeX code can be placed at the start of the LaTeX document: \documentclass[sigconf,review,anonymous]{acmart} and \acmConference[TechDebt 2024]{7th International Conference on Technical Debt}{April 14--15, 2024}{Lisbon, Portugal}.

Accepted papers and attendance expectation

The official publication date is the date the proceedings are made available in the ACM Digital Library. This date may be up to two weeks prior to the first day of ICSE 2024. The official publication date affects the deadline for any patent filings related to published work. After acceptance, the list of paper authors cannot be changed under any circumstances, and the list of authors on camera-ready papers must be identical to those on submitted papers. After acceptance, paper titles can not be changed except by permission of the Program Co-Chairs, and only then when referees recommend a change for clarity or accuracy with paper content.

If a submission is accepted, the first author (i.e., the Emerging Researcher) of the paper is required to register for TechDebt 2024 and present the paper.

Important Dates

• Submission Deadline: November 17, 2023
• Notification of Acceptance: January 10, 2024
• Camera-ready: January 28, 2024