Negative ResultsICPC 2019

Accepted Papers

Negative Results Track

The IEEE/ACM International Conference on Program Comprehension (ICPC) would like to encourage the submission of articles reporting important and relevant negative results of research studies in the field of program comprehension.

We seek negative results for all types of program comprehension research areas (cognitive theories, visualization tools, comprehension of specific types of software systems, comprehension in the context of diverse software process models, etc.). Negative results are important contributions to scientific knowledge because they allow us to constantly evaluate our hypothesis space and understanding of the current approaches. As Walter Tichy writes, “Negative results, if trustworthy, are extremely important for narrowing down the search space. They eliminate useless hypotheses and thus reorient and speed up the search for better approaches.”

Format and Submission

We solicit regular and short papers. Regular papers must not be longer than 10 pages for the main text, inclusive of figures, tables, appendices; references only may be included on up to 2 additional pages. Short papers must not be longer than 4 pages for the main text and 2 additional pages for references. The submission must conform to the IEEE Conference Proceedings Formatting Guidelines (title in 24pt font and full text in 10pt type, LaTEX users must use \documentclass[10pt,conference]{IEEEtran} without including the compsoc or compsocconf option).

The submission must also comply with the ACM plagiarism policy and procedures. In particular, it must not have been published elsewhere and must not be under review elsewhere while under review for ICPC. The submission must also comply with the IEEE Policy on Authorship.

All submissions must be in PDF format and must be submitted online via the ICPC 2019 EasyChair conference management system.

Review and Evaluation Criteria

Negative Results research papers will be reviewed by at least three members of the Program Committee. Submissions will be evaluated on the basis of importance and quality of contribution, study methodology, depth of the discussion on the implications of the negative results, amount of useful and actionable insights, and clarity of the presentation.

ICPC 2019 Negative Results track will employ a double-blind review process. This means that the submissions should by no means disclose the identity of the authors. The authors must make every effort to honor the double-blind review process. In particular, the authors’ names must be omitted from the submission and references to their prior work should be in the third person.

Further advice, guidance and explanation about the double-blind review process can be found in the Q&A page.

ICPC 2019 Negative Results track will follow the ACM SIGSOFT rules on Conflicts of Interest and Confidentiality of Submissions, and all authors, reviewers, organizers are expected to uphold the ACM Code of Conduct.

Publication and Presentation

Upon notification of acceptance, all authors of accepted papers will receive further instructions for preparing their camera-ready versions. At least one author of the paper must register and present the paper at the conference; otherwise the paper will be excluded from both the program and the proceedings. All accepted papers will be published in the conference electronic proceedings, which will also be available in the ACM Digital Library. Purchase of additional pages in the proceedings is not allowed.

The papers will be presented in a formal setting. More details on the presentations will follow the notifications.