ICPC 2020 ERA

ICPC 2020 Early Research Achievement Track

The goal of the Early Research Achievements (ERA) track is to provide researchers and practitioners with a forum for presenting great, promising ideas in early stages of research. Ideally, the ICPC ERA track seeks papers challenging the status quo of program comprehension with new research directions and provocative ideas. ERA track is the perfect place for a paper that aims at setting the agenda for a new line of research and a series of future papers!

In principle, the track addresses the same topics of interest as those of the technical research paper track. ERA submissions are intended to describe a single and well-defined idea at an early stage of investigation. As opposed to regular research papers, ERA papers are not intended to serve as a vehicle for the dissemination of research results. Submissions to the ERA track should describe research in progress. Authors of contributions to other tracks are welcome to also submit a paper to the ERA track if a specific aspect of their research meets the goal of the track. Ideally, ERA authors will combine research topics in new ways, establish connections to other fields outside of classical program comprehension, as well as argue for the importance of program comprehension research in areas not explicitly listed.

The submissions should clearly focus on the new proposed ideas or the emerging results, their impact on the field at large, and future research directions. An ERA paper is not expected to have a solid and complete evaluation as in the main research track. Naturally, preliminary results that provide initial support for the proposed ideas claimed are welcome.

Format and Submission

ERA track submissions must not be longer than 4 pages for the main text, inclusive of figures, tables, and appendices where references may optionally continue on 1 additional page (a.k.a. 4+1 pages). Purchase of additional pages in the proceedings is not allowed. All ERA track submissions must, at the time of submission, conform to the ACM Master Article Template, indifferent of the type-setting system used (LaTeX, Word…). LaTeX users should use the provided class and bibliographic style without modification:

\documentclass[sigconf,review]{acmart}
\bibliographystyle{ACM-Reference-Format}

Submissions must be submitted electronically as PDF files via the HotCRP Submission System and must explicitly answer the following questions in the submission: What is the new idea? Why is it new? What is the single most related paper by the same author(s)? By others? What feedback do the authors expect from the forum? Addressing these questions in explicit, distinct sections is strongly recommended. The submissions must comply with the ACM Policy on Plagiarism, Misrepresentation, and Falsification and the IEEE Policy on Authorship, part of the IEEE Plagiarism FAQ. In particular, submissions to the ERA track must not have been accepted previously for publication or submitted for review to another conference, journal, or book while under review for ICPC. Submissions should not disclose the identity of the authors to comply with the double-blind review process employed by ICPC. The authors’ names must be omitted from the submissions and references to their prior work should be in the third person. Further advice, guidance, and explanation about the double-blind review process are available on the Q & A of ICSE 2020.

ICPC 2020 and the ERA track follow the ACM SIGSOFT rules on Conflicts of Interest and Confidentiality of Submissions and all authors, reviewers, and organizers will uphold the ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct.

Review and Evaluation Criteria

ERA papers will be reviewed by at least three members of the ERA Program Committee. Submissions will be evaluated on the basis of their originality, importance of contribution, soundness, evaluation, quality, and consistency of presentation, and appropriate comparison to related work. Special emphasis will be put on the originality and timeliness of the proposed contribution, and even though a full evaluation of the proposed ideas is welcomed, it is not required.

Publication and Presentation

Upon notification of acceptance, all authors of accepted papers will be asked to complete a Copyright form and 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. The papers will be presented in a formal setting. More details on the presentations will follow the notifications.

All accepted papers will be published in the conference electronic proceedings, which will also be available in the ACM and IEEE Digital Library. The official publication date is the date the proceedings are made available in the ACM or IEEE Digital Libraries. This date may be up to two weeks prior to the first day of ICSE 2020. The official publication date affects the deadline for any patent filings related to published work.

Track Chairs

Leon Moonen, Venera Arnaudova