Research PapersICT4S 2023

The International Conference on Information and Communications Technology for Sustainability (ICT4S) is the premier international conference aiming at bringing together leading researchers in ICT for Sustainability with government, industry and community representatives, including decision-makers and end-users with an interest in using ICT for sustainability, as well as artists and researchers focusing on ICT effects on sustainability and developers of sustainable ICT systems or applications. ICT4S is devoted to covering all types of research, developments and applications of ICT to support sustainability. In this context, there are still numerous problems to be addressed that require collaborative research across multiple disciplines.

Accepted Papers

Call for Papers

To provide a broader forum for reporting on scientific progress as well as practical experiences on ICT for sustainability, ICT4S 2023 invites research paper submissions that range from well-founded technical papers, to exploratory, empirical and application papers. We welcome original papers reporting on research, development, case studies, and experience and empirical reports in the field of ICT4S. The following type of papers are possible:

• Technical Papers describe original scientifically rigorous solutions to significant sustainability development problems. A technical paper should clearly describe the problem addressed, the relevant state of the art, the scientifically-founded solution, and the impact and benefits of the contribution. Appropriate examples, synthetic or otherwise, should be used to explain all aspects of the contribution.
• Exploratory papers describe new, non-conventional ICT for sustainability development research positions or approaches. These papers should challenge the status-quo and describe vision solutions based on new ways of using ICT for the development of sustainable systems, tools, methods, and environments. They must clearly describe the inadequacies in the current state-of-the-art and rigorously present their approach, clearly demonstrating and discussing its pertinence, correctness, and significance.
• Application papers provide a realistic and verifiable picture of the current state-of-the-practice in ICT for sustainability and explore the problems encountered by the industrial, community, or other adoption of sustainability techniques. Contributions should describe and analyze the application of ICT for sustainability techniques to industrial problems, preferably identifying challenges, shortcomings, innovative solutions, and concepts arising from the practical deployment of tools and techniques.
• Empirical Evaluation papers evaluate existing problem cases or scientifically validate proposed solutions through, for example, empirical studies, experiments, case studies, or simulations. The topic of the evaluation presented in the paper must be clearly stated and motivated. The research method must be sound and appropriate. The results must highlight the advances found, but also the current gaps and challenges.

Evaluation Process and Selection Criteria

ICT4S 2023 will follow a double-blind review process for the Research Papers track.

All submitted papers will be reviewed by three members of the program committee. Papers will be evaluated (in accordance with their type) based on their novelty, significance, soundness, reproducibility, evaluation, quality of presentation and appropriate comparison to related work, and general presentation of the overall contribution. Since the ICT4S conference is also a place where researchers and practitioners can exchange personal perspectives on values and impact, particular attention will be given to the explicit description and the significance of how the work has or would positively impact any aspect of sustainability of the environment, society, or economy.

Topics of interest

ICT4S 2023 seeks submissions to the Research Papers track on diverse topics related to ICT for sustainability, including, but not limited to:

• Sustainable community building via ICT
• Potential of ICT for economic growth and decentralization
• Green E-Commerce, sustainable online-shopping
• Digital Sufficiency / Digital Sobriety
• ICT and circular economy / circular society
• Sustainability-driven resilience by and of ICT
• Social sustainability implications, contributions and limitations of ICT
• Enabling and systemic effects of ICT on society and/or the environment
• Smart cyber-physical systems (grids, city, home, farming)
• Sustainability in data centers and high-performance computing
• Green networking, monitoring and adaptation of software-intensive systems and services
• ICT-induced behavioral and societal change
• Design principles for sustainable ICT
• Sustainable software engineering
• Sustainability of technical infrastructures
• Software for sustainable business governance
• Reduced hardware obsolescence
• Incentives and nudges for more sustainable ICT
• Challenges for an environmentally sustainable ICT industry
• Art and education in ICT for sustainability
• Systematic interdisciplinary efforts in ICT for sustainability
• Computational sustainability
• Climate informatics
• Blockchain and Sustainability
• Cloud and sustainability
• Smart and Sustainability
• FinTech and Sustainability
• IST sustainability and SDGs
• Agile & Sustainability

Submission Process

Papers should be submitted electronically via EasyChair.

Select the “[ICT4S’23] Research Track" and submit your abstract prior to the full paper by the deadline stated, to allow their allocation to reviewers. Papers should be submitted in IEEE conference proceedings format. Each paper is limited to 10 pages including the main text, figures, tables, and appendices. Two more pages containing only references are permitted. Papers that are too long or violate the formatting instructions will be automatically rejected. All submissions must be original, unpublished, and not submitted simultaneously for publication elsewhere.

At least one author of each accepted Research Track paper is expected to register for the conference. Registered authors of accepted Research Track papers will be allocated a slot during the conference to present their work. Presented Research Track papers will be published in the conference proceedings.

ICT4S 2023 will have the proceedings published by Conference Publishing Services (CPS). Accepted submissions will be submitted to IEEE Xplore and the IEEE Computer Society Digital Library. Content will be submitted to the indexing companies for possible indexing. Indexing services are independent organizations, and CPS cannot guarantee that any particular abstract or index entry will be included in Ei Compendex or any other indexing service.

The ICT4S 2023 Research Papers track will use a double-blind reviewing process. The goal of double-blind reviewing is to ensure that the reviewers can read and review your paper without having to know who any of the authors are, and hence avoid related bias. Of course, authors are allowed and encouraged to submit papers that build on their previously published work.

In order to prepare your submission for double-blind reviewing, please follow the instructions given below.

1. Omit all names and affiliations of authors from the title page, but keep sufficient space to re-introduce them in the final version should the paper be accepted.

2. Do not include any acknowledgements that might disclose your identity. Leave space in your submission to add such acknowledgements when the paper has been accepted.

3. Refer to your own work in the third person, as you would normally do with the work of others. You should not change the names of your own tools, approaches, or systems, since this would clearly compromise the review process; it would also violate the constraint that “no change is made to any technical details of the work”. Instead, refer to the authorship or provenance of tools, approaches, or systems in the third person, so that it is credible that another author could have written your paper. In particular, never blind references.

4. Adhere to instruction 3 when citing previously published own work.

5. Remove identification metadata from the PDF file before submission (in Adobe Acrobat Reader, you can check their presence with File Properties, or Ctrl-D).

Review criteria:

• Technical papers (10 pages incl. references*) describe original scientifically rigorous solutions to significant sustainability development problems. A technical paper should clearly describe the problem addressed, the relevant state of the art, the scientifically-founded solution, and the impact and benefits of the contribution. Appropriate examples, synthetic or otherwise, should be used to explain all aspects of the contribution. Review Criteria (in order of relevance):

  • Novelty: to what extent is the proposed solution novel with respect to the state-of-the-art? To what extent is related literature considered? To what extent did the authors clarify their contribution?

  • Potential Impact: is the potential impact on research and practice clearly stated? Is the potential impact convincing? Has the proposed solution been preliminarily evaluated in a representative setting?

  • Soundness: has the novel solution been developed according to recognised research methods? Is the preliminary evaluation of the solution sound? Did the authors clearly state the research questions? Are the conclusions of the preliminary evaluation logically derived from the data? Did the authors discuss the limitations of the proposal?

  • Verifiability: did the authors share their software? Did the authors share their data? Did the authors provide guidelines on how to reuse their artifacts and replicate their results? [NOTE: sharing data and software is NOT mandatory, but papers that make an effort in this direction should be adequately rewarded]

  • Presentation: is the paper clearly presented? To what extent can the content of the paper be understood by the general community public? If highly technical content is presented, did the authors make an effort to also summarizse their proposal in an intuitive way?

• Empirical evaluation papers (10 pages incl. references) evaluate existing problem cases or scientifically validate proposed solutions through, for example, empirical studies, experiments, case studies, or simulations. The topic of the evaluation presented in the paper must be clearly stated and motivated. The research method must be sound and appropriate. The results must highlight the advances found, but also the current gaps and challenges. Check the Empirical Standards for guidelines and review criteria for each research strategy: https://github.com/acmsigsoft/EmpiricalStandards Review Criteria (in order of relevance):

  • Soundness: has the novel solution been developed according to recognised research methods? Is the research method justified? Is the research method adequate for the problem at hand? Did the authors clearly state the research questions, data collection, and analysis? Are the conclusions of the evaluation logically derived from the data? Did the authors discuss the threats to validity?

  • Potential Impact: is the potential impact on research and practice clearly stated? Is the potential impact convincing? Was the study carried out in a representative setting?

  • Verifiability: did the authors share their software? Did the authors share their data? Did the authors provide guidelines on how to reuse their artifacts and replicate their results? [NOTE: sharing data and software is NOT mandatory, but papers that make an effort in this direction should be adequately rewarded]

  • Novelty: to what extent is the study novel with respect to the related literature? To what extent is related literature considered? To what extent did the authors clarify their contribution? To what extent does the study contribute to extending the body of knowledge in requirements engineering?

  • Presentation: is the paper clearly presented? To what extent can the content of the paper be understood by the general community? If highly technical content is presented, did the authors make an effort to also summarize their study in an intuitive way?

• Application papers (10 pages incl. references) Application papers provide a realistic and verifiable picture of the current state-of-the-practice in ICT for sustainability and explore the problems encountered by the industrial, community, or other adoption of sustainability techniques. Review Criteria (in order of relevance):

  • Relevance of the Application: is the application context in which the experience is carried out interesting for the community? Is the application context sufficiently representative? To what extent is the paper reporting a real-world experience involving practitioners? Is the experience credible?

  • Relevance of Lessons Learned: are the lessons learned sufficiently insightful? Did the authors report convincing evidence, also anecdotal, to justify the lessons learned?

  • Potential for Discussion: will the presentation of the paper raise discussion at the conference? To what extent can participants take inspiration to develop novel solutions based on the reported experience? To what extent can participants take inspiration to perform sound empirical evaluations based on the reported experience?

  • Novelty: is the context of the study in line with the current practice? Does the study report on a contemporary problem that practitioners and researchers typically face?

  • Presentation: is the application context clearly presented? Are the lessons learned clearly described? To what extent can the content of the paper be understood by the general public?

• Exploratory papers (10 pages incl. references) describe new, non-conventional ICT for sustainability development research positions or approaches. These papers should challenge the status-quo and describe vision solutions based on new ways of using ICT for the development of sustainable systems, tools, methods and environments. They must clearly describe the inadequacies in the current state-of-the-art and rigorously present their approach, clearly demonstrating and discussing its pertinence, correctness and significance. Review Criteria (in order of relevance):

  • Potential Impact: will the vision impact the future research and practice? Is a roadmap discussed? Is the vision sufficiently broad to affect different subfields? Do the authors discuss both short-term and long-term impacts of their vision?

  • Potential for Discussion: will the presentation of the vision raise the interest of the audience? Will the vision raise discussion? Can the vision raise controversial opinions in the audience?

  • Novelty: is the vision sufficiently novel with respect to existing reflections within the community? Do the authors clarify the novelty of their vision?

  • Soundness of Arguments: is the vision supported by logical arguments? Are the implications convincing?

  • Presentation: is the vision presented in a compelling way? Is the vision presented in a way that can elicit reflections in the community?

ICT4S’23 Instructions for presenters & session chairs

ICT4S strives to be an inclusive environment where we encourage an open conversation between disciplines. We appreciate the different perspectives that your contributions bring.

Session format
In each of the six research session of the program, there will be four presentations. A session chair will introduce your talk and keep an eye on the time. Each presentation has assigned 10 minutes plus 5 minutes questions and answers. After the four presentations, the last 30 minutes are in a panel where the session chair moderates a conversation with all presenters and the audience on the connections in between the presentations.

Suggestions for your presentation

1. Make it memorable: There is a great program with many interesting talks, so if you want us to remember what you spoke about, choose a memorable title and summarise one or two main messages at the end.
2. Make it accessible: Slides with good visuals engage the audience, and large text makes it easier to follow. Also, you may share your preprint as link on https://conf.researchr.org/program/ict4s-2023/program-ict4s-2023/
3. Make it pleasant: Breathe slowly and deeply before to relax, maybe warm up your voice, maybe put a smile on your face and remember we are here to listen to you and learn from you.

Suggested preparation for the panel part

1. Think about how your research ties in with the other presentations in the same session and what larger questions come from that.
2. You are welcome to bring questions to the audience related to the session topic.