New Ideas and Emerging ResultsSCAM 2024

Call for papers

Following the success of the previous editions of the New Ideas and Emerging Results (NIER) track at SCAM 2021-2023, the 24th IEEE International Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation (SCAM 2024) will again host a NIER track. This track aims to provide a place for researchers and practitioners to present, discuss, and polish early-stage research. This early-stage research should be innovative with the potential to make a strong future impact on the research or practice of software engineering. However, as it concerns early-stage research, the NIER track does not require submissions to have a strong evaluation. Instead, submissions should contain preliminary results that indicate the future potential of the research as well as a discussion of the challenges which must be overcome in the pursuit of the given research goals. These challenges should act as both future research directions as well as topics which the authors feel require discussion within the community. The topics of interest for this track are the same as for the main research track and are listed below.

Topics of Interest

We welcome the submission of papers that describe original, early-stage work in the field of source code analysis and manipulation. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• abstract interpretation
• bad smell detection
• bug location and prediction
• clone detection
• concern, concept, and feature localization and mining
• decompilation
• energy efficient source code
• natural language analysis of source code artifacts
• program comprehension
• program slicing
• program transformation and refactoring
• repository, revision, and change analysis
• security vulnerability analysis
• source level metrics
• source level optimization
• source-level testing and verification
• static and dynamic analysis

We explicitly solicit results from any theoretical or technological domain that can be applied to these and similar topics.

Submission guidelines

All submissions must be in English and should be submitted electronically in PDF format using EasyChair.

Submitted papers should describe original, unpublished, and significant work. These papers must not have been previously accepted for publication, nor be concurrently submitted for review in another journal, book, conference, or workshop.

The submissions must follow the rules of the double-blind reviewing process. Additionally:

• papers must not exceed 6 pages, including figures, tables, appendices, and references (the 6th page can be used for references only)
• papers must be marked as NIER track papers
• papers must conform to the IEEE proceedings paper format guidelines; templates in LaTeX and Word are available on IEEE’s website
• all submissions must be in English and should be submitted electronically in PDF format
• if the paper is accepted, at least one author must register for the conference and present the paper
• all authors, reviewers, and organizers are expected to uphold the IEEE Code of Conduct; failure to do so may lead to a (desk) rejection of the paper

Double-blind review

We follow a double-blind reviewing process. Submitted papers must adhere to the following rules:

• author names and affiliations must be omitted (the track co-chairs will check compliance before reviewing begins)
• references to authors’ own related work must be in the third person (for example, instead of writing “We build on our previous work…” you should write “We build on the work of…”)

If the program chairs find that the authors did not respect the rules of double-blind review, they can decide to (desk) reject the paper.

Paper evaluation

Submissions will be evaluated based on their originality, the importance of their contribution, the challenges highlighted, and their potential future significance. In addition, reviewers are asked to consider the soundness, overall quality, clarity and consistency of presentation, and whether the submission appropriately contextualizes itself with respect to related work. Again, the NIER track does not require a complete evaluation. Preliminary data and a discussion of the challenges and future research directions supported by this preliminary data are encouraged.

Artifact Evaluation

ICSME, VISSOFT, and SCAM have joined forces and present a single Artifact Evaluation Track for all three venues. We invite authors of papers of all lengths accepted to SCAM 2024 to submit artifacts associated with those papers for evaluation. Papers with artifacts that meet the review criteria will be awarded badges, noting their contributions to open science in SE.

More information on the Call for Papers of the Joint Artifact Evaluation Track will be available at the ICSME 2024 Joint Artifact Evaluation Track.

Proceedings

All accepted papers will appear in the SCAM 2024 proceedings, which will be available through the IEEE Digital Library.