Modularity '15

March 16-19, 2015

Fort Collins, Colorado, USA

Call for Papers - Modularity Visions track

Modularity properties are key determinants of quality in information systems, software, and system production processes. Modularity influences system diversity, dependability, performance, evolution, the structure and the dynamics of the organizations that produce systems, human understanding and management of systems, and ultimately system value.

Yet the nature of and possibilities for modularity, limits to modularity, the mechanisms needed to achieve it in given forms, and its costs and benefits remain poorly understood. Significant advances in modularity thus are possible and promise to yield breakthroughs in our ability to conceive, design, develop, validate, integrate, deploy, operate, and evolve modern information systems and their underlying software artifacts.

The Modularity Visions track of Modularity'15 is looking for papers presenting compelling insights into modularity in information systems, including its nature, forms, mechanisms, consequences, limits, costs, and benefits. Modularity Vision papers can also present proposals for future work. The scope of Modularity Visions is broad and open to submissions from all areas of computer science.

Modularity Visions papers must supply some degree of validation because mere speculation is not a good basis for progress. However, Modularity Visions accepts less rigorous methods of validation such as compelling arguments, exploratory implementations, and substantial examples. The use of worked-out prototypes to support new ideas is strongly encouraged.
 
Selection Process

Modularity Visions papers are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will appear in the Modularity'15 Proceedings in the ACM Digital Library. Submissions will be judged on the potential impact of the ideas and the quality of the presentation.
 
Modularity Visions will follow a two-phase review process. (Note that this process is different from the two-rounds process of the Research Results track.) The first reviewing phase assesses the papers using the criteria stated above and results in the selection of a subset of submissions that are either accepted as-is or deemed potentially acceptable. All other papers will be rejected in this phase.
 
Authors of potentially accepted papers will be requested to improve specific aspects of the papers in keeping with the assessment criteria and the nature of Modularity Visions. For example, the following represent some core improvement suggestions:

•  clarity of presentation and overall writing improvements to make the work more accessible,
•  making the presentation of the technical ideas crisper or more concrete,
•  making the argument sharper and more compelling, or
•  expanding or refining the ideas based on new input from the reviewers.

Authors will be given about two months to perform the revisions, after which a second submission will occur.
 
The second submission should reflect the revision requests sent to the authors. To that end, the second submission must be accompanied by a cover letter mapping each revision request to specific parts of the paper. The absence of this cover letter might form the basis for the paper's rejection.
 
The second and final reviewing phase assesses how the revision requests have been acted upon by the authors, and whether the final paper improves the original submission. Revisions that did not address the reviewers' requests or significantly lessen the quality of the paper may lead to the its rejection.

Important Dates

• Abstracts due: October 3, 2014
• Papers due: October 10, 2014
• First phase notification: December 7, 2014
• Invited revisions due: February 2, 2015
• Final notification: February 9, 2014
• Camera ready version due: February 15, 2015

 
Submission Guidelines

Modularity Visions submissions must conform to both the ACM Policy on Prior Publication and Simultaneous Submissions and the SIGPLAN Republication Policy.
 

Submissions should use the SIGPLAN Proceedings Format using 9 point font. Please include page numbers in your submission as this will be helpful for the reviewers and also for you when reading their reviews. (If your submission is written using LaTeX, please set the preprint option in the LaTeX \documentclass command to generate page numbers.) Please also ensure that your submission is legible when printed on a black and white printer. In particular, please check that colors remain distinct and font sizes are legible.
 
To ensure that papers stay focused on their core contributions, the main part of the paper should be no longer than 12 pages. There is no page limit for appendices, and, therefore, for the overall submission. If the paper is accepted, the final submission will be limited to 16 pages, including appendices.
 
It is the responsibility of the authors to keep the reviewers interested and motivated to read their submission. Reviewers are under no obligation to read all or even a substantial portion of a paper if they do not find the initial part of the paper compelling. The committee will not accept a paper if it is unclear that the paper will fit in the Modularity'14 Proceedings.
 
Program Committee Chair

Eelco Visser, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
 
Program Committee

Robert Hirschfeld, Hasso-Plattner-Institut

Gary T. Leavens, University of Central Florida

Sean McDirmid, Microsoft Research

Oscar Nierstrasz, University of Berne

James Noble, Victoria University of Wellington

Richard Page, University of York

Grigore Rosu, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Ina Schaefer, Braunschweig University of Technology

Tijs van der Storm, Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica

For More Information

For additional information, clarification, or answers to questions please contact the Program Committee Chair, Eelco Visser, at modularity-visions@aosd.net.