Call for Papers
Scope
The Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming accepts papers that advance knowledge of programming. Almost anything about programming is in scope, but in each case there should be a clear relevance to the act and experience of programming. Additionally, papers must be written in a scholarly form. Scholarly works are those that describe ideas in the context of other ideas that are already known, so to contribute to the systematic and long-standing chaining of knowledge. Papers that fail to properly contextualize the work will not be considered.
We accept descriptions of work under different perspectives:
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Art: knowledge and technical skills acquired through practice and personal experiences. Examples include libraries, frameworks, languages, APIs, programming models and styles, programming pearls, and essays about programming.
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Science (Theoretical): knowledge and technical skills acquired through mathematical formalisms. Examples include formal programming models and proofs.
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Science (Empirical): knowledge and technical skills acquired through experiments and systematic observations. Examples include user studies and programming-related data mining.
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Engineering: knowledge and technical skills acquired through designing and building large systems and through calculated application of principles in building those systems. Examples include measurements of artifacts’ properties, development processes and tools, and quality assurance methods.
Independent of the type of work, the journal accepts submissions covering several areas of expertise, including but not limited to:
- General-purpose programming
- Distributed systems programming
- Parallel and multi-core programming
- Graphics and GPU programming
- Security programming
- User interface programming
- Database programming
- Visual and live programming
- Data mining and machine learning programming, and for programming
- Interpreters, virtual machines, and compilers
- Modularity and separation of concerns
- Model-based development
- Metaprogramming and reflection
- Testing and debugging
- Program verification
- Programming education
- Programming environments
- Social coding
Upon submission, authors are requested to state what type of paper they are submitting and what areas of expertise are covered by the paper. These two classifications, combined, are used to select reviewers and to apply suitable assessment criteria for the papers. They are not used beyond that purpose. Misclassification by the authors may lead to negative assessments from reviewers.
Paper Selection
The following criteria are used when evaluating submitted papers:
- Novelty and Importance: The paper presents new insights or results, and contributes significantly to the advancement, analysis, or synthesis of knowledge in the field.
- Scholarship and Clarity: The paper places its ideas and results appropriately and clearly within the context established by previous research in the field.
More specific criteria for assessing papers depends on the type of the paper:
- Papers submitted as “The Art” should include a very solid contextualization of the work, and, when applicable, they should include the artifacts themselves.
- Papers submitted as “Science” should describe the methods or formalisms in detail, as well as any data and scripts used to analyze it.
- Papers submitted as “Engineering” should present the methods in detail, unveil results that are clearly better than some accepted baseline, and include the artifacts used to reach the conclusions.
Artifacts are recommended, but not required, for the initial submission. Depending on the papers, reviewers may take the existence of artifacts as a positive signal about the work. Also depending on the papers, artifacts may be required as a condition for publication.
Reviewing and Selection Process
There are two rounds of review. The first round assesses the papers according to the quality criteria stated above, and results in the selection of a subset of submissions that are either accepted as-is or are deemed potentially acceptable. All other papers are rejected. Authors of potentially acceptable papers are requested to improve specific aspects of the research and the paper. Authors are given a specified period of time to perform the revisions and re-submit the paper. During the second and final reviewing round, the same reviewers assess how well the revision requests have been addressed by the authors, and whether the final paper maintains or improves the level of contribution of the original submission. Revisions that significantly lessen the contribution of the work or that fail to adequately address the reviewers’ original concerns will result in the paper’s rejection.
Papers rejected in either the first or second phases may be resubmitted one more time to the journal. The resubmission will be treated as a new submission, and the paper may be assigned to new reviewers. After a second rejection, subsequent submissions of the same paper will be desk-rejected.
Reviews are solicited from an external Review Committee; at least three reviews are sought for each submission that undergoes full review. Responsibility for the final decision rests with the Associate Editors.
Artifact Evaluation
The journal offers an artifact evaluation process, allowing authors of accepted papers (including accepted subject to minor revisions) to submit results of any form (for example implementations, data, analysis results). Three badges are available, based on the ACM Artifact Review and Badging badges: available, functional, and reusable. Artifacts of accepted articles will be published and archived alongside their articles via Zenodo as part of the Zenodo Programming community. Articles will include references to their artifacts and artifacts references to the corresponding articles. The artifact evaluation submission and reviewing schedule is aligned with that of paper submissions.
For details see the Artifact Evaluation page.
