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Artifacts Track – Call for Papers

Goal and Scope

    The ICSME 2017 artifacts track exists to promote, celebrate, and catalog excellent examples of research artifacts in software engineering. These artifacts are reusable units of research that can be used to support other research endeavors.

    For examples of research artifacts, please review the ICSME 2016 Artifacts Tutorial. Please also review the (non-exhaustive) list of known research artifact types. For artifacts that are executable tools, please consider submitting to the ICSME 2017 tool demonstrations track.

    ICSME 2017 allows two types of artifact submissions.

    Evaluation artifacts: For artifacts related to a research track paper accepted at ICSME 2017. Authors of accepted artifacts of this type will enjoy the following benefits:

  • A virtual award plaque (badge) displayed on the first page of the associated paper
  • Recognition on the conference website
  • One additional proceedings page for the associated paper, to be used to describe the artifact
  • The opportunity to present the artifact in a dedicated artifacts session at the conference (in addition to the usual presentation for the associated paper)

    Independent artifacts: For artifacts related to a paper published previously or unrelated to any paper published so far. Authors of accepted artifacts of this type will enjoy the following benefits:

  • A one-page paper in the proceedings describing the artifact
  • The opportunity to present the artifact in a dedicated artifacts session at the conference (in addition to the usual presentation for the associated paper)

    Both types of submissions have the same submission instructions and packaging guidelines and will be evaluated by the same PC using the same evaluation criteria.

Evaluation

    All submissions that meet the submission criteria (see below), fit the scope of the conference, and comply with the IEEE plagiarism policy and procedures will be reviewed by three members of the artifacts track program committee. Submissions will be evaluated as accepted or rejected.

    Artifacts will be scored using the following scorecard:

    Insightful

  1. Timely (i.e., addresses a problem that is most current and most pressing)?
  2. Makes researchers "smarter" in some way (e.g., identifies and fills some significant gap in prior work)?

    Useful

  1. Serves a useful purpose?
  2. Serves a purpose that would otherwise be tedious, prolonged, awkward, or impossible?
  3. Cost-effective?

    Usable

  • Easy to understand?
  • Accompanied by tutorial notes?
  • Artifacts need not be executable but if so, are they:
    • Easy to download, install, or execute?
    • Available in a virtual machine image?
    • Available online?
    • Supported by configuration management tools to permit easy updates?

Submission

    Submissions should be made by the deadline via EasyChair. Submissions should contain:

  • Names, affiliations, and email addresses for the authors
  • A URL to download the artifact. This could also be a URL to a GitHub repository.

    To hide the identity of the reviewers from the authors, the artifact track chairs will download the artifact and distribute it to the reviewers. The authors should also make an effort not to learn the identity of the reviewers, e.g., through logging.

Packaging Guidelines

    High-quality packaging of an artifact is as important as the quality of the artifact itself. Please keep in mind that the committee members will have limited time to review each artifact. The following requirements for the artifact submission are meant to expedite the review process:

  • Create a single zip archive, containing a README text file with instructions (how to use the artifact, how to reproduce the results presented in the paper), the paper (if the artifact is associated to one), and the artifact itself. Additionally, you may submit a video with a demo and/or instructions.
  • In case you want to submit a running setup of your tool, please provide an installation script to simplify the reviewing process. If the artifact requires a non-standard environment (e.g. specific OS, many external dependencies) we encourage you to create a virtual machine using Virtual box (www.virtualbox.org). Please use only such system images that are compatible with Virtual box.
  • If obtaining all the results takes significant amount of time, please also include a script to reproduce only a subset of the results.

Important Dates

    Submission: Monday, June 26, 2017 AoE

    Notification: Friday, July 21, 2017

    Camera ready: Thursday, August 3, 2017