ICFP 2023 Call for Papers

ICFP 2023 Call for Papers

[ICFP Publicity]

                   PACMPL Volume 7, Issue ICFP 2023
                           Call for Papers

           Accepted papers to be invited for presentation at
The 28th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Functional Programming
                            Seattle, USA
                     http://icfp23.sigplan.org/

### Important dates

(All dates are in 2023 at 11.59pm anywhere on earth.)

Submission deadline:   1 March 2023 (Wednesday)
                       (https://icfp23.hotcrp.com)
Author response:       1 May (Monday)--4 May (Thursday)
Round 1 notification:  18 May (Thursday)
Round 2 notification:  29 June (Thursday)
Camera-ready deadline: 20 July (Thursday)
Conference:            4 September (Monday)--9 September (Saturday)

### About PACMPL

Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages (PACMPL
<https://pacmpl.acm.org/>) is a Gold Open Access journal publishing
research on all aspects of programming languages, from design to
implementation and from mathematical formalisms to empirical
studies. Each issue of the journal is devoted to a particular subject
area within programming languages and will be announced through
publicised Calls for Papers, like this one.

### Scope

[PACMPL](https://pacmpl.acm.org/) issue ICFP 2023 seeks original
papers on the art and science of functional programming. Submissions
are invited on all topics from principles to practice, from
foundations to features, and from abstraction to application. The
scope includes all languages that encourage functional programming,
including both purely applicative and imperative languages, as well as
languages with objects, concurrency, or parallelism. Topics of
interest include (but are not limited to):

  * Language Design: concurrency, parallelism, and distribution;
    modularity; components and composition; metaprogramming; macros;
    pattern matching; type systems; type inference; dependent types;
    effect types; gradual types; refinement types; session types;
    interoperability; domain-specific languages; imperative
    programming; object-oriented programming; logic programming;
    probabilistic programming; reactive programming; generic
    programming; bidirectional programming.

  * Implementation: abstract machines; virtual machines;
    interpretation; compilation; compile-time and run-time
    optimisation; garbage collection and memory management; runtime
    systems; multi-threading; exploiting parallel hardware; interfaces
    to foreign functions, services, components, or low-level machine
    resources.

  * Software-Development Techniques: algorithms and data structures;
    design patterns; specification; verification; validation; proof
    assistants; debugging; testing; tracing; profiling; build systems;
    program synthesis.

  * Foundations: formal semantics; lambda calculus; program
    equivalence; rewriting; type theory; logic; category theory;
    computational effects; continuations; control; state; names and
    binding; program verification.

  * Analysis and Transformation: control flow; data flow; abstract
    interpretation; partial evaluation; program calculation.

  * Applications: symbolic computing; formal-methods tools; artificial
    intelligence; systems programming; distributed systems and web
    programming; hardware design; databases; scientific and numerical
    computing; graphical user interfaces; graphics and multimedia; GPU
    programming; scripting; system administration; security.

  * Education: teaching introductory programming; mathematical proof;
    algebra.

Submissions will be evaluated according to their relevance,
correctness, significance, originality, and clarity. Each submission
should explain its contributions in both general and technical terms,
clearly identifying what has been accomplished, explaining why it is
significant, and comparing it with previous work. The technical
content should be accessible to a broad audience.

PACMPL issue ICFP 2023 also welcomes submissions in two separate
categories — Functional Pearls and Experience Reports — that must be
marked as such when submitted and that need not report original
research results. Detailed guidelines on both categories are given at
the end of this call.

Submissions from underrepresented groups are encouraged. Authors who
require financial support to attend the conference can apply for PAC
funding (http://www.sigplan.org/PAC/).

The General Chair and PC Chair may not submit papers. PC members
(other than the PC Chair) may submit papers. However, SIGPLAN
guidelines dictate that they be held to a higher standard: a PC paper
can be accepted if after the discussion it has at least one
strongly-supportive review and no detractors. Each PC member may be
listed as a coauthor on a maximum of three submissions.

Please contact the Programme Chair if you have questions or are
concerned about the appropriateness of a topic.

### Preparation of submissions

*Deadline*: The deadline for submissions is **Wednesday, March 1,
2023**, Anywhere on Earth
(<https://www.timeanddate.com/time/zones/aoe>). This deadline will be
strictly enforced.

*Formatting*: Submissions must be in PDF format, printable in black
and white on US Letter sized paper and interpretable by common PDF
tools. All submissions must adhere to the "ACM Small" template that is
available (in both LaTeX and Word formats) from
<https://www.acm.org/publications/authors/submissions>.

There is a limit of **25 pages for a full paper or Functional Pearl**
and **12 pages for an Experience Report**; in either case, the
bibliography and an optional clearly marked appendix will not be
counted against these limits. Submissions that exceed the page limits
or, for other reasons, do not meet the requirements for formatting,
will be summarily rejected.

See also PACMPL's Information and Guidelines for Authors at
<https://pacmpl.acm.org/authors.cfm>.

*Submission*: Submissions will be accepted at
 <https://icfp23.hotcrp.com/>

Improved versions of a paper may be submitted at any point before the
submission deadline using the same web interface.

*Author Response Period*: Authors will have a 72-hour period, starting
at 12pm UTC on *Monday, May 1, 2023*, to read reviews and respond to
them.

*Appendix and Supplementary Material*: Authors have the option to
include a clearly marked appendix and/or to attach supplementary
material to a submission, on the understanding that reviewers may
choose not to look at such an appendix or supplementary
material. Supplementary material may be uploaded as a separate PDF
document or tarball. Any supplementary material **must** be uploaded
**at submission time**, not by providing a URL in the paper that
points to an external repository.

Authors are free to upload both anonymised and non-anonymised
supplementary material. Anonymised supplementary material will be
visible to reviewers immediately; non-anonymised supplementary
material (which must be submitted separately) will be revealed to
reviewers only after they have submitted their review of the paper and
learned the identity of the author(s).

*Authorship Policies*: All submissions are expected to comply with the
ACM Policies for Authorship that are detailed at
<https://www.acm.org/publications/authors/information-for-authors>.

*Republication Policies*: Each submission must adhere to SIGPLAN's
republication policy, as explained on the web at
<http://www.sigplan.org/Resources/Policies/Republication>.

*ORCID*: ORCID provides a persistent digital identifier (an ORCID iD)
that you own and control, and that distinguishes you from every other
researcher: https://orcid.org/. ACM now require an ORCID iD for every
author of a paper, not just the corresponding author. So, the author
who is filling out the permission form should make sure they have the
ORCID iDs for all of their coauthors before filling out the form. Any
authors who do not yet have an ORCID iD can go to
https://orcid.org/register to have one assigned.

### Review Process

This section outlines the two-stage process with lightweight
double-blind reviewing that will be used to select papers for PACMPL
issue ICFP 2023.

**New this year**: ICFP 2023 will have an Associate Chair who will help
the PC Chair monitor reviews, solicit external expert reviews for
submissions when there is not enough expertise on the committee, and
facilitate reviewer discussions.

*PACMPL issue ICFP 2023 will employ a two-stage review process.* The
first stage in the review process will assess submitted papers using
the criteria stated above and will allow for feedback and input on
initial reviews through the author response period mentioned
previously. As a result of the review process, a set of papers will be
conditionally accepted and all other papers will be rejected. Authors
will be notified of these decisions on **May 18, 2023**.

Authors of conditionally accepted papers will be provided with
committee reviews along with a set of mandatory revisions. By June 15,
2023, the authors may provide a second submission. The second and
final reviewing phase assesses whether the mandatory revisions have
been adequately addressed by the authors and thereby determines the
final accept/reject status of the paper. The intent and expectation is
that the mandatory revisions can feasibly be addressed within three
weeks.

The second submission should clearly identify how the mandatory
revisions were addressed. To that end, the second submission must be
accompanied by a cover letter mapping each mandatory revision request
to specific parts of the paper. The cover letter will facilitate a
quick second review, allowing for confirmation of final acceptance
within two weeks. Conversely, the absence of a cover letter will be
grounds for the paper's rejection.

*PACMPL issue ICFP 2023 will employ a lightweight double-blind
 reviewing process.*

To facilitate this, submitted papers must adhere to two rules:

  1. **author names and institutions must be omitted**, and

  2. **references to authors' own related work should be in the third
     person** (e.g., not "We build on our previous work ..." but
     rather "We build on the work of ...").

The purpose of this process is to help the reviewers come to an
initial judgement about the paper without bias, not to make it
impossible for them to discover the authors if they were to
try. Nothing should be done in the name of anonymity that weakens the
submission or makes the job of reviewing the paper more difficult
(e.g., important background references should not be omitted or
anonymised). In addition, authors should feel free to disseminate
their ideas or draft versions of their papers as they normally
would. For instance, authors may post drafts of their papers on the
web or give talks on their research ideas.

### Information for Authors of Accepted Papers

  * As a condition of acceptance, final versions of all papers must
    adhere to the ACM Small format. The page limit for the final
    versions of papers will be increased by two pages to help authors
    respond to reviewer comments and mandatory revisions: **27 pages
    plus bibliography for a regular paper or Functional Pearl, 14
    pages plus bibliography for an Experience Report**.

  * Authors of accepted submissions will be required to agree to one
    of the three ACM licensing options, one of which is Creative
    Commons CC-BY publication; this is the option recommended by the
    PACMPL editorial board. A reasoned argument in favour of this
    option can be found in the article [Why
    CC-BY?](https://oaspa.org/why-cc-by/) published by OASPA, the Open
    Access Scholarly Publishers Association. The other options are
    copyright transfer to ACM or retaining copyright but granting ACM
    exclusive publication rights.

  * PACMPL is a Gold Open Access journal, and authors are encouraged
    to publish their work under a CC-BY license. Gold Open Access
    guarantees permanent free online access to the definitive version
    in the ACM Digital Library, and the recommended CC-BY option also
    allows anyone to copy and distribute the work with attribution.
    Gold Open Access has been made possible by generous funding
    through ACM SIGPLAN, which will cover all open access costs in the
    event authors cannot. Authors who can cover the costs may do so by
    paying an Article Processing Charge (APC). PACMPL, SIGPLAN, and
    ACM Headquarters are committed to exploring routes to making Gold
    Open Access publication both affordable and sustainable.

  * ACM Author-Izer is a unique service that enables ACM authors to
    generate and post links on either their home page or institutional
    repository for visitors to download the definitive version of
    their articles from the ACM Digital Library at no
    charge. Downloads through Author-Izer links are captured in
    official ACM statistics, improving the accuracy of usage and
    impact measurements. Consistently linking to the definitive
    version of an ACM article should reduce user confusion over
    article versioning. After an article has been published and
    assigned to the appropriate ACM Author Profile pages, authors
    should visit
    <http://www.acm.org/publications/acm-author-izer-service> to learn
    how to create links for free downloads from the ACM DL.

  * The official publication date is the date the papers are made
    available in the ACM Digital Library. This date may be up to *two
    weeks prior* to the first day of the conference. The official
    publication date affects the deadline for any patent filings
    related to published work.

  * Authors of each accepted submission are invited to attend and be
    available for the presentation of that paper at the
    conference. The schedule for presentations will be determined and
    shared with authors after the full program has been selected.

### Artifact Evaluation

Authors of papers that are conditionally accepted in the first phase
of the review process will be encouraged (but not required) to submit
supporting materials for Artifact Evaluation. These items will then be
reviewed by an Artifact Evaluation Committee, separate from the paper
Review Committee, whose task is to assess how the artifacts support
the work described in the associated paper. Papers that go through the
Artifact Evaluation process successfully will receive a seal of
approval printed on the papers themselves. Authors of accepted papers
will be encouraged to make the supporting materials publicly available
upon publication of the papers, for example, by including them as
"source materials" in the ACM Digital Library. An additional seal will
mark papers whose artifacts are made available, as outlined in the ACM
guidelines for artifact badging.

Participation in Artifact Evaluation is voluntary and will not
influence the final decision regarding paper acceptance.

### Special categories of papers

In addition to research papers, PACMPL issue ICFP solicits two kinds
of papers that do not require original research contributions:
Functional Pearls, which are full papers, and Experience Reports,
which are limited to half the length of a full paper. Authors
submitting such papers should consider the following guidelines.

#### Functional Pearls

A Functional Pearl is an elegant essay about something related to
functional programming. Examples include, but are not limited to:

  * a new and thought-provoking way of looking at an old idea

  * an instructive example of program calculation or proof

  * a nifty presentation of an old or new data structure

  * an interesting application of functional programming techniques

  * a novel use or exposition of functional programming in the
    classroom

While pearls often demonstrate an idea through the development of a
short program, there is no requirement or expectation that they do
so. Thus, they encompass the notions of theoretical and educational
pearls.

Functional Pearls are valued as highly and judged as rigorously as
ordinary papers, but using somewhat different criteria. In particular,
a pearl is not required to report original research, but, it should be
concise, instructive, and entertaining. A pearl is likely to be
rejected if its readers get bored, if the material gets too
complicated, if too much-specialised knowledge is needed, or if the
writing is inelegant. The key to writing a good pearl is polishing.

A submission that is intended to be treated as a pearl must be marked
as such on the submission web page and should contain the words
"Functional Pearl" somewhere in its title or subtitle. These steps
will alert reviewers to use the appropriate evaluation
criteria. Pearls will be combined with ordinary papers, however, for
the purpose of computing the conference's acceptance rate.

#### Experience Reports

The purpose of an Experience Report is to describe the experience of
using functional programming in practice, whether in industrial
application, tool development, programming education, or any other
area.

Possible topics for an Experience Report include, but are not limited to:

  * insights gained from real-world projects using functional
    programming

  * comparison of functional programming with conventional programming
    in the context of an industrial project or a university curriculum

  * project-management, business, or legal issues encountered when
    using functional programming in a real-world project

  * curricular issues encountered when using functional programming in
    education

  * real-world constraints that created special challenges for an
    implementation of a functional language or for functional
    programming in general

An Experience Report is distinguished from a normal PACMPL issue ICFP
paper by its title, by its length, and by the criteria used to
evaluate it.

  * Both in the papers and in any citations, the title of each
    accepted Experience Report must end with the words "(Experience
    Report)" in parentheses. The acceptance rate for Experience
    Reports will be computed and reported separately from the rate for
    ordinary papers.

  * Experience Report submissions can be at most 12 pages long,
    excluding bibliography.

  * Each accepted Experience Report will be presented at the
    conference, but depending on the number of Experience Reports and
    regular papers accepted, authors of Experience Reports may be
    asked to give shorter talks.

  * Because the purpose of Experience Reports is to enable our
    community to understand the application of functional programming,
    an acceptable Experience Report need not add to the body of
    knowledge of the functional-programming community by presenting
    novel results or conclusions. It is sufficient if the Report
    describes an illuminating experience with functional programming,
    or provide evidence for a clear thesis about the use of functional
    programming. The experience or thesis must be relevant to ICFP,
    but it need not be novel.

The review committee will accept or reject Experience Reports based on
whether they judge the paper to illuminate some aspect of the use of
functional programming. Anecdotal evidence will be acceptable provided
it is well-argued and the author explains what efforts were made to
gather as much evidence as possible. Typically, papers that show how
functional programming was used are more convincing than papers that
say \emph{only} that functional programming was used. It can be
especially effective to present comparisons of the situations before
and after the experience described in the paper, but other kinds of
evidence would also make sense, depending on context. Experience drawn
from a single person's experience may be sufficient, but more weight
will be given to evidence drawn from the experience of groups of
people.

An Experience Report should be short and to the point. For an
industrial project, it should make a claim about how well functional
programming worked and why; for a pedagogy paper, it might make a
claim about the suitability of a particular teaching style or
educational exercise. Either way, it should produce evidence to
substantiate the claim. If functional programming worked in this case
in the same ways it has worked for others, the paper need only
summarise the results — the main part of the paper should discuss how
well it worked and in what context. Most readers will not want to know
all the details of the experience and its implementation, but the
paper should characterise it and its context well enough so that
readers can judge to what degree this experience is relevant to their
own circumstances. The paper should take care to highlight any unusual
aspects; specifics about the experience are more valuable than
generalities about functional programming.

If the paper not only describes experience but also presents new
technical results, or if the experience refutes cherished beliefs of
the functional-programming community, it may be better to submit it as
a full paper, which will be judged by the usual criteria of novelty,
originality, and relevance. The Program Chair will be happy to advise
on any concerns about which category to submit to.

### ICFP Organisers

General Chair:
  Nikhil Swamy (Microsoft Research, USA)
Programme Chair:
  Sam Lindley (The University of Edinburgh, Scotland)
Publicity Chair:
  Ilya Sergey (National University of Singapore, Singapore)

Accessibility Co-Chairs:
  Vadim Zaliva (University of Cambridge, UK)
  and Calvin Beck (University of Pennsylvania, USA)
Artifact Evaluation Chair:
  Jannis Limpberg (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands)
Diversity Chair:
  Daan Leijen (Microsoft Research, USA)
Industrial Relations Co-Chairs:
  Atze Dijkstra (Standard Chartered Bank, England)
  and Mathieu Bosepflug (Tweag I/O, France)
Programming Contest Co-Organisers:
  Alperen Keles (University of Maryland, USA) and
  Aymeric Fromherz (Inria, France)
Student Research Competition Chair:
  Daniel Hillerström (The University of Edinburgh, Scotland)
Video Chair:
  Apoorv Ingle (Iowa, USA)
Workshops Co-Chairs:
  Arther Azevedo de Amorim (Boston University, USA)
  and Yannick Forster (Inria, France)

### PACMPL Volume 7, Issue ICFP 2023

Associate Editor: Sam Lindley (The University of Edinburgh, Scotland)

Review Committee:

  Aggelos Biboudis, Oracle, Switzerland
  Alan Jeffrey, Roblox, USA
  Amos Robinson, Unaffiliated, Australia
  Andreea Costea, National University of Singapore, Singapore
  Andrew Hirsch, University of Buffalo, USA
  Andy Gill, Cerebrus Systems, USA
  Armando Solar-Lezama, MIT, USA
  Arnaud Spiwack, Tweag, France
  Benjamin C. Pierce, University of Pennsylvania, USA
  Beta Ziliani, FAMAF, UNC and Manas.Tech, Argentina
  Chung-Kil Hur, Seoul National University, South Korea
  Delia Kesner, Université de Paris, France
  Dylan McDermott, Reykjavik University, Iceland
  Éric Tanter, University of Chile, Chile
  Gabriel Radanne, Inria, France
  Gerwin Klein, Proofcraft & UNSW Sydney, Australia
  Hannah Gommerstadt, Vasser College, USA
  James Chapman, Input Output, Scotland
  James McKinna, Heriot-Watt, Scotland
  Jan Midtgaard, Tarides, Denmark
  Jeremy Gibbons, University of Oxford, England
  Jonathan Brachthäuser, University of Tübingen, Germany
  Jonathan Sterling, Aarhus University, Denmark
  José Pedro Magalhães, Standard Chartered Bank, England
  Josh Berdine, Meta UK, England
  Kathrin Stark, Heriot-Watt, Scotland
  Laura Bocchi, Kent, England
  Lennart Augustsson, Epic Games, Sweden
  Liang-Ting Chen, Academia Sinica, Taiwan, Taiwan
  Lionel Parreaux, HKUST, Hong Kong
  Marcos Viera, Universidad de la República, Uruguay
  Matthew Flatt, University of Utah, USA
  Michael D. Adams, National University of Singapore, Singapore
  Michael Greenberg, Stevens Institute of Technology, USA
  Niki Vazou, IMDEA, Spain
  Oliver Bračevac, Purdue University, USA
  Patrik Jansson, CSE, Chalmers and UGOT, Sweden, Sweden
  Paul Downen, UMass Lowell, USA
  Peter Thiemann, University of Freiburg, Germany
  Sam Tobin-Hochstadt, Indiana University, USA
  Satnam Singh, Groq, USA
  Sean Moss, Oxford, England
  Sebastian Erdweg, JGU Mainz, Germany
  Shin-ya Katsumata, National Institute of Informatics, Japan
  Simon Gay, University of Glasgow, Scotland
  Sonia Marin, University of Birmingham, England
  Stephen Dolan, Jane Street, England
  Susmit Sarkar, University of St Andrews, Scotland
  Tahina Ramananandro, Microsoft, USA
  Takeshi Tsukada, Chiba University, Japan
  Talia Ringer, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
  Yukiyoshi Kameyama, University of Tsukuba, Japan
  Zhenjiang Hu, Peking University, China