Call for Papers

Software visualization is a broad research area whose general goal is to enhance and promote the theory, realization, and evaluation of approaches to visually encode and analyze software systems, including software development practices, evolution, structure, and software runtime behavior. Software visualization is inherently interdisciplinary, drawing on theories and techniques from information visualization and computer graphics and applying these in the software engineering domain.

The VISSOFT conference is principally a venue for publishing and discussing research related to software visualization. VISSOFT brings together a community of researchers from software engineering, information visualization, computer graphics, and human-computer interaction to discuss theoretical foundations, algorithms, techniques, tools, and applications related to software visualization.

This year’s VISSOFT, co-held with ICSME, encourages a variety of submissions that address outstanding challenges in software systems using visualization. This includes technical papers, empirical studies, applications, case studies, and papers that present novel ideas and tools.

Topics of interest include:

  • Innovative visualization and visual analytics techniques for analysis of software engineering data. This includes source code, dependencies, repositories, developer social networks like StackOverflow and GitHub, mobile app reviews, documentation, runtime logs, and DevOps data.
  • Visualization to support software development activities, including design, requirements engineering, program comprehension, software testing, and debugging.
  • Interaction techniques and algorithms for software visualization.
  • Visualization-based techniques in software engineering education.
  • Integration of software visualization tools with development environments.
  • Empirical evaluation of software visualizations.
  • Industrial experience with using software visualization.
  • Applications of new technologies to enhance software visualization, including virtual reality, augmented reality, gamification, and machine learning.

We solicit papers that present original, unpublished research results. Papers will be rigorously reviewed by an international program committee. In addition to technical papers, VISSOFT features a New Ideas or Emerging Results (NIER) track and a Tools track. All accepted submissions will appear in the conference proceedings and the IEEE Digital Library.

Submission Types

Technical papers

A technical paper contribution must describe an in-depth and mature research result relevant to software visualization. The content of a technical paper can be at a maximum 10 pages long (including all figures, tables, and appendices). However, the 10 page limit does not include the bibliography, which is limited by two additional pages.

The submission of a video (up to 5 minutes in length) to accompany the paper is highly encouraged to show interaction possibilities. Authors who wish to submit a video can submit the video together with their paper if the size of the video is smaller than 50 MB, otherwise a URL to the video should be provided.

Authors will be given the opportunity to provide a response to reviewer requests for clarifications before a final decision is made.

After the notification, authors can also submit an artifact (tool, data, model, etc.). The following section provides more info about it.

Important Dates:
Abstract Submission date: May 1, 2018 May 15, 2018
Paper Submission date: May 8, 2018 May 22, 2018
Author Response Period: June 1 - June 5, 2018 June 9 - June 11, 2018
Notification: June 15, 2018
Submission link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=vissoft2018


Artifacts:
Traditionally, technical research papers are published without including any artifacts (such as tools, data, models, videos, etc.), even though the artifacts may serve as crucial and detailed evidence for the quality of the results that the associated paper offers. Following the effort initiated at ESEC/FSE’11, authors of accepted technical papers at VISSOFT 2018 can have their artifacts evaluated by the program committee. Positively evaluated artifacts will be reflected in the paper publication, presentation, and be formally announced during the conference. A paper with an accepted artifact will have five extra minutes of presentation which can be used to present the artifact. The authors will also be invited to demo the artifact during the interactive informal demo session organized for the tool demo track.

Given the short time between the acceptance notification and the deadline to submit the artifact, we suggest the authors to start preparing it beforehand.

Finally, for more information about the artifact evaluation process visit http://www.artifact-eval.org.

Important Dates:
Artifact Submission: June 22, 2018
Artifact Notification: July 11, 2018
Submission link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=vissoft2018

NIER and Tool papers

We accept two types of paper submissions: NIER contributions (New Ideas and Emerging Results) and Tool contributions.

The NIER contributions describe work-in-progress and preliminary exciting results. Authors should include open questions and even provocative hypotheses to get early feedback on their research ideas or even support through new research collaborations. NIER papers have to be maximum 5 pages long (including bibliography).

Tool contributions describe the design or actual utilization of software visualization tools, with a focus on relevant tool construction aspects or the use of the tool for gaining new insights. Authors should be prepared to demonstrate their tool at the conference. The submission may also contain a link to a screencast (e.g., YouTube or Vimeo video). Tools papers have to be maximum 5 pages long (including bibliography).

Important Dates:
Paper submission date: June 11, 2018 Extended: June 17, 2018
Notification: July 2, 2018
Submission link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=vissoft2018

How to Submit

Submissions must be formatted according to the ICSME 2018 Formatting Instructions. Papers must not exceed 10 pages (including figures and appendices) plus up to 2 pages that contain ONLY references. All submissions must be in PDF and must be submitted online by the deadline via the VISSOFT 2018 EasyChair conference management system.

Supplemental material (e.g., video, data, software) that might be helpful for the reviewers can be submitted together with your paper. All material must be included in a single ZIP file. Please note that this supplemental material is independent of the artifact evaluation.

Important Dates

All dates refer to midnight 23:59:59 AoE.

Main track (technical papers) NIER and Tool tracks
Abstract Submission: May 1, 2018 May 15, 2018
Paper Submission: May 8, 2018 May 22, 2018 June 11, 2018 June 17, 2018
Author Response Period: June 5 - June 9, 2018 June 9 - June 11, 2018
Author Notification: June 15, 2018 July 2, 2018
Camera-Ready Copies: July 15, 2018
Artifact Submission for Accepted Papers: June 22, 2018
Artifact Notification: July 11, 2018
Conference Date: September 24-25, 2018