Call for Papers
The New Ideas and Emerging Results (NIER) track at ICSE provides a vibrant forum for forward-looking, innovative research in software engineering. Our aim is to accelerate the exposure of the software engineering community to early yet potentially ground-breaking research results, and to techniques and perspectives that challenge the status quo in the discipline. To broadly capture this goal, NIER 2021 will publish the following types of papers.
- Forward-looking ideas: exciting new directions or techniques that may have yet to be supported by solid experimental results, but nonetheless supported by strong and well-argued scientific intuitions.
- Thought-provoking reflections: bold and unexpected results and reflections that can help us look at current research directions under a new light, calling for new directions for future research.
A NIER track paper is not just a scaled-down version of a ICSE full research track paper. The NIER track is reserved for first class, top quality technical contributions. Therefore, a NIER submission is neither an ICSE full research track submission with weaker or no evaluation, nor an op-ed piece advertising for existing and already published results. Authors of such submissions should instead consider submitting to either the main track or one of the many satellite events of ICSE.
Each submission will be reviewed and evaluated in terms of the following quality criteria:
- Value: whether the problem is worth exploring;
- Impact: the potential for disruption of current practice;
- Soundness: the validity of the rationale;
- Quality: the overall quality of the paper’s writing
Submissions must conform to the IEEE formatting instructions IEEE Conference Proceedings Formatting Guidelines (title in 24pt font and full text in 10pt type. LaTeX users must use \documentclass[10pt,conference]{IEEEtran} without including the compsoc or compsocconf options).
All NIER submissions must not exceed 4 pages for the main text, inclusive of all figures, tables, appendices, etc. An extra page is allowed for references. All submissions must be in PDF. The page limit is strict, and it will not be possible to purchase additional pages at any point in the process (including after the paper is accepted).
Submissions may be made through EasyChair
By submitting to this track, authors acknowledge that they are aware of and agree to be bound by the ACM Policy and Procedures on Plagiarism and the IEEE Plagiarism FAQ. In particular, papers submitted to ICSE 2021 must not have been published elsewhere and must not be under review or submitted for review elsewhere whilst under consideration for ICSE 2021. Contravention of this concurrent submission policy will be deemed a serious breach of scientific ethics, and appropriate action will be taken in all such cases. To check for double submission and plagiarism issues, the chairs reserve the right to (1) share the list of submissions with the PC Chairs of other conferences with overlapping review periods and (2) use external plagiarism detection software, under contract to the ACM or IEEE, to detect violations of these policies. By submitting to this track, authors acknowledge that they conform to the authorship policy of the ACM, and the authorship policy of the IEEE
- NIER Submissions Deadline: 18 October 2020
- NIER Acceptance Notification: 20 January 2021
- Submissions close at 23:59 AoE (Anywhere on Earth, UTC-12)
The ICSE 2021 NIER track will adopt a double-blind review process. No submitted paper may reveal its authors’ identities. The authors must make every effort to honor the double-blind review process; reviewers will be asked to honor the double-blind review process as much as possible. Any author having further questions on double-blind reviewing is encouraged to contact the track’s program co-chairs by e-mail. Any submission that does not comply with the double-blind review process will be desk-rejected. Further advice, guidance and explanation about the double-blind review process can be found in the Q&A page.
If a submission is accepted, at least one author of the paper is required to register for and attend the full 3-day technical conference and present the paper. The presentation is expected to be delivered in person, unless this is impossible due to travel limitations (related to, e.g., health, visa, or COVID-19 prevention).
