ICFP 2008 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, 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 and concurrency. Particular topics of interest include
Experience Reports are also solicited, which are short papers (4 pages max) that provide evidence that functional programming really works or describe obstacles that have kept it from working in a particular application.
Functional Pearls and Experience Reports are separate categories of papers that need not report original research results and must be marked as such at the time of submission. Detailed guidelines on both categories are below.
By Wednesday, 2 April 2008, 09:00 AM Apia time, submit an abstract of at most 300 words and a full paper of at most 12 pages (4 pages for an Experience Report), including bibliography and figures. The deadline will be strictly enforced and papers exceeding the page limits will be summarily rejected. Authors have the option to attach supplementary material to a submission, on the understanding that reviewers are not expected to read it.
A submission will be evaluated according to its relevance, correctness, significance, originality, and clarity. It 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.
Each submission must adhere to SIGPLAN's republication policy, as explained on the web. Violation risks summary rejection of the offending submission.
Proceedings will be published by ACM Press. Authors of accepted submissions are expected to transfer the copyright to ACM. They may have the option to have their presentation videotaped and published along with the conference proceedings in the ACM Digital Library. Video recordings will only be released at the consent of the presenter, which is expressed by signing an additional copyright release/permission form.
Papers must adhere to the standard ACM conference format: two columns, nine-point font on a ten-point baseline, with columns 20pc (3.33in) wide and 54pc (9in) tall, with a column gutter of 2pc (0.33in). A suitable document template for LaTeX is available from SIGPLAN.
In practice, this means putting
\usepackage{natbib}
\bibpunct();A{},
\let\cite=\citep
in your LaTeX preamble, and
\bibliographystyle{plainnat}
in your document.
For most citations you will use the \cite command;
if you want a citation like ``Claessen and Hughes (2000) showed
that...''
you should use something like
``\citet{claessen:quickcheck} showed...''
Alternatively, the McBride bibliography style, which adheres to the Chicago manual of style ``Documentation Two'' specifications and which fixes some perceived deficiencies of natbib, may be used. The style file along with instructions for using it is available on the McBride web site.
In addition to research papers, 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 four pages. Authors submitting such papers may wish to consider the following advice.
A Functional Pearl is an elegant essay about something related to functional programming. It might offer:
A pearl should be concise, instructive, and entertaining. Your pearl is likely to be rejected if your readers get bored, if the material gets too complicated, if too much specialized knowledge is needed, or if the writing is inelegant. The key to writing a good pearl is polishing.
Some advice from Richard Bird:
ICFP has long solicited submissions on the practice and experience of functional programming. But reports of experience are inherently different from research papers, and when judged by the criteria of scientific merit, novelty, or research contribution, they have not competed well against traditional ICFP submissions. Yet we believe that the functional-programming community would benefit from being able to draw on and cite the experience of others. For this reason, we have introduced the ICFP Experience Report.
Unlike a normal ICFP paper, the purpose of an Experience Report is not to add to the body of knowledge of the functional-programming community. Rather, the purpose of an Experience Report is to help create a body of published, refereed, citable evidence that functional programming really works---or to describe what obstacles prevent it from working.
An Experience Report is distinguished from a normal ICFP paper by its title, by its length, and by the criteria used to evaluate it.
The program committee will accept or reject Experience Reports based on whether they judge the evidence to be convincing. 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, more convincing evidence is obtained from papers which show how functional programming was used than from papers which only say that functional programming was used. The most convincing evidence often includes comparisons of situations before and after the introduction or discontinuation of functional programming. Evidence 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.
Possible topics for an Experience Report include, but are not limited to
An Experience Report should be short and to the point: make a claim about how well functional programming worked on your project and why, and produce evidence to substantiate your claim. If functional programming worked for you in the same ways it has worked for others, you need only to summarize the results---the main part of your paper should discuss how well it worked and in what context. Most readers will not want to know all the details of your project and its implementation, but please characterize your project and its context well enough so that readers can judge to what degree your experience is relevant to their own projects. Be especially careful to highlight any unusual aspects of your project. Also keep in mind that specifics about your project are more valuable than generalities about functional programming; for example, it is more valuable to say that your team delivered its software a month ahead of schedule than it is to say that functional programming made your team more productive.
If your paper not only describes experience but also presents new technical results, or if your experience refutes cherished beliefs of the functional-programming community, you may be better off submitting it as a full paper, which will be judged by the usual criteria of novelty, originality, and relevance. If you are unsure in which category to submit, the program chair will be happy to help you decide.
James Hook (Portland State University)
| Submission: | 2 April 2008 |
| Author response: | 21 May 2008 |
| Notification: | 16 June 2008 |
| Final papers due: | 9 July 2008 |