Copenhagen, Denmark
September 9 – 15, 2012

Call for Papers

Important Dates

Submissions due: Monday Mar 12, 2012 14:00 UTC
Author response: Monday May 07, 2012 14:00 UTC – May 9 14:00 UTC
Notification: Monday May 28, 2012
Final copy due: Monday Jul 02, 2012

Scope

ICFP 2012 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 and distribution; modules; components and composition; metaprogramming; interoperability; type systems; relations to imperative, object-oriented, or logic programming
  • Implementation: abstract machines; virtual machines; interpretation; compilation; compile-time and run-time optimization; memory management; 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
  • Foundations: formal semantics; lambda calculus; rewriting; type theory; monads; continuations; control; state; effects; program verification; dependent types
  • Analysis and Transformation: control-flow; data-flow; abstract interpretation; partial evaluation; program calculation
  • Applications and Domain-Specific Languages: symbolic computing; formal-methods tools; artificial intelligence; systems programming; distributed-systems and web programming; hardware design; databases; XML processing; scientific and numerical computing; graphical user interfaces; multimedia programming; scripting; system administration; security
  • Education: teaching introductory programming; parallel programming; mathematical proof; algebra
  • Functional Pearls: elegant, instructive, and fun essays on functional programming
  • Experience Reports: short papers that provide evidence that functional programming really works or describe obstacles that have kept it from working

If you are concerned about the appropriateness of some topic, do not hesitate to contact the program chair.

Abbreviated instructions for authors

  • By March 12 2012, 14:00 UTC, submit a full paper of at most 12 pages (6 pages for an Experience Report), including bibliography and figures.

The deadlines 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 may choose not to look at it.
  • Each submission must adhere to SIGPLAN's republication policy, as explained on the web at http://www.acm.org/sigplan/republicationpolicy.htm
  • Authors of resubmitted (but previously rejected) papers have the option to attach an annotated copy of the reviews of their previous submission(s), explaining how they have addressed these previous reviews in the present submission. If a reviewer identifies him/herself as a reviewer of this previous submission and wishes to see how his/her comments have been addressed, the program chair will communicate to this reviewer the annotated copy of his/her previous review. Otherwise, no reviewer will read the annotated copies of the previous reviews.

Overall, 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. 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 on the conference web site.

Proceedings will be published by ACM Press. Authors of accepted submissions are expected to transfer the copyright to the ACM. Presentations will be videotaped and released online if the presenter consents.

Formatting: Submissions must be in PDF format printable in black and white on US Letter sized paper and interpretable by Ghostscript. If this requirement is a hardship, make contact with the program chair at least one week before the deadline. 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: http://www.acm.org/sigs/sigplan/authorInformation.htm

Submission: Submissions will be accepted only online via the ICFP website. Improved versions of a paper may be submitted at any point before the submission deadline using the same web interface.

Author response: Authors will have a 48-hour period, starting at 14:00 UTC on Monday May 7th 2012, to read reviews and respond to them.

Special Journal Issue: There will be a special issue of the Journal of Functional Programming with papers from ICFP 2012. The program committee will invite the authors of select accepted papers to submit a journal version to this issue.

Organizers

General Chair

Peter Thiemann University of Freiburg

Program Chair

Robby Findler Northwestern University

Program Committee

Zena Ariola University of Oregon
Lars Birkedal IT University of Copenhagen
Matthias Blume Google
Mariangiola Dezani-Ciancaglini University of Torino
R. Kent Dybvig Cisco Systems, Inc. and Indiana University
Manuel Fahndrich Microsoft Research
John Hughes Chalmers University of Technology
Simon Marlow Microsoft Research
Jan Midtgaard Aarhus University
Brigitte Pientka McGill University
Andreas Rossberg Google
Colin Runciman University of York
Satnam Singh Google
Eijiro Sumii Tohoku University
Sam Tobin-Hochstadt Northeastern University
Andrew Tolmach Portland State University