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, human-computer interaction, and data science 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, including eye tracking.
  • Industrial experience with using software visualization.
  • Applications of new technologies to enhance software visualization, including virtual reality, augmented reality, gamification, and machine learning.
  • Analytical approaches to understand software-related aspects based on data science concepts

We solicit papers that present original, unpublished research results.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 of conditionally accepted papers must revise the paper based on the reviewers' comments and submit a response letter explaining how the comments are taken into account in the revised paper version. In a second reviewing cycle, the reviewers decide if the paper has been revised accordingly.

After the notification, authors can also submit an artifact (tool, data, model, etc.) or modify their paper to make it acceptable for the NIER/TOOLS track which will have their own call for papers.

Important Dates:
Paper Abstract: June 22, 2020
Paper Submission: June 26, 2020
Notification: July 24, 2020
Camera-Ready: August 7, 2020
Conference: September 28-29, 2020

Submission link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=vissoft2020


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 2020 can have their artifacts evaluated by the program committee. Positively evaluated artifacts will be reflected in the paper publication and be formally announced during the conference.

The artifacts of interest (but not limited to) are listed below, if your proposed artifact is not on this list, please email the chairs before submitting.

  • Software systems (compiled applications and/or source code) that are available for end users and researchers who aim at replicating a study.
  • Repositories that contain data involved in a study (e.g., logging data, system traces, survey raw data, evaluation results), which are needed to replicate a study.

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: August 2, 2020

Submission link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=vissoft2020

The artifacts (e.g., systems, data sets, tutorials) are going to be evaluated according to the following points: Completeness, consistency, documented, clarity, availability (placed on a publicly accessible archival repository. A DOI or link to this repository along with a unique identifier for the object is provided).

Data sets: Completeness, consistency, documented
Tutorials: Consistency, clarity
Systems: Functional (artifacts documented, consistent, complete, executable, and include evidence of verification and validation)

NIER/TD Track:

The NIER/TD Track of VISSOFT accepts two types of contributions: NIER (New Ideas and Emerging Results) and Tool Demonstrations (TD). Both NIER and TD contributions have a page limit of 5 (including bibliography).

NIER contributions describe work-in-progress and preliminary exciting results. Authors are encouraged to include open questions and even provocative hypotheses to get early feedback on their research ideas. A sound evaluation is not required for NIER contributions. One of the goals of the NIER Track is to foster collaboration among different research groups.

Tool Demonstrations (TD) describe the design or actual utilization of software visualization tools, with a focus on the architecture of the tool or its use to gain new insights. During the conference, we will organize an informal tool demonstration session where authors of TD papers are requested to demonstrate their tools. The submission may also contain a link to a screencast (e.g., YouTube or Vimeo) to show the interaction possibilities offered by the tool.

Important Dates:
Paper submission date: June 26, 2020

Submission link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=vissoft2020

How to submit

Technical papers must not exceed 10 pages (including figures and appendices) plus up to 2 pages that contain ONLY references. NIER/TD papers must not exceed 5 pages including references.

Papers must strictly adhere to the two-column IEEE conference proceedings format. Please use the available IEEE Manuscript Templates for Conference Proceedings.

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.

Note that VISSOFT uses a single-blind review process (i.e., the authors' names and affiliations are revealed to reviewers but reviewers' identities are not revealed to authors). The authors do not need to anonymize their papers.

Important Dates

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

Technical Papers NIER/TD Track
Paper Abstract: June 22, 2020
Paper Submission: June 26, 2020
Notification: July 24, 2020
Camera-Ready: August 7, 2020
Artifact Submission: August 2, 2020
Artifact Notification: August 17, 2020
Conference Date: September 28-29, 2020