Call for Papers

Scope and Topics

We solicit original, unpublished research papers on computing technologies and visual languages for modelling, programming, communicating, and reasoning, which are easier to learn, use or understand by humans than the current state-of-the-art. Papers should focus on efforts to design, formalize, implement, or evaluate those technologies and languages. This includes tools and visual languages intended for general audiences (e.g., professional or novice programmers, or the public) or domain-specific audiences (e.g., people working in business administration, production environments, healthcare, urban design or scientific domains).

Areas of interest include, but are not limited to:

Special Emphasis for 2019: Diversity in Computing

This year’s special topic is “Diversity in Computing”. Compared with many other fields, computing suffers from a lack of diversity, with an under-representation of disabled people, older people, women, and certain ethnic groups. Within this context, there is a current drive to make the field more inclusive, taking into account, for example, issues of gender, disability and ethnicity. In addition to the inherent benefits of a more inclusive workforce for the field as a whole, a more diverse workforce would be ideally placed to develop innovative products and solutions which suit a wider range of users.

This year, we especially welcome papers which investigate diversity in VL/HCC domains of interest, such as CS education, end-user programming, data science, and professional software development.

Paper Submissions

We invite two kinds of papers (deadlines below under Important Dates):

Papers must be submitted in a format suitable for anonymous review, and using the IEEE two-column conference paper format (see below). Papers should be submitted via the EasyChair system:

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=vlhcc2019

To facilitate the assigning of papers to reviewers, we require paper abstracts to be submitted via EasyChair at least 1 week prior to the paper submission deadline (see Important Dates below). The abstract must be no longer than 150 words, and must be kept up to date such that it matches exactly the abstract in the submitted paper.

All accepted papers, whether full or short, should be complete, self-contained, archival contributions. Contributions from full papers are more extensive than those from short papers. Work-in-progress, which has not yet yielded a contribution, should be submitted to the Showpieces category. All submissions will be reviewed by members of the Program Committee. Submission and reviews for the technical program are managed with EasyChair. At least one author of each accepted paper is required to register for VL/HCC 2019 and present the paper at the conference. IEEE reserves the right to exclude a paper from distribution after the conference, including IEEE Xplore Digital Library, if the paper is not presented by the author at the conference.

Accepted papers will be available to conference attendees via the IEEE Open Preview program in the IEEE Xplore Digital Library (http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/). The proceedings are an official electronic publication of the IEEE in Computer Science, with an ISBN number. Be sure to use the current IEEE conference paper format (which was updated in 2018), and to select the “US letter” template:

http://www.ieee.org/conferences_events/conferences/publishing/templates.html

Supplemental Materials

In addition to papers, authors may optionally submit supplemental materials that support their papers, as long as the total size of the submission (paper+supplemental materials) does not exceed 100MB.

Examples of supplemental materials include short digital videos, copies of study instruments, or experimental methodologies. Supplemental material should be briefly described in the paper body. However, since not everyone who reviews your paper may review submitted supplemental materials, your submission must stand on its own without them.

The supplemental materials will appear in the IEEE Xplore Digital Library. Videos must be at most 3 minutes in length, and prepared as MP4 files using the H.264 codec. All supplemental materials must adhere to the IEEE preparation instructions.

Papers and supplemental materials must be submitted using the EasyChair system.

Evaluation and Justification

Papers are expected to support their claims with appropriate evidence. For example, a paper that claims to improve programmer productivity is expected to demonstrate improved productivity; a paper that claims to be easier to use should demonstrate increased ease of use.

However, not all claims necessarily need to be supported with empirical evidence or studies with people. For example, a paper that claims to make something feasible that was clearly infeasible might substantiate its claim through the existence of a functioning prototype.

Moreover, there are many alternatives to empirical evidence that may be appropriate for justifying claims, including analytical methods, formal arguments or case studies. Given this criterion, we encourage potential authors to think carefully about what claims their submission makes and what evidence would adequately support these claims. In addition, we expect short papers to have less comprehensive evaluation than long papers.

Double Blind Reviewing

We follow a lightweight double-blind reviewing process. Thus, submitted papers must not reveal the identities of authors. However, the author names will be known to the program committee in the rebuttal phase.

Both authors and reviewers are expected to make every effort to honor the double-blind reviewing process. In case of questions, please contact the Program Chairs. Authors should ensure that the submission can be evaluated without it being obvious who wrote the paper. This means leaving author names off the paper and using terms like “previous research” rather than “our previous research” when describing background. However, do not hide previous work – papers must still reference all relevant research, including that by the current authors, so reviewers can evaluate novelty. It is important that authors specify all conflicts of interest with potential reviewers during the submission phase.

Reviewers should not undertake any investigation that might lead to the revealing of authors’ identity. If identities are inadvertently revealed, please contact the Program Chairs.

The Program Chairs will check all submissions for obvious signs of lack of anonymity and may ask authors to make changes and resubmit the paper within four days of the submission deadline.

Reviewing Process

Papers will be reviewed as follows:

  1. Initial review period: at least three members of the Program Committee or external reviewers will review each paper. At the end of this period, these initial reviews will be released to the authors.
  2. Author response period: authors will have an opportunity to submit a response based on their initial reviews. Responses should focus on answering reviewers’ questions, addressing reviewers’ concerns, and clarifying any factual misunderstandings. At this point, the identity of authors will be revealed to the program committee.
  3. Final review period: taking the author response into account, the original reviewers will revise their reviews as they deem appropriate, and the Program Committee will reach a final decision to accept or reject the submitted work.

Workshops, Showpieces, and Graduate Consortium

The conference also invites submissions for workshops and tutorials, showpieces (e.g., demos and posters), and the Graduate Consortium (GC). More information about these contribution types will be posted on the VL/HCC 2019 web site at http://vlhcc.org/.

Important Dates

All deadlines are by the end of the day Anywhere on Earth.

Track Event/Deadline Date(s)
Workshop/Tutorial Proposals Submission Deadline Fri 29 Mar
Workshop/Tutorial Proposals Decision Notifications Mon 15 Apr
Papers Abstracts-Only Requested ASAP Extended!
Papers Submission Deadline Mon 6 May Extended!
Papers Initial Review Period Tue 7 May – Fri 24 May
Papers Initial Discussion Period Sat 25 May – Thu 30 May
Papers Preliminary Notifications Fri 31 May
Papers Author Response Period Fri 31 May – Fri 7 June
Papers Author Responses Deadline Fri 7 June
Papers Final Review Period Sat 8 June – Fri 14 June
Papers Final Decision Notifications Mon 17 June
Showpieces Submission Deadline Fri 28 June
Showpieces Decision Notifications Mon 8 July
Graduate Consortium Application Deadline Sun 7 July Extended!
Graduate Consortium Decision Notifications Mon 8 July
All Tracks Camera-Ready Deadline Fri 12 July
All Tracks VL/HCC 2019 Symposium Mon 14 Oct – Fri 18 Oct