VISSOFT 2017: 5th IEEE Working Conference on Software Visualization

= 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, and human-computer interaction 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.

VISSOFT 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
* Industrial experience with using software visualization
* Applications of new technologies to enhance software visualization, including virtual reality, augmented reality, gamification, and machine learning.

We solicit papers that present original, unpublished research results.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.

= 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 not limited in length.

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 should provide a URL to the video.

Authors will be given the opportunity to provide a response to reviewer requests for clarifications before a final decision is made.

Important Dates:
Abstract Submission: April 18, 2017
Paper Submission: April 25, 2017
Author Response Period: May 29 - June 2, 2017
Author Notification: June 9, 2017

Submission link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=vissoft2017

Awards:
A Mate 9 smartphone will be awarded to a distinguished technical paper, sponsored by Huawei.

Special issue:
We plan to invite a selection of the technical papers accepted at VISSOFT 2017 to submit an extended version to a journal.

= 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 2017 can have their artifacts evaluated by the program committee. Positively evaluated artifacts will be reflected in the paper publication, presentation, and be formally announced during the conference. More information about the artifact evaluation process may be found on http://www.artifact-eval.org.

Important Dates:
Artifact submission: June 25, 2017
Artifact notification: July 15, 2017
Submission link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=vissoft2017

= NIER and Tool papers=

We accept two types of paper submissions: NIER contributions (New Ideas and Emerging Results) and Tool contributions. The NIER contributions describe work-in-progress and preliminary exciting results. Authors should include open questions and even provocative hypotheses to get early feedback on their research ideas or even support through new research collaborations. NIER papers have to be maximum 5 pages long (including bibliography). Tool contributions describe the design or actual utilization of software visualization tools, with a focus on relevant tool construction aspects or the use of the tool for gaining new insights. Authors should be prepared to demonstrate their tool at the conference. The submission may also contain a link to a screencast (e.g., YouTube video). Tools papers have to be maximum 5 pages long
(including bibliography).

Important Dates:
Paper submission date: June 23, 2017
Notification: July 24, 2017
Submission link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=vissoft2017

= Organizing Committee =

General Chair:
Kang Zhang, The University of Texas at Dallas, USA
http://www.utdallas.edu/~kzhang/

Program Co-Chairs:
Ivan Beschastnikh, University of British Columbia, Canada
https://www.cs.ubc.ca/~bestchai/
Andrea Mocci, UniversitàdellaSvizzeraitaliana, Switzerland
http://www.inf.usi.ch/postdoc/mocci/

Publicity Co-Chairs:
Cong Chen, Fujitsu Laboratories of America, USA
http://www.fujitsu.com/us/about/businesspolicy/tech/rd/research-staff/cong-chen.html
Bin Lin, UniversitàdellaSvizzeraitaliana, Switzerland
http://www.inf.usi.ch/phd/lin/

NIER/Tool Co-Chairs:
Bonita Sharif, Youngstown State University, USA
http://www.csis.ysu.edu/~bsharif/
Olga Baysal, Carleton University, Canada
http://olgabaysal.com

Artifact Evaluation Co-Chairs:
Anne Etien, ÉcolePolytechniqueUniversitaire de Lille, France
http://www.lifl.fr/~etien/
Omar Benomar, Yellow Pages / PagesJaunes and Université de Montréal, Canada
http://www-ens.iro.umontreal.ca/~benomaro/

Most Influential Paper Award Chairs:
Stephan Diehl, University of Trier, Germany
https://www.uni-trier.de/index.php?id=52170
Malcolm Munro, Durham University, UK
http://community.dur.ac.uk/malcolm.munro/

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Twitter: @IEEEVISSOFT