Call for Papers

LICS 2020 will be hosted in Beijing in the period 8–12 July 2020, in co-location with ICALP 2020.

The LICS Symposium is an annual international forum on theoretical and practical topics in computer science that relate to logic, broadly construed. We invite submissions on topics that fit under that rubric. Suggested, but not exclusive, topics of interest include:

automata theory, automated deduction, categorical models and logics, concurrency and distributed computation, constraint programming, constructive mathematics, database theory, decision procedures, description logics, domain theory, finite model theory, formal aspects of program analysis, formal methods, foundations of computability, games and logic, higher-order logic, lambda and combinatory calculi, linear logic, logic in artificial intelligence, logic programming, logical aspects of bioinformatics, logical aspects of computational complexity, logical aspects of quantum computation, logical frameworks, logics of programs, modal and temporal logics, model checking, probabilistic systems, process calculi, programming language semantics, proof theory, real-time systems, reasoning about security and privacy, rewriting, type systems and type theory, and verification.

Instructions to Authors

Authors are required to submit a paper title and a short abstract of about 100 words in advance of submitting the extended abstract of the paper. The exact deadline time on these dates is given by anywhere on earth (AoE).
Titles and Short Abstracts Due 6 January 2020
Full Papers Due 10 January 2020
Author Response Period 16–20 March 2020
Author Notification 10 April 2020
Conference 8–12 July 2020

Deadlines are firm; late submissions will not be considered. All submissions will be electronic via https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=lics2020.

Formatting instructions: Every full paper must be submitted in the ACM SIGPLAN Proceedings 2-column 10pt format and may be at most 12 pages, excluding references. The LaTeX style files are available from here.

The extended abstract must be in English and provide sufficient detail to allow the program committee to assess the merits of the paper. It should begin with a succinct statement of the issues, a summary of the main results, and a brief explanation of their significance and relevance to the conference and to computer science, all phrased for the non-specialist. Technical development directed to the specialist should follow. References and comparisons with related work must be included. (If necessary, detailed proofs of technical results may be included in a clearly-labeled appendix, to be consulted at the discretion of program committee members.) Submissions not conforming to the above requirements will be rejected without further consideration. Paper selection will be merit-based, with no a priori limit on the number of accepted papers. Papers authored or co-authored by members of the program committee are not allowed.

Results must be unpublished and not submitted for publication elsewhere, including the proceedings of other symposia or workshops. The program chair must be informed, in advance of submission, of any closely related work submitted or about to be submitted to a conference or journal. Authors of accepted papers are expected to sign copyright release forms. One author of each accepted paper is expected to present it at the conference.

LICS 2020 will use a lightweight double-blind reviewing process. Following this process means that reviewers will not see the authors' names or affiliations as they initially review a paper. The authors' names will then be revealed to the reviewers only once their reviews have been submitted.

To facilitate this process, submitted papers must adhere to the following:

Author names and institutions must be omitted and
References to the authors' own related work should be in the third person (e.g., not "We build on our previous work ..." but rather "We build on the work of ...").

The purpose of this process is to help the reviewers come to an initial judgment about the paper without bias, not to make it impossible for them to discover the authors if they were to try. Nothing should be done in the name of anonymity that weakens the submission, makes the job of reviewing the paper more difficult, or interferes with the process of disseminating new ideas. For example, important background references should not be omitted or anonymized, even if they are written by the same authors and share common ideas, techniques, or infrastructure. Authors should feel free to disseminate their ideas or draft versions of their paper as they normally would. For instance, authors may post drafts of their papers on the web or give talks on their research ideas.
Kleene Award for Best Student Paper

An award in honor of the late Stephen C. Kleene will be given for the best student paper(s), as judged by the program committee.
Special Issues

Full versions of up to three accepted papers, to be selected by the program committee, will be invited for submission to the Journal of the ACM. Additional selected papers will be invited to a special issue of Logical Methods in Computer Science.