# ACSOS 2021 - Call For Papers

2nd IEEE International Conference on
Autonomic Computing & Self-Organizing Systems

- 27 September -- 1 October 2021, Washington, DC, USA
- http://2021.acsos.org
- https://twitter.com/ACSOSconf


## Important Dates

- Abstract submission deadline: April 30th, 2021 (EXTENDED)
- Paper submission deadline: May 7th, 2021 (EXTENDED)
- Notification to authors: June 25th, 2021
- Camera ready: August 13th, 2021
- ACSOS Conference: September 27th -- October 1st, 2021

All times in Anywhere on Earth (AoE) timezone.

## Goals and Mission

The goal of the IEEE International Conference on Autonomic Computing and Self-Organizing Systems (ACSOS) is to provide a forum for sharing the latest research results, ideas and experiences in autonomic computing, self-adaptation and self-organization. ACSOS was founded in 2020 as a merger of the IEEE International Conference on Autonomic Computing (ICAC) and the IEEE International Conference on Self-Adaptive and Self-Organizing Systems (SASO).

Emerging large-scale systems (including data centers, cloud computing, smart cities, cyber-physical systems, sensor networks, and embedded or pervasive environments) are becoming increasingly complex, heterogeneous, and difficult to manage. The challenges of designing, controlling, managing, monitoring, and evolving such complex systems in a principled way led the scientific community to look for inspiration in diverse fields, such as biology, biochemistry, physics, complex systems, control theory, artificial intelligence, and sociology. To address these challenges novel modeling and engineering techniques are needed that help to understand how local behavior and global behavior relate to each other. Such models and practices are a key condition for understanding, controlling, and designing the emergent behavior in autonomic and self-adaptive systems.

The mission of ACSOS is to provide an interdisciplinary forum for researchers and industry practitioners to address these challenges to make resources, applications, and systems more autonomic, self-adaptive, and self-organizing. ACSOS provides a venue to share and present their experiences, discuss challenges, and report state-of-the-art and in-progress research. The conference program will include technical research papers, in-practice experience reports, vision papers, posters, demos, and a doctoral symposium.

## Scope

We invite novel contributions related to the fundamental understanding of autonomic computing, self-adaption and self-organization along with principles and practices of their engineering and application. The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

* Autonomic and Self-* system properties: robustness; resilience; efficient resource management; stability; anti-fragility; diversity; self-reference and reflection; emergent behavior; computational awareness and self-awareness;
* Autonomic and Self-* systems theory: bio-inspired and socially-inspired paradigms and heuristics; theoretical frameworks and models; languages and formal methods; queuing and control theory; requirement and goal expression techniques; uncertainty as a first class entity;
* Autonomic and Self-* systems engineering: reusable mechanisms and algorithms; design patterns; programming languages; architectures; operating systems and middlewares; testing and validation methodologies; runtime models; techniques for assurance; platforms and toolkits; multi-agent systems;
* Autonomic and Self-* systems practice: case studies from industry, experimental setups and data sets, experience reports with established autonomic and self-* software;
* Data-driven management: data mining; machine learning; data science and other statistical techniques to analyze, understand, and manage the behavior of complex systems or establishing self-awareness;
* Mechanisms and principles for self-organisation and self-adaptation: inter-operation of self-* mechanisms; evolution, logic, and learning; addressing large-scale and decentralized system;
* Socio-technical self-* systems: human and social factors; visualization; crowdsourcing and collective awareness;
* Autonomic and self-* concepts applied to hardware systems: self-* materials; self-construction; reconfigurable hardware, self-* properties for quantum computing;
* Convergence of artificial intelligence, cloud, and Internet of Things: moving artificial intelligence to the edge, collective decision processes, in-network learning, distributed reinforcement learning;
* Self-adaptive cybersecurity: intrusion detection, malware attribution, zero-trust networks and blockchain-based approaches, privacy in self-* systems;
* Cross disciplinary research: approaches that draw inspiration from complex systems, artificial intelligence, physics, chemistry, psychology, sociology, biology, and ethology.

We invite research papers applying autonomic and self-* approaches to a wide range of application areas, including (but not limited to):

* smart environments: -grids, -cities, -homes, and -manufacturing;
* Internet of things and cyber-physical systems;
* robotics, autonomous vehicles, and traffic management;
* cloud (including serverless), fog, edge computing and data centers;
* hypervisors, containerization services, orchestration, operating systems, and middleware;
* biological and bio-inspired systems.


Note that separate calls for Poster, Demo, and In-Practice Report Submissions will also be issued, as well as a call for participation in the Doctoral Symposium.

## Submission Instructions

Research papers (up to 10 pages including images, tables, and references) should present novel ideas in the cross-disciplinary research context described in this call, motivated by problems from current practice or applied research.

Experience Reports (up to 10 pages including images, tables, and references) cover innovative implementations, novel applications, interesting performance results and experience in applying recent research advance to practical situations on any topics of interest.

Vision Papers (up to 6 pages including images, tables, and references) introduce ground-shaking, provocative, and even controversial ideas; discuss long term perspectives and challenges; focus on overlooked or underrepresented areas, and foster debate.

All submissions must indicate a primary and (optionally) a secondary topic area from the following list:

* RM: Resource Manargement in Data Centers and Cloud Computing
* CPS: Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) and Internet of Things (IoT)
* SOSA: Theory and Practice of Self-Organization, Self-Adaptation, and Organic Computing
* ENG: Software and Systems Engineering for Autonomic and Self-Organizing Systems
* SYS: Systems theory for Autonomic and Self-Organizing Systems
* DATA: Data-Driven Approaches to Autonomic and Self-Organizing Systems Analysis and Management
* NEW: Emerging Computing Paradigms
* SOC: Socio-technical Autonomic and Self-Organizing Systems
* LANG: Languages and Formal Methods for Autonomic and Self-Organizing Systems
* COG: Self-Aware, Reflective, and Cognitive Computing
* APP: Application Areas for Autonomic and Self-Organizing Systems such as Autonomous Vehicles, Smart Cities, Swarms, etc.
* REL: Assurances, security, resilience, and reliability of Autonomic and Self-Organizing Systems
* CROSS: Cross-disciplinary research on e.g., complex systems, control theory, artificial intelligence, chemistry, psychology, sociology, and biology

All submissions are required to be formatted according to the standard IEEE Computer Society Press proceedings style guide: (https://www.ieee.org/conferences/publishing/templates.html).
Papers are submitted electronically in PDF format through the ACSOS 2021 conference management system: (https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=acsos21).

Research papers and experience reports will be included in the conference proceedings that will be published by IEEE Computer Society Press and made available as a part of the IEEE Digital Library. Vision papers will be part of a separate proceedings volume (the ACSOS Companion).

As per the standard IEEE policies, all submissions should be original, i.e., they should not have been previously published in any conference proceedings, book, or journal and should not currently be under review for another archival conference. We would like to also highlight IEEE’s policies regarding plagiarism and self-plagiarism: (https://www.ieee.org/publications/rights/plagiarism/id-plagiarism.html).
Where relevant and appropriate, accepted papers will also be encouraged to participate in the Demo or Poster Sessions.

## Review Criteria

Research papers should highlight both theoretical and empirical contributions, substantiated by formal analysis, simulation, experimental evaluations, or comparative studies. Appropriate references must be made to related work. Due to the cross-disciplinary nature of the ACSOS conference, we encourage papers to be intelligible and relevant to researchers who are not members of the same specialized sub-field. Moreover, research papers should provide an indication of the real-world relevance of the problem that is solved, including a description of the domain, and an evaluation of performance, usability, and/or comparison to alternative approaches.

Experience reports should provide insights into any aspect of design, implementation or management of self-* systems that would be of benefit to practitioners and the ACSOS community.

Vision Papers should introduce innovative, risky, visionary, and provocative ideas, spotlighting overlooked areas, raising controversial points, and exploring cross-disciplinary contaminations.

All submissions will be rigorously peer-reviewed and evaluated based on the quality of their technical contribution, originality, soundness, significance, presentation, understanding of the state of the art, and overall quality.

We intend to continue the tradition of giving the best papers of the conference an opportunity to publish an extended version in a special issue of ACM Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems (TAAS).
The Karsten Schwan Best Paper Award will be awarded to a selected paper.


## (NEW!!) Artifact Evaluation program

For the first time, ACSOS introduces an artifact evaluation program. To improve reproducibility of results, authors of accepted papers with a computational component are invited to submit their code and/or their data to an optional artifact evaluation process. A dedicated committee will be in charge of reproducing the results presented in the accepted papers. Participation in the program is OPTIONAL and does not impact the paper acceptance in any way. The best artifacts will be awarded the IEEE ACSOS Best Software Artifact Award. Artifacts that are successfully reproduced will be highlighted in the conference program, and they will feature in the corresponding camera ready paper a badge of reproducibility.
For more information, please refer to the ACSOS 2021 call for artifacts.

## Demos & Posters

Posters provide a forum for authors to present their work in an informal and interactive setting. They allow authors and interested participants to engage in discussions about their work. Demonstration should present an existing tool or research prototype. Authors are expected to perform a live demonstration on their own hardware during the poster and demonstration session. Contributions will be collected in ACSOS Companion Proceedings, published by IEEE Computer Society Press, and made available as a part of the IEEE Digital Library.
For more information, please refer to the ACSOS 2021 call for posters and demos.

## Workshops & Tutorials

ACSOS workshops will provide a meeting place for presenting novel ideas in a less formal and possibly more focused way than the conferences themselves. Their aim is to stimulate and facilitate active exchange, interaction, and comparison of approaches, methods, and ideas. Contributions will be collected in ACSOS Companion Proceedings, published by IEEE Computer Society Press, and made available as a part of the IEEE Digital Library.
For more information, please refer to the ACSOS 2021 call for workshops and tutorials.

## Doctoral Symposium

The Doctoral Symposium provides an international forum for PhD students working in ACSOS-related research fields to present their work to a diverse audience of leading experts in the field, to gain both insightful feedback and discussion points around their research as well as the invaluable experience of presenting new research to an international audience. Contributions will be collected in ACSOS Companion Proceedings, published by IEEE Computer Society Press, and made available as a part of the IEEE Digital Library.
For more information, please refer to the ACSOS 2021 Doctoral Symposium call for participation.

## ACSOS in Practice: Accelerating Convergence: between Academia & Industry (ACAI)

ACAI@ACSOS features short vision talks and opportunities for researchers to brainstorm potential collaborations. We ask ALL ACAI attendees to submit information about their interests, qualifications and visions for ACAI.
Contributions will be collected in ACSOS Companion Proceedings, published by IEEE Computer Society Press, and made available as a part of the IEEE Digital Library.
For more information, please refer to the ACAI@ACSOS2021 call for papers.

## ACSOS mailing list

- acsos@lists.uni-wuerzburg.de -- https://lists.uni-wuerzburg.de/mailman/listinfo/acsos