(please note the deadlines for extended abstracts are different from those stated above)

The 18th International Conference on the Integration of Constraint Programming, Artificial Intelligence, and Operations Research will be held in Vienna, Austria, July 5th-July 8th, 2021.

The aim of the conference is to bring together interested researchers from Constraint Programming (CP), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Operations Research (OR) to present new techniques or applications and to provide an opportunity for researchers in one area to learn about techniques in the others. A main objective of this conference series is also to give these researchers the opportunity to show how the integration of techniques from different fields can lead to interesting results on large and complex problems. Therefore, papers that actively combine, integrate, or contrast approaches from more than one of the areas are especially solicited. High quality papers from a single area are also welcome, if they are of interest to other communities involved. Application papers showcasing CP/AI/OR techniques on novel and challenging applications or experience reports on such applications are strongly encouraged.

The program committee invites submissions that include but are not limited to the following topics:
* Inference and relaxation methods: constraint propagation, cutting planes, global constraints, graph algorithms, dynamic programming, Lagrangian and convex relaxations, heuristic functions based on constraint relaxation.
* Search methods: branch and bound, intelligent backtracking, incomplete search, randomized search, portfolios, column generation, Benders decompositions or any other decomposition methods, local search, meta-heuristics.
* AI and Machine Learning techniques applied to solve optimization and Operations Research problems.
* Integration methods: solver communication, model transformations and solver selection, parallel and distributed solving, combining machine learning with combinatorial optimization.
* Modeling methods: comparison of models, symmetry breaking, uncertainty, dominance relationships.
* Innovative applications of CP/AI/OR techniques.
* Implementation of CP/AI/OR techniques and optimization systems.

Submissions are of two types: regular papers (submitted for publication and presentation) and extended abstracts (submitted for presentation only).

This year’s conference will, as last year, give a distinguished paper award and a student paper award.

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INSTRUCTIONS FOR REGULAR PAPERS

Regular papers should present original unpublished work and can be of two types:
* long papers (at most 15 pages plus references)
* short papers (at most 8 pages plus references)

Both long and short papers will undergo rigorous review and are subject to the same criteria of quality. Both types are also eligible for distinguished paper or student paper award. Short papers are particularly encouraged for interesting and novel work in progress, for which the practical or theoretical relevance is not yet fully identified.

The conference proceedings will be published in the Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science series. Authors should consult Springer’s authors’ guidelines and use their proceedings templates, either for LaTeX or for Word, for the preparation of their papers. Springer encourages authors to include their ORCIDs in their papers. In addition, the corresponding author of each paper, acting on behalf of all of the authors of that paper, must complete and sign a Consent-to-Publish form. The corresponding author signing the copyright form should match the corresponding author marked on the paper. Once the files have been sent to Springer, changes relating to the authorship of the papers cannot be made.

Submission schedule for regular papers (both long and short):
Abstracts: January 21st, 2021 (anywhere on Earth: AoE)
Full papers: January 28th, 2021 (AoE)
Rebuttal Phase: February 25th-March 2nd, 2021
Notification: March 13th, 2021
Camera-ready version: March 27th, 2021 (AoE)

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INSTRUCTIONS FOR EXTENDED ABSTRACTS

Extended abstracts should be 1 or 2 pages in length and may present preliminary work or work already published in other outlets. The extended abstracts are submitted for presentation only (if accepted), and will not be formally published in the LNCS conference volume. A collection of the accepted extended abstracts will be published on the conference website. A submission representing work submitted or published in another outlet should state that outlet. Extended abstracts will be reviewed to ensure appropriateness for the conference.

Submission schedule for extended abstracts:
Abstract: March 3, 2021 (AoE)
Notification: April 4th, 2021

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SUBMISSION PROCESS

All papers are to be submitted electronically in PDF format by following the instructions at the URL
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=cpaior2021

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QUESTIONS

For any queries on the submission process, please contact the Program Chair Peter J. Stuckey at:
cpaior2021@dbai.tuwien.ac.at