-== 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We solicit papers that present original, unpublished research results.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 date: May 2, 2017
Paper submission date: May 9, 2017
Author response period: May 29 - June 2, 2017
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, Università della Svizzera italiana, 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, Università della Svizzera italiana, 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, École Polytechnique Universitaire de Lille, France
http://www.lifl.fr/~etien/
Omar Benomar, Yellow Pages / Pages Jaunes 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