Early Research Achievement (ERA) Track

The goal of the Early Research Achievements (ERA) track is to provide researchers and practitioners with a forum for presenting great, promising ideas in early stages of research. Ideally, ICPC ERA track seeks papers challenging the status quo of program comprehension with new research directions and provocative ideas. ERA track is the perfect place for a paper that aims at setting the agenda for a new line of research and a series of future papers!

In principle, the track addresses the same topics of interest as those of the technical research paper track. ERA submissions are intended to describe a single and well-defined idea at an early stage of investigation. As opposed to regular research papers, ERA papers are not intended to serve as a vehicle for the dissemination of research results. Submissions to the ERA track should describe research in progress. Authors of contributions to other tracks are welcome to also submit a paper to the ERA track if a specific aspect of their research meets the goal of the track. Ideally, ERA authors will combine research topics in new ways, to establish connections to other fields outside of classical program comprehension, as well as to argue for the importance of program comprehension research in areas not explicitly listed.

The submissions should clearly focus on the new proposed ideas or the emerging results, their impact on the field at large, and future research directions. An ERA paper is not expected to have a solid and complete evaluation as in the main research track. Naturally, preliminary results providing initial support for the proposed ideas claimed are welcome. Papers submitted to the ERA track must not have been accepted previously for publication or submitted for review to another conference, journal, or book.

Format
For the formatting and style guideline more information is available on ICSE 2013 web site (http://2013.icse-conferences.org/content/submission-guidelines). Submissions must be four-page long, including all text, references, appendices, and figures. They must be submitted electronically as PDF files via Easychair at https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=icpc2013tracks and they should address the following additional requirements:
Must explicitly answer the following questions in the submission: What is the new idea? Why is it new? What is the single most related paper by the same author(s)?
By others? What feedback do the authors expect from the forum? Addressing these questions in explicit, distinct sections is strongly recommended.
Must not have been previously published, nor be under consideration for publication, elsewhere.
Review and Evaluation Criteria
ERA papers will be reviewed by at least three members of the ERA Program Committee. Submissions will be evaluated on the basis of their originality, importance of contribution, soundness, evaluation (if available), quality and consistency of presentation, and appropriate comparison to related work. Special emphasis will be put on the originality and timeliness of the proposed contribution, and even though a full evaluation of the proposed ideas is welcomed, it is not required.
Publication and Presentation
Upon notification of acceptance, all authors of accepted papers will be asked to complete an IEEE Copyright form and will receive further instructions for preparing their camera-ready versions. At least one author of the paper must register and present the paper at the conference; otherwise the paper will be excluded from both the program and the proceedings. All accepted papers will be published in the conference electronic proceedings, which will also be available in the IEEE Digital Library. The papers will be presented in a formal setting. More details on the presentations will follow the notifications.
To add some additional incentive, we will provide the Most Promising Idea (MPI) award to recognize the paper that present the most promising idea in inspiring a new line of research and a series of future papers.

*** IMPORTANT DATES ***
Submission Deadline: March 22nd, 2013
Acceptance Notification: April 19th, 2013
Camera-ready Copy Deadline: April 29th, 2013

Track Co-Chairs
Mark Grechanik, University of Illinois, Chicago, USA
Rocco Oliveto, University of Molise, Italy

ERA Program Committee Members
Alberto Bachelli, University of Lugano, Switzerland
Alessandro Marchetto, FIAT research center, Italy
Bonita Sharif, Youngstown State University, USA
Brian Robinson, ABB Research, USA
Christoph Csallner, University of Texas at Arlington, USA
Christoph Treude, McGill University, Canada
David Lo, Singapore Management University, Singapore
Earl Barr, University College London, UK
Gerardo Canfora, University of Sannio, Italy
Giacomo Ghezzi, University of Zurich, Switzerland
Jens Krinke, University College London, UK
Nikolaos Tsantalis, Concordia University, Canada
Radu Marinescu, Technical University of Timisoara, Romania
Scott Grant, Queen's University, Canada
Sonia Haiduc, Wayne State University, USA
Suresh Thummalapenta, IBM Research, India
Venera Arnaoudova, Ecole Polytechnique of Montreal, Canada
William G. J. Halfond, University of Southern California, USA