[ecoop-info] Call for Submissions: MoDELS 2018: ACM/IEEE 21st International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems

[Christoph Seidl]

Combined Call for Submissions (Papers, Workshops and Tutorials)

MoDELS 2018: ACM/IEEE 21st International Conference on Model Driven 
Engineering
Languages and Systems

Copenhagen, Denmark
October 14-19, 2018
http://www.modelsconference.org

Contributions related to all aspects of modeling, modeling languages and
model-driven engineering are cordially invited to the 21st edition of 
MoDELS,
in Copenhagen, Denmark 14-19 October 2018.

MoDELS is the premier conference series for model-driven software and 
systems
engineering. Since 1998, MoDELS has covered all aspects of modeling, from
languages and methods, to tools and applications. Attendees of MoDELS 
come from
diverse backgrounds, including researchers, academics, engineers and 
industrial
professionals. MoDELS 2018 is a forum for participants to exchange 
cutting-edge
research results and innovative practical experiences around modeling and
model-driven software and systems. This year’s edition will provide an
opportunity for the modeling community to further advance the foundations of
modeling, and come up with innovative applications of modeling in emerging
areas of cyber-physical systems, embedded systems, socio-technical systems,
cloud computing, big data, security, open source, and sustainability. We 
invite
you to join us at MoDELS 2018 and help shape the modeling methods and
technologies of the future!

------------------------------------------------

Call for Papers

Foundations Track Papers

We invite authors to submit high quality contributions describing 
significant,
original, and unpublished results in the following categories:

1. Technical Papers: Technical papers should describe innovative research in
modeling or model-driven engineering activities. Papers in this submission
category should describe a novel contribution to the field and should 
carefully
support claims of novelty with citations to the relevant literature.

Evaluation Criteria: Technical papers are evaluated on the basis of
originality, soundness, relevance, importance of contribution, strength of
validation, quality of presentation and appropriate comparison to 
related work.
Where a submission builds upon previous work of the author(s), the 
novelty of
the new contribution must be described clearly with respect to the previous
work. Technical papers need to discuss clearly how the results were 
validated
(e.g., formal proofs, controlled experiments, rigorous case studies, or
simulations). Authors are strongly encouraged to make the artifacts used for
the evaluation publicly accessible, e.g., through a Github repository or an
alternative that is likely to remain available. There will be an artifact
evaluation process, as discussed below.

2. New Ideas and Vision Papers: We solicit papers that present new ideas and
visions. Such papers may describe new, non-conventional model-driven
engineering research positions or approaches that depart from standard
practice. They can describe well-defined research ideas that are at an early
stage of investigation. They could also provide new evidence that common 
wisdom
should be challenged, present new unifying theories about existing modeling
research that provides novel insight or that can lead to the development 
of new
technologies or approaches, or apply modeling technology to radically new
application areas.

Evaluation Criteria: New ideas and vision papers will be assessed 
primarily on
their level of originality and potential for impact on the field in terms of
promoting innovative thinking. Hence, inadequacies in the 
state-of-the-art and
the pertinence, correctness, and impact of the idea/vision must be described
clearly, even though the new idea needs not be fully worked out, and a fully
detailed roadmap needs not be presented.


Practice and Innovation Track

The goal of this track is to fill the gap between foundational research in
modeling and model-driven engineering and industrial needs. We invite 
authors
from academia and industry to submit original contributions reporting on the
innovative application of MDE in industrial, government, or open-source
settings, as well as the development of innovative engineering solutions to
enable the use of modeling in such contexts. Examples include:
- Scalable and cost-effective methodologies and tools
- Industrial case studies with valuable lessons learned
- Experience reports providing novel insights

Each paper should provide clear take-away value by describing the 
context of a
problem of practical and industrial importance, and the application of 
modeling
that leads to a solution.
Evaluation Criteria: A paper in the P&I Track will be evaluated mainly 
from its
practical take-away, the potential impact of the findings. The paper should
discuss why the solution to the problem is innovative, effective, or 
efficient
and what likely practical impact it has or will have; it should provide a
concise explanation of the approach, techniques, and methodologies employed;
and explain the best practices that emerged, tools developed, and/or 
software
processes involved. Studies reporting on negative findings must provide a
thorough discussion of the potential causes of failure, and ideally a
perspective on how to solve them.


Topics of Interest

MoDELS 2018 seeks submissions on diverse topics related to modeling for
software and systems engineering, including, but not limited to:
- Evidence-based education research for curricular concerns on modeling 
topics.
- Collaborative modeling research to address global and team management 
issues
(e.g., browser-based and cloud-enabled collaboration research and tools).
- New paradigms, formalisms, applications, approaches, frameworks, or 
processes
for model-driven engineering.
- Modeling with, and for, new and emerging systems and paradigms such as
cyber-security, cyber-physical systems, the internet of things, cloud
computing, data analytics, big data, systems engineering, social media, 
devices
and services, mobile applications, open source software, sustainability and
modeling for social good.
- Development, use, and evolution of domain-specific modeling languages.
- Evaluation and comparison of modeling languages, techniques and tools.
- Evolution of general-purpose modeling languages and related standards.
- Definition of the syntax and semantics of modeling and model 
transformation
languages.
- Tools, meta-tools and language workbenches for model-driven engineering,
including model management aspects.
- Definition, usage, and analysis of generative and reengineering 
approaches.
- Integration of modeling languages and tools (hybrid multi-modeling 
approaches).
- Quality assurance (analysis, testing, verification) for functional and
nonfunctional properties of models and model transformations.
- Development of systems engineering and modeling-in-the-large concepts.
- Modeling in software engineering; applications of models to address 
general
software engineering challenges.
- Modeling for development challenges such as collaboration, scalability,
security, interoperability, adaptability, maintainability, dependability,
reuse, energy efficiency, etc.


Submission and Evaluation Process

The submission and evaluation process for MoDELS 2018 is similar to past 
MoDELS
conferences, with the specific details below.


Submission Process

Papers must be submitted electronically through the MoDELS 2018 EasyChair
submission web pages. The submission for Foundations and Practice & 
Innovation
tracks can be found at:

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=models2018

All papers—“Foundations”, “Practice and Innovation” and “New 
Ideas/Vision”—must
not exceed 10 pages (including figures and appendices, excluding 
references).
All papers may include 1 additional page for references. All submissions 
must
be in English. Submissions must adhere to the ACM formatting instructions
(specifically the sigconf template), which can be found at:

https://www.acm.org/publications/proceedings-template

Submissions that do not adhere to these limits or that violate the 
formatting
guidelines will be desk-rejected without review. Accepted papers will be
published in the conference proceedings published by ACM. Authors of best
papers from the conference will be invited to revise and submit extended
versions of the papers for publication in the Journal of Software and 
Systems
Modeling.


Review Process

Unlike previous years, the MoDELS 2018 review process will use a single 
phase
with no rebuttals. There will be an extended discussion phase monitored 
by one
or two Program Board members assigned to each paper. The Program Chairs will
also be heavily involved in monitoring discussions and reviews, to 
ensure that
quality reviews are produced.
All papers that conform to the submission guidelines will be 
peer-reviewed by
at least three members of the Program Committee. The Program Board will 
monitor
the reviews of papers assigned to them, to ensure that the reviews are
constructive and sufficiently detailed so that authors can both improve 
their
papers and understand the rationale behind final decisions. After 
reviews are
completed, the Program Board will lead a discussion phase on papers 
assigned to
them, in order to come up with recommendations. These recommendations 
will be
discussed at the Program Board meeting, to be held in early July 2018, 
in order
to come up with decisions on papers to be presented at the conference.
Authors of accepted papers will be invited to submit their accompanying
artifacts (e.g., software, datasets, proofs) to the Artifact Evaluation
process. The Artifact Evaluation process is run by a separate committee 
whose
task is to assess how the artifacts support the results presented in the
papers. Participation in the Artifact Evaluation process is optional and 
does
not affect the final decision regarding the papers. Papers that 
successfully go
through the Artifact Evaluation process will be rewarded with a seal of
approval printed on the paper themselves. The artifacts will be archived.

------------------------------------


Call for Tutorials

Following the tradition of previous conferences, MoDELS 2018 will host
tutorials as part of its satellite events on October 14 to 16, 2018.
Tutorials provide intensive courses on topics in the area of model-based
software and systems engineering ranging from modeling methodologies and
research methods through new modeling tools and technologies to thoughts 
on the
past, current, and future development of the modeling discipline.


Audience

Tutorials target an audience of practitioners, researchers (academic and
industrial), students, and developers familiar with, and already working 
with,
modeling techniques. The target audience typically has a strong interest in
Model-Driven Engineering (MDE), including work on improving and evolving
modeling languages (such as UML or DSLs), developing sophisticated MDE tool
support, and using MDE to develop / test / reverse / maintain complex 
systems.
Potential attendees may also be interested in how modeling has been applied
effectively in specialized domains (e.g., in the automotive industry), 
and in
learning about successful uses of MDE methods in real-world applications.


Topics

The following themes are examples of what is considered relevant for 
tutorials:
- Modeling techniques for specific domains (e.g., automobile, 
cyber-physical and
hybrid systems, ...)
- Modeling methodologies and model-oriented processes (e.g., for agile 
modeling
or modeling at scale)
- AI in modeling (including search*based approaches, machine learning, 
planning,
or flexible modeling)
- Presentation of new tools or new versions of old tools (e.g., modeling 
tools,
language workbenches, model transformation languages, model verification 
tools,
model execution tools)
- Dissemination of project results from industry-related projects
- Teaching of model-driven software development
- Research methods in MD* (Model-Driven Development (MDD), Model Driven
Engineering (MDE), Model Driven Software Development (MDSD), etc.)
- Modeling for re-engineering and legacy evolution
- Empirical studies in the context of modeling
- User experience in model-based software engineering
- Practical experiences of general interest
- General topics of interest to young researchers, like presentation 
skills or
research methodologies

Tutorials are intended to provide independent instructions on a topic of
relevance to the audience described above. Therefore, no sales-oriented
presentations will be accepted. Tutorials relating to commercial tools or
involving the use of commercial tools may be accepted, but will be 
subject to
closer scrutiny, including possible approval of presentation slides. 
Potential
presenters should keep in mind that there may be quite a varied audience,
including novice graduate students, seasoned practitioners, and specialized
researchers. Tutorial speakers should be prepared to cope with this 
diversity.


Proposal Contents

All submissions must be in English and adhere to the IEEE formatting
instructions
(https://www.ieee.org/conferences_events/conferences/publishing/templates.html).
The submission must include the following information in the indicated 
order:
- Title
- Presenters: Name, affiliation, contact information, and short bio.
- Authors of the proposal or tutorial material, who are not going to be
presenting, may be listed, but must be listed last with a footnote “Author
only; will not be presenting”.
- Abstract (maximum of 200 words)
- If accepted, the abstract will be used to advertise the tutorial. 
Thus, the
abstract should clearly highlight the goals of the tutorial and the 
skills that
participants will acquire.
- Keywords (at least 5 keywords)
- Proposed length: half-day (3 hours) or full-day (6 hours)
- Regular tutorials should be set up as half-day tutorials (3 hours). A 
proposal
for a full-day tutorial (6 hours) must be accompanied by a clear 
justification
of why 6 hours are necessary.
- Level of the tutorial: beginner/introduction or advanced
- Target audience and any prerequisite background required by attendees 
to be
able to follow the tutorial (beyond average modeling skills)
- Description of the tutorial and intended outline (maximum of 4 pages)
- Novelty of the tutorial
- List offerings of similar tutorials at previous editions of the MoDELS
conference or other conferences, and discuss the differences with respect to
the current proposal.
- Required infrastructure
- Declare any infrastructure that you would need for your tutorial 
besides a data
projector (e.g., flip charts, white boards). We will do our best 
together with
the local organizers to provide you with the needed infrastructure.
- Sample slides (minimum of 6 slides, maximum of 25 slides)
- Supplementary material (optional)


Submission

Proposals must be submitted electronically in PDF format through the link:

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=models2018

Select category “Tutorials”, by March 16, 2018 AoE. This is a hard 
deadline. No
extensions will be allowed.


Review Process

The Tutorials Selection Committee will review each submitted proposal to 
ensure
high quality, and select tutorials based on their anticipated benefit for
prospective participants and their fit within the tutorial program as a 
whole.
Factors to be considered also include: relevance, timeliness, 
importance, and
audience appeal; effectiveness of teaching methods; and past experience and
qualifications of the instructors. The goal will be to provide a diverse 
set of
tutorials that attracts a high level of interest among broad segments of the
MoDELS participants.


Compensation

As in previous years, participants will pay a single satellite fee, 
which will
cover both tutorials and workshops. This permits unifying the treatment of
workshops and tutorials, and it makes tutorials more attractive to 
attendees.
Under this scheme, tutorial presenters will not receive monetary 
compensation,
and will have to pay their own registration to the satellite events. By
submitting a tutorial proposal, the presenter accepts that there will be no
compensation for giving the tutorial if accepted and that the 
registration fees
for the instructors have to be funded by the instructors themselves. The
benefit to the presenter is the opportunity to extend their sphere of 
influence
to the MoDELS community.

------------------------------------


Call for Workshops

The MoDELS series of conferences is the premier venue for the exchange of
innovative technical ideas and experiences related to model-driven software
engineering. Topics covered by MoDELS include, among others, domain-specific
modeling languages, general-purpose modeling languages and standards,
model-driven engineering processes, model transformations, model-driven
software engineering tools and frameworks, as well as quality assurance for
functional and non-functional properties of models.
Following the tradition of previous conferences, MoDELS 2018 will host a 
number
of workshops during three days before the main conference. The workshops 
will
provide a collaborative forum for a group of typically 15 to 30 
participants to
exchange recent and/or preliminary results, to conduct intensive 
discussions on
a particular topic related to model-driven software engineering, and to
coordinate efforts between representatives of a technical community. 
They are
intended as a forum for lively discussion of innovative ideas, recent 
progress,
and practical experience on model-driven engineering for specific aspects,
problems or needs.
In 2018, MoDELS challenges the community to explore the use of modeling for
new and emerging systems, paradigms, and open problems, including (but not
limited to):
- cyber-physical and safety-critical systems
- cloud computing
- social media
- security
- open source
- analytics
- society and sustainability
- games and gamification
- human factors and accessibility

We encourage prospective workshop organizers to submit proposals for highly
interactive workshops focusing on areas related to modeling in general. Both
research-oriented and applied topics are welcome. The duration of each 
workshop
is either half a day or a full day.

Workshops are typically based on presenting peer-reviewed papers 
submitted to
the workshop. However, we also welcome workshops that do not intend to run a
paper submission process, but take a different format.


Workshop Proposal Guidelines

Your proposal must contain the following information:

General Information:
- Workshop title and name or acronym
- Organizers and primary contact (name/affiliation/email)
- Desired length of the workshop (half day or full day)
- Abstract (200 words), intended for the MoDELS 2018 website


Objectives and Scope:
- Motivation
- Objectives
- Topics of interest
- Intended audience
- Relevance to the MoDELS 2018 conference and the MoDELS community in 
general
(comments in favor of your application; if your workshop was at MoDELS 
2017 or
any of the former conferences, an argument why it should be held again)
- Previous events including, where applicable, a link to the website, the
number of submitted and accepted papers, and the number of attendees


Organization Details:
- Details on the organizers (150 words max), including relevant past 
experience
in workshop organization
- Workshop program committee (indicate whether already finalized or 
expected)


Workshop Format:
- Intended paper format (number of pages; types of papers, e.g., full 
papers,
work-in-progress papers, practitioners' reports, posters)
- Evaluation process
- Intended workshop format (including duration, number of presentations, and
planned keynotes)
- Number of expected participants (please make at least an educated guess).
Note: For workshops that have a different strategy for participant 
recruitment
than paper submissions, explain how you plan to attract participants.
- Specific requirements (e.g. equipment or room capacity)


Additional Material:
- If existent, URL of the workshop web page (or a draft of it)
- Draft of the workshop’s Call for Papers (CfP) that you intend to send 
out if
your workshop is accepted (around 1 page)


To ensure a proper coordination of the workshop paper submission 
deadlines with
those of the main conference, the following constraints have to be 
respected:
- Workshop website and CfP dissemination: May 10, 2018
- Workshop paper submission deadline: July 17, 2018
- Workshop paper notification to authors: August 17, 2018 (or before, but
STRICTLY NOT LATER, since the notification should be before the MoDELS early
registration deadline)
- Workshop paper camera ready version: August 21, 2018
- Workshop dates: October 14-16, 2018

Please note that the dates above are common across all workshops.


Submissions

Please ensure that you adhere to the workshop proposal guidelines above and
provide all of the requested information within at most 7 pages, 
including the
CfP draft. Submissions must adhere to the ACM formatting instructions
(specifically the sigconf template), which can be found at:

https://www.acm.org/publications/proceedings-template

Please submit your workshop proposal electronically as a PDF via 
EasyChair at:

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=models2018

until the workshop proposal deadline on March 03, 2018.


Proceedings

As last year, there will be joint workshop proceedings that include 
papers from
all workshops. The proceedings will be published by CEUR 
(http://ceur-ws.org).

For each workshop, the joint proceedings will include:
- An opening message from the organizers, including, if applicable, the 
workshop
program committee
- All peer-reviewed papers presented in the workshop (papers should have 
at least
5 pages in LNCS format, we propose page limits of 5 pages for short 
papers and
10 pages for full papers)
- Abstracts of invited talks

Further details will be communicated to the organizers of accepted 
workshops at
the time of notification.

------------------------------------------------

Important Dates

Papers (Foundations and P&I)
- Fri 27 April 2018, Abstract submission
- Fri 4 May 2018, Paper submission
- Thu 5 July 2018, Author notification
- Sat 21 July 2018, Camera Ready Due

Tutorials proposals
- Fri 16 March 2018, Submission
- Fri 13 April 2018, Notification


Workshop proposals
- Sat 3 March 2018, Submission
- Fri 13 April 2018, Notification

Please note that:
- Abstract submission is mandatory for papers
- All deadlines are hard. No extensions will be granted.
- All dates are according to time zone "Anywhere on Earth", i.e., UTC-12
- All accepted papers must be presented by an author who is registered as a
"Regular" participant (student presenters must register as a Regular
participant).

For more information about the evaluation process, specific instructions for
submission as well as the other tracks for MoDELS 2018, please visit
http://www.modelsconference.org/

-----------------------------------------


Organization

General Chair
Andrzej Wasowski, IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Foundations Track Chair
Richard Paige, University of York, UK

Practice and Innovation Track Chair
Øystein Haugen, Østfold University College, Norway

Tutorial Co-Chairs
Zinovy Diskin, McMaster University, Canada
Steffen Zschaler, King's College London, UK

Workshops Co-Chairs
Regina Hebig, University of Gothenburg | Chalmers, Sweden
Thorsten Berger, University of Gothenburg | Chalmers, Sweden

Artifacts Evaluation Chairs
Vadim Zaytsev, Raincode, Belgium
Thomas Degueule, CWI, Netherlands

Proceedings Chairs
Daniel Strüber, Uni Koblenz Landau, Germany
Önder Babur, TU Eindhoven, Netherlands

Sponsorship Chairs
Francis Bordelau, CMind, Canada
Sebastian Voss, fortiss, Germany

Local Arrangements Chair
Ahmad Salim Al-Sibahi, IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Web Chair
Stefan Stanciulescu, IT University of Copenhagen (Denmark) | ABB Corporate
Research Center (Switzerland)

Social Media Chairs
Thanos Zolotas, University of York, UK
Andreas Wortmann, RWTH Aachen, Germany

Publicity Chairs
Asia: Yingfei Xiong, Peking University, China
Australia and Oceania: Georg Grossmann, University of South Australia,
Australia
Europe: Christoph Seidl, TU Braunschweig, Germany
Latin America: Kelly Garces Pernett, Universidad de los Andes, Colombia
North America: Eugene Syriani, University of Montreal, Canada

Twitter: @modelsconf

-- 
Dr.-Ing. Christoph Seidl
Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter
Institut für Softwaretechnik und Fahrzeuginformatik
Technische Universität Braunschweig

Tel.:(+49) 531 391-2296

E-Mail: c.seidl at tu-braunschweig.de
Skype: christoph.seidl.tud

Besucheradresse:
Raum IZ 417 (TU Braunschweig)
Informatikzentrum
Mühlenpfordtstr. 23
38106 Braunschweig

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