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Guidelines

Submission Guidelines

Authors can submit their work in the form of a complete paper or an abstract.

Complete papers can be submitted as a Regular Paper, representing completed and validated research, or as a Position Paper, portraying a short report of work in progress or an arguable opinion about an issue discussing ideas, facts, situations, methods, procedures or results of scientific research focused on one of the conference topic areas.

An abstract can be submitted to the Abstracts Track, either because the work done represents a very early stage of research, or because the authors wish to present to the audience the results of an already published paper. In the latter case the paper cannot be republished. However, the authors can attach to the abstract a complete paper or a video, if permission to share any such complementing materials is provided. The abstract itself can only have a limited number of characters.

Authors should submit a paper in English, carefully checked for correct grammar and spelling, addressing one or several of the conference areas or topics. Each paper should clearly indicate the nature of its technical/scientific contribution, and the problems, domains or environments to which it is applicable. The use of artificial intelligence (AI)–generated text in an article should be disclosed in the acknowledgements section of any paper submitted to this conference. The sections of the paper that use AI-generated text should include a citation to the AI system used to generate the text.

To facilitate the double-blind paper evaluation method, authors are kindly requested to produce and provide the paper WITHOUT any reference to any of the authors, including the authors’ personal details, the acknowledgments section of the paper and any other reference that may disclose the authors’ identity.

When submitting a complete paper please note that only original papers should be submitted. Authors are advised to read INSTICC's ethical norms regarding plagiarism and self-plagiarism thoroughly before submitting and must make sure that their submissions do not substantially overlap work which has been published elsewhere or simultaneously submitted to a journal or another conference with proceedings. Papers that contain any form of plagiarism will be rejected without reviews.

All papers must be submitted through the online submission platform PRIMORIS and should follow the instructions and templates that can be found under Guidelines and Templates. After the paper submission has been successfully completed, authors will receive an automatic confirmation e-mail.

Reviewing Process

Complete Papers

All reviews follow a double-blind process. All papers are subject to plagiarism analysis using a software tool prior to review.

All regular papers are reviewed by at least two reviewers, but usually by three or more, and rated considering their: Relevance, Originality, Technical Quality, Significance and Presentation;

The reviewers are also asked to answer a group of questions that may help the authors to improve the paper, should it be accepted, namely: Abstract and Introduction are adequate?, Needs more experimental results?, Needs comparative evaluation?, Improve critical discussion?, Figures are Adequate?, Conclusions/Future Work are convincing?, References are up-to-date and appropriate?, Paper formatting needs adjustment?, Improve English?

Finally, the reviewers can provide some free text observations which was given to the authors and also some free text private observations, made available only to the program chair. Conflicting reviews may require assignment of a new reviewer. In the end the program chairs decide. The author has a period for rebuttal, which triggers a workflow involving the chairs and the reviewers if necessary. All rebuttals are answered but decisions are final.

Position papers follow a similar process but the criteria used for classification are slightly different in order to account for the nature of these papers, i.e. speculative ideas and/or ongoing work not yet fully validated.

Abstracts

The submissions will be reviewed by a panel of experts, including the conference and program chairs. In order to ensure a proper and fair review of the abstracts, we encourage authors to submit abstracts with clear insights and background of the work, and to include complementing material that can help the panel understand its contribution and relevance to the conference. Complementing material could include, for example, previously published papers or videos related to the abstract, to enrich the abstract submission. All abstracts will be analyzed, however insufficient proof of scientific and/or novel contribution, as well as lack of background and grounds to understand what is being proposed, may lead to the rejection of an abstract.

In order to evaluate the technical quality, the submitted abstract should contain clear though summary indication regarding the data used for experiments, the exploited methods and the achieved results.


Conference Paper Formats, including Special Sessions and Workshops

Regular Papers

Submission: Regular Papers should be submitted ready for double-blind review (no authors identified), as pdf files with 10,000 to 50,000 characters (excluding white spaces), including references, tables, graphs and appendices. Submissions with less than 10,000 characters or more than 50,000 characters, may not be sent for review.

Acceptance: After a double-blind peer review, qualifying Regular Papers may be accepted as either Full Papers or Short Papers.

Presentation: Regular Papers classified as Full Papers are awarded a 25’ minutes slot for an oral presentation at the conference. Regular Papers classified as Short Papers are given either a 20’ minutes slot for an oral presentation or assigned to present at a Poster Session. Authors who have been assigned an oral presentation, either Full or Short, may however also choose to present at a Poster Session instead, should they prefer it.

Publication: Regular Papers accepted as Full Papers will be assigned a 25-page limit in the Conference Proceedings, while Regular Papers accepted as Short Papers have a 20-page limit. If absolutely necessary, authors may increase the total number of pages by a maximum of 4 extra pages, for an additional fee. The total number of pages to consider is the number obtained after the paper has been correctly formatted according to the appropriate template, including references, tables, graphs and appendices. The Conference Proceedings will be published by Springer, under an ISBN, and will include final versions of all accepted papers, adjusted to satisfy reviewers’ recommendations. They will be made available for online consultation at Springer Link.

Indexation: The proceedings will be abstracted/indexed in DBLP, Google Scholar, EI-Compendex, INSPEC, Japanese Science and Technology Agency (JST), Norwegian Register for Scientific Journals and Series, Mathematical Reviews, SCImago, Scopus and zbMATH. CCIS volumes are also submitted for the inclusion in ISI Proceedings. More information can be found here.



Position Papers

Submission: Position Papers should be submitted ready for double-blind review (no authors identified), as pdf files with 8,000 to 40,000 characters (excluding white spaces), including references, tables, graphs and appendices. Submissions with less than 8,000 characters or more than 40,000 characters, may not be sent for review.

Acceptance: After a double-blind peer review, qualifying Position Papers will be accepted as Short Papers.

Presentation: Position Papers are given either a 20’ minutes slot for an oral presentation or assigned to present at a Poster Session. Authors who have been assigned an oral presentation may however also choose to present at a Poster Session instead, should they prefer it.

Publication: Position Papers will be assigned a 20-page limit in the Conference Proceedings. If absolutely necessary, authors may increase the total number of pages by a maximum of 4 extra pages, for an additional fee. The total number of pages to consider is the number obtained after the paper has been correctly formatted according to the appropriate template, including references, tables, graphs and appendices. The Conference Proceedings will be published by Springer, under an ISBN, and will include final versions of all accepted papers, adjusted to satisfy reviewers’ recommendations. They will be made available for online consultation at Springer Link.

Indexation: The proceedings will be abstracted/indexed in DBLP, Google Scholar, EI-Compendex, INSPEC, Japanese Science and Technology Agency (JST), Norwegian Register for Scientific Journals and Series, Mathematical Reviews, SCImago, Scopus and zbMATH. CCIS volumes are also submitted for the inclusion in ISI Proceedings. More information can be found here.


Abstracts

Submission: Authors can submit a 1-page abstract and may include, as complementing material, a previously published paper or a video.

Acceptance: The submissions will be screened by a panel of experts, including the conference and program chairs and can be accepted as Short Papers. Acceptance will indicate, for each paper, also its form of presentation.

Presentation: Abstracts that bring an appropriate complementing material are eligible for oral or poster presentation; otherwise, they are eligible for poster presentation only. Oral presentations are given a 20’ minutes time slot. Authors who have been assigned an oral presentation may however choose to present at a Poster Session instead, should they prefer it.

Publication: Abstracts will be advertised in the conference program and in the conference book of abstracts (in the printed and digital version), but not published in the proceedings or included in any kind of Digital Library. Complementary materials will also not be published in the proceedings or included in any kind of Digital Library.

Indexation: Abstracts will not be indexed.


Schematic Summary

Guidelines
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