Accepted Papers

  • Vincenzo Grassi, Raffaela Mirandola. The Tao way to anti-fragile software architectures: the case of mobile applications.
  •  Zheng Li. Long Live The Image: Container-Native Data Persistence in Production.
  • Maen Hammad, Rua’a Banat. Automatic Class Decomposition using Clustering. 

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The goal of the New and Emerging Ideas (NEMI) track at ICSA 2021 is to encourage the software architecture community to propose new software architecture research visions and ideas, which can potentially challenge the status quo of the software architecture discipline (research and practice), and point to new directions and opportunities.

This year, the NEMI track will be even more interactive than in previous years, featuring short presentations and rich discussion during the sessions, as well as an expert panel with the topic “Software Architecture in the COVID-19 Reality” that will include interaction with other participants. We are proud to announce our panelists:

  • Paola Inverardi, University of L’Aquila, Italy
  • Patricia Lago, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands
  • Nenad Medvidovic, University of Southern California, USA
  • Danny Weyns, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium

Important dates (AoE)

  • Abstracts (mandatory) due: Dec 09, 2020
  • Papers due:  Dec 16, 2020
  • Papers notification: Jan 22, 2021
  • Camera-ready due: Feb 19, 2021

Types of submissions

The ICSA 2021 NEMI track seeks the following types of contributions:

New Ideas (4 pages):

  • Visions or new directions supported by a strong and well-motivated scientific foundation or practical application;
  • Arguments or results that challenge established results or beliefs, providing evidence that calls for fundamentally new directions, opening up new research avenues or software architecture practices;
  • Radically new approaches, techniques, or theories that can bring new results to software architecture research or practice.

Emerging Results (4 pages):

  • Not yet fully mature research results, that may lack full validation but that still can stimulate discussions; papers should trigger discussion and raise awareness and reflection on specific topics, in research and/or industrial practice.

NEMI papers must clearly motivate and illustrate a rationale for changing current practice and/or research in software architecture. Evaluation results are not required for NEMI papers (but if such results exist, then they may be presented, if only to give the reviewers an insight into the evaluation plan). Strong argumentation and reasoning is expected to inspire the readers.

Moreover, NEMI submissions must include a section titled “Discussion” including some critical reflection that explicitly addresses relevant aspects for discussion during the NEMI session. These aspects include, for example, potential societal impact of the vision, ideas, and/or results proposed; alternatives and their pros and cons also in comparison with the proposal; aspects going beyond technical barriers that may affect the feasibility of the submitted proposal, and others.

Scope

NEMI provides a forum for innovative, thought-provoking insights in software architecture in order to accelerate the exposure of the community to early and ongoing yet promising and potentially inspiring innovations in industry and academia.

NEMI papers are not second-class ICSA research track papers. NEMI is a forum for first-class contributions that provide novel, soundly motivated directions, and emerging results in research and practice.

In principle, the track addresses the same software architecture topics of interest as those of the technical paper track. However, NEMI authors are encouraged to combine these topics in new ways, to establish connections to other fields outside of classical software architecture, push the boundaries of software architecture to new avenues, as well as to argue for the importance of software architecture research and practice in areas not explicitly listed.

Out of scope

A NEMI submission should not be just incremental results on existing research, nor disguised advertisements for previously published results, products, tools or methods, or experience reports. ICSA 2021 has several tracks and workshops where such work can be submitted.

Evaluation

All submissions will be evaluated in terms of the following criteria:

  • Value: the problem is worth exploring, ideally inspired by real-world use;
  • Impact: the potential for disruption of current practice and/or research;
  • Originality: new insights or ideas/visions;
  • Rationale: soundness of the justification, reasoning, and argumentation;
  • Evaluation: appropriate consideration of relevant literature and/or research evaluation to demonstrate originality, arguments, and limitations;
  • Quality: overall manuscript quality.

Formatting and Submission Instructions

All NEMI submissions must conform to the Author Instructions, and must not exceed four pages, including all text, references, appendices, and figures. No double-blind, but single-blind review will apply to NEMI papers. All papers are to be submitted electronically via EasyChair, by the submission deadline. Submissions must not have been published elsewhere and must not be under review or submitted for review elsewhere while under consideration for ICSA 2021 NEMI track.

Publication and Attendance

All accepted contributions will be published in ICSA 2021 Companion proceedings, and appear in IEEE Xplore Digital Library. At least one author of an accepted contribution is required to register and present the work at the conference.
Authors of accepted contributions will be requested to produce a short video presentation that will be watched by other participants during the sessions, prior to live discussions.

Organization

Track Chairs

  • Romina Spalazzese, Malmö University, Sweden
  • Javier Camara, University of York, UK

Program Committee

  • Nour Ali, Brunel University, UK
  • Thais Batista, Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN), Brazil
  • Martin Becker, Fraunhofer, Germany
  • Javier Camara, University of York, UK (Co-Chair)
  • Carlos E. Cuesta, Rey Juan Carlos University, Spain
  • Matthias Galster, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
  • Ilias Gerostathopoulos, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands
  • Pooyan Jamshidi, University of South Carolina, USA
  • Anne Koziolek, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany
  • Ivo Krka, Google, Switzerland
  • Nuno Laranjeiro, University of Coimbra, Portugal
  • Gabriel A. Moreno, Software Engineering Institute – Carnegie Mellon University, USA
  • Elisa Yumi Nakagawa, University of São Paulo, Brazil
  • Elena Navarro, University of Castilla La Mancha, Spain
  • Romina Spalazzese, Malmö University, Sweden (Co-Chair)
  • Chouki Tibermacine, University of Montpellier, France
  • Catia Trubiani, Gran Sasso Science Institute (GSSI), Italy
  • Jan Martijn van der Werf, Universiteit Utrecht, Netherlands

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For more information please contact the NEMI Track chairs:

  • Romina Spalazzese, Malmö University, Sweden – romina.spalazzese (at) mau.se
  • Javier Camara, University of York, UK – javier.camaramoreno (at) york.ac.uk