The goal of the New and Emerging Ideas (NEMI) track at ICSA 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.
The ICSA 2022 NEMI track seeks the following types of contributions:

New Ideas

  • 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

  • Not yet fully mature research results, which may lack full validation but that clearly point to important scientific novelty or gaps, and that can stimulate reflection. Papers should trigger discussion and raise awareness and reflection on specific topics in research and/or 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 insights into the evaluation plan). Strong argumentation and reasoning is expected to inspire the readers.
Moreover, NEMI submissions must include a section titled “Discussion” including critical reflection that explicitly addresses relevant aspects for discussion during the conference. 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 of NEMI Track

NEMI provides a forum for innovative, thought-provoking insights in software architecture to accelerate the exposure of the community to early and ongoing yet promising and potentially inspiring innovations in industry and academia.
A NEMI track paper is not just a scaled-down version of an ICSA research track paper. The NEMI track is reserved for first class, top quality technical contributions.
In principle, the track addresses the same software architecture topics of interest as those of the research track. However, NEMI authors are encouraged to combine those 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 2022 has several tracks and workshops where such work can be submitted.

Evaluation

Each submission will be reviewed and evaluated in terms of the following quality 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; and
  • Quality: overall manuscript quality.

Formatting and Submission

All NEMI submissions must conform to the Author Instructions and must not exceed 5 pages, including all text, references, appendices, and figures. No double-blind, but single-blind review will apply to NEMI papers. All papers must 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 2022 NEMI track.

Important dates

Abstract submission: December 1st, 2021
Full paper submission: December 8th, 2021
Notification of acceptance: January 14th, 2022
Camera ready paper submission: January 27th, 2022
Notes: All deadlines are 23:59h AoE (anywhere on Earth)

Publication and Attendance

All accepted contributions will be published in ICSA 2022 Companion proceedings and will 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 can be watched by other participants during the sessions, prior to live discussions.

Organization

Track Chairs

Patricia Lago, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Elisa Yumi Nakagawa, University of São Paulo, Brazil

Program Committee

  • Nour Ali, Brunel University, UK
  • Pablo Antonino, Fraunhofer IESE, Germany
  • Paris Avgeriou, University of Groningen, Netherlands
  • Claudia Ayala, Technical University of Catalunya, Spain
  • Nelly Bencomo, Aston University, UK
  • Barbora Buhnova, Masaryk University, Czechia
  • Javier Camara, University of York, UK
  • Rafael Capilla, Rey Juan Carlos University, Spain
  • Laurence Duchien, University of Lille, France
  • Neil Ernst, University of Victoria, Canada
  • Nelly Condori Fernandez, University of Castilla La Mancha, 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
  • Philippe Kruchten, University of British Columbia, Canada
  • Ivo Krka, Sportening, Croatia
  • Nuno Laranjeiro, University of Coimbra, Portugal
  • Nabor Mendonça, University of Fortaleza, Brazil
  • Elena Navarro, University of Castilla La Mancha, Spain
  • Claudia Raibulet, University Milano-Biccoca, Italy
  • Romina Spalazzese, Malmö University, Sweden
  • Catia Trubiani, Gran Sasso Science Institute, Italy
  • Danny Weyns, Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium
  • Jan Martijn van der Werf, Utrecht University, Netherlands