Objectives and scope

In the last decades, we have witnessed a proliferation of approaches that integrate several modelling, verification and simulation techniques, facilitating more versatile and efficient analysis of software-intensive systems. These approaches provide powerful support for the analysis of different functional and non-functional properties of the systems, complex interaction of components of different nature as well as validation of diverse aspects of system behaviour. The iFM conference series is a forum for discussing recent research advances in the development of integrated approaches to formal modelling and analysis. The conference covers all aspects of the design of integrated techniques, including language design, verification and validation, automated tool support and the use of such techniques in software engineering practice. To credit the effort of tool developers, we use EAPLS artefact badging.

Areas of interest include but are not limited to:

Formal and semi-formal modelling notations
Combining formal methods with different performance, simulation and system analysis techniques
Program verification, model checking, and static analysis
Theorem proving, decision procedures and SAT/SMT solving
Runtime analysis, monitoring and testing
Program synthesis
Modelling, analysis and synthesis of cyber-physical, hybrid, embedded, probabilistic, distributed or concurrent systems
Abstraction and refinement
Model learning and inference
Approaches to integrating formal methods into software engineering practice or industry
Approaches to integrating formal methods into standardisation or certification processes
Formal methods for AI
Formal methods for explainability, and explainability of formal methods
Tools and case studies supporting the integration of formal methods

Paper Categories

iFM 2023 solicits high-quality papers reporting research results and/or experience reports related to the overall theme of formal methods integration.

We accept papers in the following categories:

(1) Regular papers (limit 16 pages) on

original scientific research results
tools, their foundation and evaluations
applications of formal methods, including rigorous evaluations

(2) Short papers (limit 6 pages) on

any subject of interest in the area of formal methods that can be described with sufficient detail within the page limit

All page limits exclude the references. Appendices may be included, but they will only be read by a reviewer at their discretion.

Regular and short papers must be original, unpublished, and not submitted for publication elsewhere. Papers will undergo a thorough review process. Submissions will be judged on the basis of significance, relevance, correctness, originality and clarity.

The submissions will be reviewed and selected for publication based on the above mentioned criteria as well as suitability to the conference’s technical program.
Submission guidelines

Submissions for all categories should be made using the iFM 2023 EasyChair site:

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ifm-2023

Submissions must be in PDF format, using the Springer LNCS style files.

Springer requires that authors should consult Springer’s authors’ guidelines and use their proceedings templates, either for LaTeX or for Word, for the preparation of their papers. Springer encourages authors to include their ORCIDs in their papers. After a paper is accepted, the corresponding author of each paper, acting on behalf of all of the authors of that paper, must complete and sign a Consent-to-Publish form. The corresponding author signing the copyright form should match the corresponding author marked on the paper. Once the files have been sent to Springer, changes relating to the authorship of the papers cannot be made.

The conference proceedings will be published in Springer’s Lecture Notes in Computer Science series. We will apply for a special issue of the Formal Aspects of Computing journal for extended versions of selected papers from iFM 2023, as well as a special issue of the Original Software Publication track in Science of Computer Programming (see Artifact Badging below).

All accepted papers must be presented at the conference. At least one author of each accepted paper must register to the conference by the early registration date.
EAPLS Artefact Badging

Reproducibility of experiments is crucial to foster an atmosphere of open, reusable and trustworthy research. To improve and reward reproducibility and to give more visibility and credit to the effort of tool developers in our community, authors of accepted papers will be invited to submit possible artefacts associated with their paper for evaluation, and based on the level of reproducibility they will be awarded one or more badges. See https://eapls.org/pages/artifact_badges/ for details. Artefact submission is optional and the result of the artefact evaluation will not alter the paper’s acceptance decision.

To credit the effort of tool developers, we plan to apply for a special issue of the Original Software Publication track in Science of Computer Programming (https://www.journals.elsevier.com/science-of-computer-programming/call-for-software/a-new-software-track-on-original-software-publications-science-of-computer-programming). Authors of selected artefacts will be invited to contribute to this issue.