# SEAMS 2021 - Call for Papers

The 16h International Symposium on Software Engineering for Adaptive and Self-Managing Systems (SEAMS)

Madrid, Spain

May 23-24, 2021

https://conf.researchr.org/home/seams-2021

Co-located withthe 43rd International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2021)

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IMPORTANT DATES (Preliminary)

* Abstract submission: Friday 15 January 2021

* Paper submission: Friday 22 January 2021

* Notification: Monday 1st March 2021

* Camera-ready submission: Friday 22 March 2021

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SCOPE

Modern and emerging software systems, such as industrial Internet of Things, Cyber-Physical Systems, cloud and edge computing, robotics, and smart environments have to operate without violating their quality requirements. Self-adaptation and self-management enable these systems to adapt themselves at runtime to preserve and optimize their operation in the presence of uncertain changes in their operating environment, resource variability, evolving user needs, attacks, intrusions, and faults.

Approaches to augment software and software-controlled systems with self-managing and self-adaptive capabilities are an important area of research and development, offering solutions that leverage advances in fields such as software architecture, fault-tolerant computing, programming languages, run-time program analysis and verification, among others. Additionally, research in this field is informed by related areas such as control systems, machine learning, artificial intelligence, agent-based systems, and biologically inspired computing. SEAMS focuses on applying software engineering to these approaches, including methods, techniques, processes and tools that can be used to support self-* properties, like, self-protection, self-healing, self-optimization, and self-configuration.

The objective of SEAMS is to bring together researchers and practitioners from academia, industry and government, to investigate, discuss, examine and advance the fundamental principles, the state of the art, and the solutions addressing critical challenges of engineering self-adaptive and self-managing systems.

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TOPICS OF INTEREST

All topics related to engineering self-adaptive and self-managing systems, including:

Foundational Concepts

Self-* properties
Understanding and taming uncertainty
Runtime models and variability
Mixed-initiative and human-in-the-loop systems
Situational awareness
Ethical challenges of self-adaptive systems

Engineering Strategies

Control theory
Online analysis and planning
Decentralized control
Automatic synthesis techniques
AI techniques
Search-based techniques and learning
Simulation

Engineering Activities

Domain/environment analysis techniques
Requirements elicitation techniques
Architecture and design techniques
Verification and validation activities & frameworks
Systematic reuse (patterns, viewpoints, reference architectures, code, etc.)
Instrumentation of legacy systems (probing and effecting)
Processes and methodologies

Languages

Formal notations for modeling and analyzing self-* properties
Domain-specific language support for self-adaptation
Programming language support for self-adaptation

Application Areas

Industrial Internet of Things
Cyber-physical systems
Cloud, fog and edge computing
Bioengineering
Robotics
Smart environments
Smart user interfaces
Privacy and security

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COMMUNITY DEBATE

One of the recurring discussions within the community is the topic of handling unanticipated changes in self-adaptive systems. To foster our understanding of this topic, SEAMS 2021 will include a debate where participants can take a position either in favour or against the statement “handling unanticipated changes is the ultimate challenge for self-adaptation.” The debate at the symposium will have an adjudicator and two sides, respectively in favour and against the statement. The idea is to have a vote at the end from the audience to decide who was more convincing. Members of the audience can ask questions, and both sides need to answer those questions.

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TYPES OF PAPERS

SEAMS 2021 solicits the following types of papers:

* Long papers (10 pages main text, inclusive of figures, tables, appendices, etc.; plus references up to two additional pages): papers offering novel and mature research contributions, including:

Technical papers that clearly describe an innovative and original technical contribution.
Empirical study that evaluates or compares existing techniques or derives relevant findings using a research method (experiment, survey, case study, grounded theory, …).
Literature review on a research topic in the field.

Authors of long papers are encouraged to submit their supplementary material for recognition of artifacts that are functional, reusable, available, replicated, or reproduced. Accepted long papers whose supplementary material has been evaluated positively will receive corresponding artifact badges. To submit supplementary material, an extra one page abstract (not included in the proceedings) should be attached to the submitted long paper, which describes the material, provides information to access the material, supports the evaluation of the material, and justifies why the material deserves the badges the authors are applying for.

* Short papers (6 pages + 1 page references): papers that have smaller scope and/or contribution. This type of papers also includes:

New Ideas and Emergent Results (NIER) papers, which describe novel and promising ideas and/or techniques that are in an early stage of development.
Experience papers that describe the experiences gained from applying/evaluating software engineering research results in practice.
Artifact papers, which describe model problems, exemplars, or sets of resources (e.g., data sets, tools, and frameworks) that are useful for the broader SEAMS community to develop, evaluate, and compare self-adaptation approaches.

* Demo papers (2 pages + 1 page references): papers that should demonstrate the use of self-adaptive software in a proof-of-concept, prototype or real-world application. The paper should contain a URL to a demonstration video of no more than five minutes in duration explaining the working of the application.

* Community debate papers (2 pages including references): Researchers who want to participate in the community debate (see above) are invited to write a motion either in favour or against the statement “handling unanticipated changes is the ultimate challenge for self-adaptation.”

Accepted papers will appear in the SEAMS 2021 proceedings that will be published in the IEEE and ACM digital libraries. The official publication date is the first day of the conference. The official publication date affects the deadline for any patent filings related to published work. Purchases of additional pages in the proceedings are not allowed.

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BEST PAPER AWARDS

SEAMS 2021 will recognize three outstanding papers with a "Best Paper Award", "Best Student Paper Award", and "Best Artifact Award". The winners will be selected from a shortlist by a dedicated committee, considering the following criteria: originality, technical quality, soundness, significance, and clarity of presentation. The primary author of the Best Student Paper award must be a student at the time of submission.

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CONFERENCE ATTENDANCE EXPECTATION

If a submission is accepted, at least one author of the paper is required to register for and attend SEAMS 2021 and present the paper. The presentation is expected to be delivered in person, unless this is impossible due to travel limitations (related to, e.g., health, visa, or COVID-19 prevention).

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PAPER SUBMISSION AND REVIEW PROCESS

All submitted papers and artifacts will be reviewed by at least three members of the program committee. Papers must not have been previously published or concurrently submitted elsewhere.

Submissions must conform to the IEEE formatting instructions IEEE Conference Proceedings Formatting Guidelines (title in 24pt font and full text in 10pt type, LaTeX users must use \documentclass[10pt,conference]{IEEEtran} without including the compsoc or compsocconf options).

Papers must be submitted via EasyChair: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=seams2021

By submitting to SEAMS, authors acknowledge that they are aware of and agree to be bound by the ACM Policy and Procedures on Plagiarism and the IEEE Plagiarism FAQ. In particular, papers submitted to SEAMS 2021 must not have been published elsewhere and must not be under review or submitted for review elsewhere whilst under consideration for SEAMS 2021. Contravention of this concurrent submission policy will be deemed a serious breach of scientific ethics, and appropriate action will be taken in all such cases. To check for double submission and plagiarism issues, the chairs reserve the right to (1) share the list of submissions with the PC Chairs of other conferences with overlapping review periods and (2) use external plagiarism detection software, under contract to the ACM or IEEE, to detect violations of these policies.By submitting to the SEAMS, authors acknowledge that they conform to the authorship policy of the ACM, and the authorship policy of the IEEE.