PACMPL Issue POPL 2025 seeks contributions on all aspects of programming languages and programming systems, both theoretical and practical. Authors of papers published in PACMPL Issue POPL 2025 will be invited to present their work in the POPL conference in January 2025, which is sponsored by ACM SIGPLAN, in cooperation with ACM SIGACT and ACM SIGLOG.

Scope

Principles of Programming Languages (POPL) is a forum for the discussion of all aspects of programming languages and programming systems. Both theoretical and experimental papers are welcome, on topics ranging from formal frameworks to experience reports. We seek submissions that make principled, enduring contributions to the theory, design, understanding, implementation, or application of programming languages.

Evaluation Criteria

The Review Committee will evaluate the technical contribution of each submission as well as its accessibility to both experts and the general POPL audience. All papers will be judged on significance, originality, relevance, correctness, and clarity. Each paper must explain its scientific contribution in both general and technical terms, identifying what has been accomplished, explaining why it is significant, and comparing it with previous work. Advice on writing technical papers can be found on the SIGPLAN author information page.

Deadlines and formatting requirements, detailed below, will be strictly enforced.

Double-Blind Reviewing

POPL 2025 will use a full double-blind reviewing process (similar to the one used for POPL 2023 and 2024 but different from the lightweight double-blind process used in previous years). This means that identities of authors will not be made visible to reviewers until after conditional-acceptance decisions have been made, and then only for the conditionally-accepted papers. The use of full double-blind reviewing has several consequences for authors.

    Submissions: Authors must omit their names and institutions from their paper submissions. In addition, references to authors’ own prior work should be in the third person (e.g., not “We build on our previous work …” but rather “We build on the work of …”).

    Supplementary material: Authors are permitted to provide supplementary material (e.g., detailed proofs, proof scripts, system implementations, or experimental data) along with their submission, which reviewers may (but are not required to) examine. This material may take the form of a single file, such as a PDF or a tarball. Authors must fully anonymize any supplementary material.

    Author response: In responding to reviews, authors should not say anything that reveals their identity, since author identities will not be revealed to reviewers at that stage of the reviewing process.

    Dissemination of work under submission: Authors are welcome to disseminate their ideas and post draft versions of their paper(s) on their personal website, institutional repository, or arXiv (reviewers will be asked to turn off arXiv notifications during the review period). But authors should not take steps that would almost certainly reveal their identities to members of the Program Committee, e.g., directly contacting PC members or publicizing the work on widely-visible social media or major mailing lists used by the community.

The purpose of the above restrictions is to help the Program Committee and external reviewers come to a judgment about the paper without bias, not to make it impossible for them to discover the authors’ identities if they were to try. In particular, nothing should be done in the name of anonymity that weakens the quality of the submission.

However, there are occasionally cases where adhering to the above restrictions is truly difficult or impossible for one reason or another. In such cases, the authors should contact the Program Chair to discuss the situation and how to handle it.

The FAQ on Double-Blind Reviewing addresses many common scenarios and answers many common questions about this topic. But there remain many grey areas and trade-offs. If you have any doubts about how to interpret the double-blind rules or you encounter a complex case that is not clearly covered by the FAQ, please contact the Program Chair for guidance.

Evaluation Process

Like last year, POPL 2025 will use a double-blind reviewing process (instead of the lightweight double-blind process used in recent years). This means that identities of authors will not be visible to reviewers until after conditional-acceptance decisions have been made. For authors, the main change is that there is no option to upload non-anonymized supplementary material; only anonymized supplementary material may be submitted.

POPL 2025 will have five Associate Chairs who will help the PC Chair monitor reviews, solicit external expert reviews for submissions when there is not enough expertise on the committee, and facilitate reviewer discussions.

As in previous years, authors will have a multi-day period to respond to reviews, as indicated in the Important Dates table. Responses are optional. A response must be concise, addressing specific points raised in the reviews; in particular, it must not introduce new technical results. Reviewers will write a short reaction to these author responses.

The Review Committee (RC) will discuss papers electronically, and will use synchronous virtual meetings to discuss any papers for which there is disagreement among reviewers, in some cases soliciting additional input from other experts in the committee. There is no formal External Review Committee, though experts outside the committee may be consulted for some papers. Reviews will be accompanied by a short summary of the reasons behind the committee’s decision with the goal of clarifying the reasons behind the decision.

To conform with ACM requirements for journal publication, all POPL papers will be conditionally accepted; authors will be required to submit a short description of the changes made to the final version of the paper, including how the changes address any requirements imposed by the Review Committee. That the changes are sufficient will be confirmed by the original reviewers prior to acceptance to POPL. Authors of conditionally accepted papers must submit a satisfactory revision to the Review Committee by the requested deadline or risk rejection.

For additional information about the reviewing process, see: Principles of POPL, a presentation of the underlying organizational and reviewing policies for POPL. For POPL 2025, policies specified in this Call for Papers supersede those in the Principles of POPL document.

Submission Site Information

The submission site is https://popl25.hotcrp.com.

Authors can submit multiple times prior to the deadline. Only the last submission will be reviewed. There is no abstract deadline. The submission site requires entering author names and affiliations, relevant topics, and potential conflicts. Addition or removal of authors after the submission deadline will need to be approved by the Program Chair (as this kind of change potentially undermines the goal of eliminating conflicts during paper assignment).

The submission deadline is 11:59PM July 11, 2024 anywhere on earth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anywhere_on_Earth

Conflicts of Interest

For each submission, the authors must make sure that they properly declare all potential conflicts of interest for all of the authors of that submission. This includes marking PC conflicts as well as “Other Conflicts (external)”. A conflict caught late in the reviewing process leads to a voided review which may be infeasible to replace.

Conflicts should be declared between an adviser and an advisee (e.g., Ph.D., post-doc; forever), between an author and a co-author (papers and proposals; for two years), between people at the same institution (branches of large companies or different locations of research institutes are considered to be the same institution; for two years after leaving an institution), between people with financial conflicts of interest, and between friends or relatives.

Please do not declare spurious conflicts: such incorrect conflicts are especially harmful if the aim is to exclude potential reviewers, so spurious conflicts can be grounds for rejection. If you are unsure about a conflict, please consult the Program Chair.