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 (aka Program Committee, PC) 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 2027 will use a full double-blind reviewing process (similar to the one used in recent years (POPL 2023 - 2026) but different from the lightweight double-blind process used before then). 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, and there is no option to submit non-anonymized 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 Review 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 Review 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.