Research papers

Research papers submitted to ICER for peer review are limited to 8 pages exclusive of references and should exemplify:

  • A clear theoretical basis, building on existing literature in computing education and other disciplines.
  • A strong empirical basis, drawing on relevant research methods. Papers that re-interpret and explain others’ empirical results are welcome.
  • An explication of the paper’s impact on, and contribution to, existing knowledge about computing education.

Submission Deadlines

Friday, March 29, 2019 Anywhere on Earth (UTC-12) – Mandatory abstract/intent to submit uploaded to EasyChair

All authors intending to submit a research paper must first enter their author, affiliation, title, and text abstract information into EasyChair by this deadline. Your abstract will be used by potential reviewers to bid on papers of interest. Ensure the best reviewer match by writing a clear abstract that describes your paper’s motivation, its theoretical grounding, and the research methods used along with a summary of your results. Authors failing to submit an abstract and associated meta-data by the due date (even if the EasyChair system accepts the abstract late) will not be eligible to upload full paper text.

Friday, April 5, 2019 Anywhere on Earth (UTC-12) – Full paper submission (anonymized) added to EasyChair

Authors have a week following the initial abstract deadline to complete final submission of the paper to be reviewed. This will be submitted as an update to the paper entry created during abstract submission. Please reduce file sizes when possible for ease of downloading, as long as this does not sacrifice the quality necessary for a fair review.

Friday, May 31, 2019 – Author notification

Friday, June 14, 2019 – Final camera ready submission for accepted papers

Paper Formatting and Length Requirements

Papers submitted to ICER must conform to the style rules outlined on the ACM SIG Proceedings website. Authors should use the templates listed at ACMs site. Note that the templates were revised substantially in late 2016, and there is extensive documentation available for the LaTeX version.  The Word version is in a transitional stage.

LaTeX: use the ‘sigconf’ template for ICER submissions (\documentclass[sigconf]{acmart}).  The easiest way to ensure that you have up-to-date versions and the correct fonts is to use Overleaf, but any reasonable LaTeX environment should suffice if you load the correct templates and install any needed packages.

Word:  if you are using Word, use the Interim template “Interim layout.docx” available for download on the https://www.acm.org/publications/proceedings-template page.  Do not use the new submission template provided under the “New workflow for ACM publications” named acm_submissions_template.docx; we will only accept submissions that look like those produced from  Interim layout.docx.

We strongly suggest that you use LaTeX, but if you must use Word, allocate sufficient time to get it to work correctly.

The body text of research paper submissions must not exceed eight pages, excluding references, using the provided templates.

Preparing for Blind Review

ICER paper submissions are reviewed using a double-blind process. Authors must take care to anonymize their submissions by leaving names and affiliations blank in the paper submitted for review. Submissions that include identifying information may be returned without review. Additionally, authors should redact details in the paper body or acknowledgments section that might identify themselves including, but not limited to: institution names, obvious self-citation, and specific funding information (i.e., grant numbers).  Work that builds on an author’s previous results should refer to that work in the third person, e.g. “This work is based on the findings in McCartney et. al [7] that identified the magic bullet for teaching CS1”, rather than “This is based on our previous findings that identified the magic bullet for teaching CS1 [7]”.

Once you have completed paper anonymization, please also review the generated PDF or Word document’s meta-data/properties to ensure that your document creation software has not inadvertently included author information.

The anonymization requirements hold for both abstracts and full papers.

We encourage authors to review these additional tips for anonymizing your submission which address a number of common cases.

Submission Procedure

To submit a paper…

  • Ensure that it is a suitably anonymised PDF document.
  • Go to the ICER 2019 page at EasyChair.
  • Unless you already have an EasyChair account, follow the prompts to create an account, taking note of the secret word that you provide.
  • When you receive a confirmation email, go to the link given in that email, repeat your secret word, complete your account details, and login to EasyChair. If you do not receive a confirmation email, it is likely that your email system has filtered it out as suspected SPAM, in which case we ask you to try again using a more forgiving email system.
  • Select New Submission and follow the prompts.
  • Submit the abstract and/or paper as appropriate for the deadline.

AUTHORS TAKE NOTE:

The official publication date is the date the proceedings are made available in the ACM Digital Library. This date will be up to two weeks prior to the first day of the conference. The official publication date affects the deadline for any patent filings related to published work.

The ACM has recently revised its authorship policy in a way that might impact some ICER authors. In summary, any person listed as an author on a paper must (1) have made substantial contributions to the work, (2) have participated in drafting/revising the paper, (3) be aware that the paper has been submitted, and (4) agree to be held accountable for the content of the paper. The revision is intended to allow enforcement of plagiarism sanctions, but it could impact people who work in large, collaborative research groups, and on postgraduate advisors who have not contributed directly to a paper. Prospective authors should read the new policy. You should also ensure that your submissions abide by the ACM Conflict of Interest Policy. Aligned with this is also the ACM Publications Policy on the Withdrawal, Correction, Retraction, and Removal of Works from ACM Publications and ACM DL.