Onward! Essays

An Onward! essay reflects upon software-related technology. Its goal is to help the reader to share a new insight, engage with an argument, or wrestle with a dilemma. A successful essay is a clear and compelling piece of writing that explores a topic important to the software community. The writing can be enhanced by other pieces of art such as photos or film. The subject area should be interpreted broadly, including the relationship of software to human endeavors, or its philosophical, sociological, psychological, historical, or anthropological underpinnings. An essay can be an exploration of its topic, its impact, or the circumstances of its creation; it can present a personal view of what is, explore a terrain, or lead the reader in an act of discovery; it can be a philosophical digression or a deep analysis. It can describe a personal journey, perhaps that by which the author reached an understanding of such a topic.

Accepted Papers

General Information

An Onward! essay reflects upon software-related technology. Its goal is to help the reader to share a new insight, engage with an argument, or wrestle with a dilemma. A successful essay is a clear and compelling piece of writing that explores a topic important to the software community. The writing can be enhanced by other pieces of art such as photos or film. The subject area should be interpreted broadly, including the relationship of software to human endeavors, or its philosophical, sociological, psychological, historical, or anthropological underpinnings. An essay can be an exploration of its topic, its impact, or the circumstances of its creation; it can present a personal view of what is, explore a terrain, or lead the reader in an act of discovery; it can be a philosophical digression or a deep analysis. It can describe a personal journey, perhaps that by which the author reached an understanding of such a topic.

Regardless of its form or subject, an essay must have "meat." It must must provide some insight or argument (and the reader should be left - perhaps after a bit of reflection - in no doubt what the claimed insight or argument is); it should show a keen mind coming to grips with a tough or intriguing problem; it should leave the reader with a feeling that the encounter was worthwhile.

The ACM International Conference on Systems, Programming, Languages and Applications: Software for Humanity (SPLASH) is sponsored by ACM SIGPLAN.

SPLASH is the home of OOPSLA Research Papers, Onward!, and the Dynamic Languages Symposium, among other events.

Call for Papers

An essay should have these characteristics: It should argue something significant, the case must be compelling. the essay must be written to communicate and the writing should be distinctive. Artistry is welcome to the extent that it is crucial to the case and its presentation. Craftsmanship is essential.

Important: Essays can be on any topic related to software; the themes and topics of OOPSLA and Onward!/Essays are unrelated. That is, ties to objects and OO are not required. Onward!/Essays looks to explore software in all its marvelous expanse.

Selection Process

Onward! Essay submissions are peer-reviewed. Accepted essays will appear in the Onward! Proceedings in the ACM Digital Library. Submissions will be judged on the potential impact of the reflections and the quality of the presentation.

Onward! Essays will follow a two-phase review process. The first reviewing phase assesses the essay using the criteria stated above and results in the selection of a subset of submissions that are either accepted as-is or deemed potentially acceptable. All other submissions will be rejected in this phase.

Authors of potentially accepted essays will be requested to improve specific aspects of the essays in keeping with the assessment criteria and the nature of Onward! essays. For example, the following represent some core improvement suggestions:

• clarity of presentation and overall writing improvements to make the work more accessible

• making the presentation of any technical ideas and the reflections in the essay crisper or more concrete

• making the argument sharper and more compelling

Authors will be given two months to perform the revisions, after which a second submission will occur.

The second submission should reflect the revision requests sent to the authors. To that end, the second submission must be accompanied by a cover letter mapping each revision request to specific parts of the essay. The absence of this cover letter might form the basis for the essay's rejection.

The second and final reviewing phase assesses how the revision requests have been acted upon by the authors, and whether the final essay improves the original submission. Revisions that did not address the reviewers' requests or significantly lessen the quality of the essay may lead to its rejection.

Submission

Onward! Essays submissions must conform to both the ACM Policy on Prior Publication and Simultaneous Submissions (http://www.acm.org/publications/policies/sim_submissions/) and the SIGPLAN Republication Policy (http://www.sigplan.org/Resources/Policies/Republication).

Paper submissions should use the SIGPLAN Proceedings Format using 10 point font. Note that by default the SIGPLAN Proceedings Format produces papers in 9 point font. If you are formatting your paper using LaTeX, you will need to set the 10pt option in the \documentclass command. If you are formatting your paper using Word, you may wish to use the Word template that provides support for this font size. Please include page numbers in your submission. Setting the preprint option in the LaTeX \documentclass command generates page numbers. Please also ensure that your submission is legible when printed on a black and white printer. In particular, please check that colors remain distinct and font sizes are legible. To ensure that papers stay focused on their core contributions, the main part of the paper should be no longer than 14 pages. There is no page limit for appendices, and, therefore, for the overall submission. If the paper is accepted, the final submission will be limited to 20 pages, including appendices. It is the responsibility of the authors to keep the reviewers interested and motivated to read or view their submission. Reviewers are under no obligation to read all or even a substantial portion of a paper if they do not find the initial part of the paper compelling. The committee will not accept a paper if it is unclear that the paper will fit in the Onward! Proceedings. Films should be submitted in AVI or MOV format, preferably encoded in H.264.

For More Information

For additional information, clarification, or answers to questions please contact the Onward! Essays Chair, Bernd Bruegge.