Birds of a FeatherSIGCSE TS 2023

A Birds of a Feather (BoF) provides an environment for researchers and practitioners with similar interests to meet for informal discussions. Proposers of BOF sessions should serve as discussion leaders only. BOFs are not intended to be presentations. Each BoF, whether hosted in-person or online, should involve active participation for attendees and should be planned for a 50 minute session.

BoF proposals should include plans to facilitate active participation for attendees of diverse backgrounds. Proposers may find the following resources useful in identifying inclusive practices to include in the BOF activities:

• An inclusive meeting checklist from the University of Waterloo
• An article on facilitating effective discussions from the University of Waterloo

Authors submitting work to SIGCSE TS 2023 are responsible for complying with all applicable conference authorship policies and those articulated by ACM. If you have questions about any of these policies, please contact program@sigcse2023.org for clarification prior to submission.

Presentation Modality

Authors of accepted BOF submissions will have the option of participating either in-person by physically attending the conference in Toronto, Canada, or online.

All authors of this track must pre-declare their intended presentation modality at the time of submission. Your choice of modality will not be shared with reviewers, and will not impact their assessment of your submission. For timely planning for the conference, your choice of modality CANNOT be changed after the submission deadline.

Accepted Submissions

Deadlines and Submission

BOF submissions consist of a 2-page description about the proposed BOF session including a 250-word short abstract, additional content about the work, and references.

BOF submissions to the SIGCSE TS 2023 must be made through EasyChair no later than Friday, October 14, 2022. The track chairs reserve the right to desk reject submissions that are incomplete after the deadline has passed.

Important Dates

Abstracts

All BOF submissions must have a plain-text abstract of up to 250 words. Abstracts should not contain subheadings or citations. The abstract should be submitted in EasyChair along with the submission metadata, and it should be included in the PDF version of the submission at the appropriate location.

Submission Templates

SIGCSE TS 2023 is not participating in the new ACM workflow, template, and production system. All BOF submissions must be in English and formatted using the 2-column ACM SIG Conference Proceedings format and US letter size pages (8.5x11 inch or 215.9 x 279.4mm).

Page Limits: BOF submissions are limited to a maximum of 2 pages of body content (including all titles, author information, abstract, main text, tables and illustrations, acknowledgements, and supplemental material).

MS Word Authors: Please use the interim Word template provided by ACM. NOTE: Each author should be defined separately for accurate metadata identification. Multiple authors may share one affiliation. Include space for authors’ e-mail addresses whenever possible on separate lines. Grouping authors’ names or e-mail addresses, or providing an ‘e-mail alias’ is not acceptable, e.g., {brian,lina,leenkiat}@university.edu or firstname.lastname@college.org

LaTeX Authors:

• Overleaf provides a suitable two-column sig conference proceedings template.
• Other LaTeX users may alternatively use the ACM Primary template, adding the “sigconf” format option in the documentclass to obtain the 2-column format.

At the time of submission all entries should include author information, an abstract, body content, and references. NOTE: BOF submissions may omit the following sections from the standard ACM template: keywords, CCS Concepts, and placeholders for the ACM Reference Format and copyright blocks.

Submissions that do not adhere to page limits or formatting requirements will be desk rejected without review.

Accessibility: SIGCSE TS 2023 authors are strongly encouraged to prepare submissions using these templates in such a manner that the content is widely accessible to potential reviewers, track chairs, and readers. Please see these resources for preparing an accessible submission.

Single Anonymized Review

Submissions to the BOF track are reviewed with the single-anonymous review process. Submissions should include author names and affiliations. Thus, the author identities are known to reviewers, but reviewers are anonymous to each other and to the authors.

The reviewing process includes a discussion phase after initial reviews have been posted. During this time, the reviewers can examine all reviews and privately discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the work in an anonymous manner through EasyChair. This discussion information can be used by the track chairs in addition to the content of the review in making final acceptance decisions.

The SIGCSE TS 2023 review process does not have a rebuttal period for authors to respond to comments, and all acceptance decisions are final.

ACM Policies

By submitting your article to an ACM Publication, you are hereby acknowledging that you and your co-authors are subject to all ACM Publications Policies, including ACM’s new Publications Policy on Research Involving Human Participants and Subjects (https://www.acm.org/publications/policies/research-involving-human-participants-and-subjects). Alleged violations of this policy or any ACM Publications Policy will be investigated by ACM and may result in a full retraction of your paper, in addition to other potential penalties, as per ACM Publications Policy.

Please ensure that you and your co-authors obtain an ORCID ID (https://orcid.org/register), so you can complete the publishing process for your accepted paper. ACM has been involved in ORCID from the start and we have recently made a commitment to collect ORCID IDs from all of our published authors (https://authors.acm.org/author-resources/orcid-faqs). The collection process has started and will roll out as a requirement throughout 2022. We are committed to improve author discoverability, ensure proper attribution and contribute to ongoing community efforts around name normalization; your ORCID ID will help in these efforts.

What Gets Published?

The full text of accepted BOF submissions will not appear in the ACM digital library. Only the title, author metadata, and the 250-word abstract will be included in the official conference proceedings.

Presentation Details

By SIGCSE policy, at least one author of an accepted BOF is required to register, attend, and present the work. SIGCSE TS 2023 will allow for authors to hold their BOFs either in-person or online, based on the declared modality choice at the time of submission.

Further details about post-acceptance processes and presentation logistics will be provided by the time acceptance decisions are sent out.

Sample Formatted BoF Proposal

Language Editing Assistance

ACM has partnered with International Science Editing (ISE) to provide language editing services to ACM authors. ISE offers a comprehensive range of services for authors including standard and premium English language editing, as well as illustration and translation services. Editing services are at author expense and do not guarantee publication of a manuscript.

Review Timeline

Overview

Birds-of-a-Feather Sessions provide an environment for colleagues with similar interests to meet for informal discussion. Proposers of BOF sessions should serve as discussion leaders only. BOFs are not intended to be presentations.

Single-Anonymous Review Process

Submissions to the BoF track are reviewed with the single-anonymous review process. Submissions should include author names and affiliations. Thus, the author identities are known to reviewers, but reviewers are anonymous to each other and to the authors.

The reviewing process includes a discussion phase after initial reviews have been posted. During this time, the reviewers can examine all reviews and privately discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the work in an anonymous manner through EasyChair. Reviewers can refer to each other by their reviewer number on that submission’s review. This discussion information can be used by the track chairs in addition to the content of the review in making final acceptance decisions.

The SIGCSE TS 2023 review process does not have a rebuttal period for authors to respond to comments, and all acceptance decisions are final.

EasyChair Reviewer Profile

When you receive your invitation to review for SIGCSE TS 2023, please take a few moments to update your profile and select 3-5 topics that you are most qualified for reviewing. To do so, select SIGCSE TS 2023 > My topics from the menu.

Please check at most 5 topics! More topics will make it harder for the EasyChair system to make a good set of matches.

Getting Started Reviewing

Before starting your review, you may be asked by the Track Chairs to declare conflicts with any submitting authors. Please do so in a timely manner so we can avoid conflicts during assignment.

As a Reviewer, we ask that you carefully read each submission assigned to you and write a constructive review that concisely summarizes what you believe the submission to be about. When reviewing a submission, consider:

• the strengths and weaknesses,
• the contribution to an outstanding SIGCSE TS 2023 program and experience for attendees, and
• how it brings new ideas or extends current ideas through replication to the field and to practitioners and researchers of computing education.

BoF Review Guidelines

While your review text should clearly support your scores and recommendation, please do not include your preference for acceptance or rejection of a submission in the feedback to the authors. Instead, use the provided radio buttons to make a recommendation (the authors will not see this) based on your summary review and provide any details that refer to your recommendation directly in the confidential comments to the APC or track chairs. Remember that as a reviewer, you will only see a small portion of the submissions, so one that you recommend for acceptance may be rejected when considering the other reviewer recommendations and the full set of submissions.

Discussion

The discussion and recommendation period provides the opportunity for the Track Chairs to discuss reviews and feedback so they can provide the best recommendation for acceptance or rejection to the Program Chairs and that the submission is given full consideration in the review process. We ask that Reviewers engage in discussion when prompted by other reviewers and the Track Chairs by using the Comments feature of EasyChair. During this period you will be able to revise your review based on the discussion, but you are not required to do so.

The Track Chairs will make a final recommendation to the Program Chairs from your feedback.

Recalcitrant Reviewers

Reviewers who don’t submit reviews, have reviews with limited constructive feedback, or who submit inappropriate reviews will be removed from the reviewer list (as per SIGCSE policy). Recalcitrant reviewers will be informed of their removal from the reviewer list. Reviewers with repeated offenses (two within a three year period) will be removed from SIGCSE reviewing for three years.