PLDI Research Papers

Call for Papers

PACMPL Issue PLDI 2025 seeks contributions on all aspects of programming languages research, broadly construed, including design, implementation, theory, applications, and performance.

Authors of papers published in PACMPL Issue PLDI 2025 will be invited – but not required – to present their work in the PLDI conference in June 2025, which is sponsored by ACM SIGPLAN.

Scope

PLDI is a premier forum for programming language research, broadly construed. Outstanding research that extends and/or applies programming-language concepts to advance the field of computing is welcome. Novel system designs, thorough empirical work, well-motivated theoretical results, and new application areas are all in scope for PLDI.

Evaluation Criteria and Process

Reviewers will evaluate submissions for accuracy, significance, originality, and clarity. Submissions should be organized to communicate clearly to a broad programming-language audience as well as experts on the paper’s topics. Papers should identify what has been accomplished and how it relates to previous work. Authors of empirical papers are encouraged to consider the seven categories of the SIGPLAN Empirical Evaluation Guidelines when preparing submissions.

The selection of papers will be made in two rounds of reviewing. In the first round, reviewers will assess the papers according to the quality criteria listed above. Authors will be given several days to compose a written response to the reviews received in the first round – e.g., to correct errors and clarify technical concerns. At the end of the first round, the Review Committee will conditionally accept a subset of the submissions and all other submissions will be rejected. In the second round, authors of conditionally-accepted papers will be given an opportunity to improve specific aspects of the research and the paper, as identified by the reviewers. Authors will have sufficient time to perform the required revisions and re-submit the paper. The same reviewers as in the first round will then assess how the revision requests have been acted upon by the authors. Revisions that fail to adequately address the reviewers’ original concerns will result in rejection.

The Review Committee will make final decisions regarding (conditional) acceptance and rejection, although reviews for a given paper will typically be performed by a subset of the committee. During the review period, authors must not contact Review Committee members – all questions must be addressed to the Associate Editor (who is doing the job that we would have called “Program Chair” before PLDI joined PACMPL). Contacting Review Committee members about submitted paper(s) is an ethical violation and may be grounds for summary rejection.

Deadlines and formatting requirements, detailed below, will be strictly enforced, with extremely rare extenuating circumstances considered at the discretion of the Associate Editor.

Double-Blind Reviewing

Author names and affiliations must be omitted from submissions. If a submission refers to prior work done by the authors, that reference should be made in third person. Any supplementary material must also be anonymized. These are firm submission requirements. The Review Committee will only learn the identities of authors of accepted papers following the second round of reviewing.

The FAQ on Double-Blind Reviewing clarifies the policy for the most common scenarios. But there are many gray areas and trade-offs. If you have any doubts about how to interpret the double-blind rules, or any cases that are not fully covered by the FAQ, please contact the Associate Editor. In complex cases, it is better to get guidance from the Associate Editor than to risk summary rejection.

Submission Site Information

The submission site will be at https://pldi2025.hotcrp.com.

Authors can submit multiple times prior to the (firm!) deadline. Only the last submission will be reviewed. There is no deadline for submitting abstracts. 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 Associate Editor (as this kind of change potentially undermines the goal of eliminating conflicts during paper assignment).

The submission deadline is 11:59PM on Thursday November 14, 2024 anywhere on earth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anywhere_on_Earth

Declaring Conflicts

When submitting a paper, you will need to declare potential conflicts. Conflicts should be declared between an adviser and an advisee (e.g., Ph.D., post-doc). Other conflicts include institutional conflicts, financial conflicts of interest, friends or relatives, or any recent co-authors on papers and proposals (last 2 years).

Please do not declare spurious conflicts: such incorrect conflicts are especially harmful if the aim is to subvert the normal peer-review process by excluding potential reviewers. Listing spurious conflicts can be grounds for rejection. If you are unsure about whether or not a given relationship constitutes a conflict, please consult the Associate Editor.

Formatting Requirements

Each paper should have no more than 20 pages of text, excluding bibliography, using the ACM Proceedings format. This format is chosen for compatibility with PACMPL. It is a single-column page layout with a 10 pt font, 12 pt line spacing, and wider margins than recent PLDI page layouts. In this format, the main text block is 5.478 in (13.91 cm) wide and 7.884 in (20.03 cm) tall. Use of a different format (e.g., smaller fonts or a larger text block) is grounds for summary rejection. PACMPL templates for Microsoft Word and LaTeX can be found at the SIGPLAN author information page. Authors using LaTeX should use the sample-acmsmall-conf.tex file (found in the samples folder of the acmart package) with the acmsmall option. We also strongly encourage use of the review and screen options as well, e.g.:

\documentclass[acmsmall,screen,review,anonymous,nonacm]{acmart}

Papers may be submitted using numeric citations, but final versions of accepted papers may use either the author-year or numeric format for citations. Submissions should be in PDF and printable on both US Letter and A4 paper. Please take care to ensure that figures and tables are legible, even when the paper is printed in gray-scale. Papers that exceed the length requirement, deviate from the expected format, or are submitted late will be rejected.

Supplementary Material

Authors are welcome to provide supplementary material if that material supports the claims in the paper. Such material may include proofs, experimental results, and/or data sets. This material should be uploaded at the same time as the submission. Reviewers are not required to examine the supplementary material but may refer to it if they would like to find further evidence supporting the claims in the paper.

Supplemental material cannot be included in the main submission text. All appendices must be submitted as supplemental material, not as part of the main submission PDF.

Plagiarism and Concurrent Work

Papers must describe unpublished work that is not currently submitted for publication elsewhere, as described by the SIGPLAN Republication Policy and ACM Policy on Plagiarism. Concurrent submissions to other conferences, workshops, journals, or similar venues of publication are disallowed. Prior work must, as always, be cited and referred to in the third person even if it is the authors’ own work, so as to preserve author anonymity. If you have further questions, please contact the Associate Editor.

Artifact Evaluation for Accepted Papers

Authors of accepted papers will be invited to submit supporting materials to the Artifact Evaluation process. Artifact Evaluation is run by a separate committee whose task is to assess how well the artifacts support the work described in the papers. At artifact submission time, authors will be asked to provide an artifact availability statement that details the expected behavior of the artifact, and how it pertains to the results of the paper. Artifact submission is voluntary but encouraged and will not influence the final decision regarding the papers.

Papers that go through the Artifact Evaluation process successfully will receive a badge printed on the papers themselves, and include the artifact availability statement (which will not count agains the page limit). Authors of accepted papers are encouraged to make their artifacts publicly available upon publication of the proceedings, by including them as “source materials” in the ACM Digital Library.

Open Access and Copyright

As a Gold Open Access journal, PACMPL is committed to making peer-reviewed scientific research free of restrictions on both access and (re-)use. Authors are strongly encouraged to support liberal open access by licensing their work with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY) license, which grants readers (re-)use rights.

• Authors of accepted papers will be required to provide an ORCID for each co-author and choose one of the following publication rights:
• Author licenses the work with a Creative Commons license, retains copyright, and (implicitly) grants ACM non-exclusive permission to publish (suggested choice).
• Author retains copyright of the work and grants ACM a non-exclusive permission to publish license.
• Author retains copyright of the work and grants ACM an exclusive permission to publish license.
• Author transfers copyright of the work to ACM.

These choices follow from ACM Copyright Policy and ACM Author Rights, corresponding to ACM’s “author pays” option. While PACMPL may ask authors who have funding for open-access fees to voluntarily cover the article processing charge (currently, US$400), payment is not required for publication. PACMPL and SIGPLAN continue to explore the best models for funding open access, focusing on approaches that are sustainable in the long-term while reducing short-term risk.

Publication Date

All papers will be archived by the ACM Digital Library. Authors will have the option of including supplementary material with their paper. The official publication date is the date the proceedings are made available in the ACM Digital Library or the first day of the conference, which ever is sooner. Note that the date may 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.

Presentations

Authors of accepted papers will be invited to present their work at PLDI. Authors who need financial assistance for travel to the conferences should apply for a grant from the SIGPLAN Professional Activities Committee (PAC) program. We welcome all authors, regardless of nationality. If authors are not able to obtain visas to travel to the conference despite making reasonable effort, we will make arrangements to facilitate remote participation or presentation by another attendee on behalf of the authors.

Distinguished Paper Awards

Up to 10% of the accepted papers may be designated as Distinguished Papers. This award highlights papers that the Review Committee believes should be read by a broad audience due to their relevance, originality, significance, and clarity. The set of distinguished papers will be chosen through a rigorous review process of the final papers, carried out by a subset of the Review Committee.

Acknowledgments

This call-for-papers is an adaptation and evolution of content from previous SIGPLAN conferences. We are grateful to prior organizers for their work, which is reused here.

Code of Conduct

PLDI follows the ACM Policy Against Harassment at ACM Activities. Please familiarize yourself with the policy and guide for reporting unacceptable behavior.

FAQ on Double-Blind Reviewing

General

Q: Why are you using double-blind reviewing?

A: Studies have shown that a reviewer’s attitude toward a submission may be affected, even unconsciously, by the identity of the authors. We want reviewers to be able to approach each submission without any such, possibly involuntary, pre-judgment. Many computer science publications have embraced double-blind reviewing. PLDI has used it for several years now and doing so is stipulated in the Practices of PLDI (under update).

Q: Do you really think blinding actually works? I suspect reviewers can often guess who the authors are anyway.

A: It is rare for authorship to be guessed correctly, even by expert reviewers, as detailed in this study.

Q: Couldn’t blind submission create an injustice where a paper is inappropriately rejected based upon supposedly-prior work which was actually by the same authors and not previously published?

A: Reviewers are held accountable for their positions and are required to identify any supposed prior work that they believe undermines the novelty of the paper. Any assertion that “this has been done before” by reviewers should be supported with concrete information. The author response mechanism exists in part to hold reviewers accountable for claims that may be incorrect.

For authors

Q: What exactly do I have to do to anonymize my paper?

A: Use common sense. Your job is not to make your identity undiscoverable but simply to make it possible for reviewers to evaluate your submission without having to know who you are. The specific guidelines stated in the call for papers are simple: omit authors’ names from your title page, and when you cite your own work, refer to it in the third person. For example, if your name is Smith and you have worked on amphibious type systems, instead of saying “We extend our earlier work on statically typed toads [Smith 2004],” you might say “We extend Smith’s [2004] earlier work on statically typed toads.” Also, be sure not to include any acknowledgements that would give away your identity. In general, you should aim to reduce the risk of accidental unblinding. For example, if your paper is the first to describe a system with a well-known name or codename, or you use a personally-identifiable naming convention for your work, then use a different name for your submission (which you may indicate has been changed for the purposes of double-blind reviewing). You should also avoid revealing the institutional affiliation of authors or at which the work was performed.

Q: I would like to provide supplementary material for consideration, e.g., the code of my implementation or proofs of theorems. How do I do this?

A (and also see the next question): On the submission site there will be an option to submit supplementary material along with your main paper. This supplementary material should also be anonymized; it may be viewed by reviewers during the review period, so it should adhere to the same double-blind guidelines.

Q: My submission is based on code available in a public repository. How do I deal with this?

A: Making your code publicly available is not incompatible with double-blind reviewing. You should do the following. First, cite the code in your paper, but remove the actual URL and, instead say “link to repository removed for double-blind review” or similar. Second, if, when writing your author response, you believe reviewer access to your code would help, say so in your author response (without providing the URL), and upload a zip file containing the code under supplemental materials (but make sure that the code/documentation does not reveal the identity of the authors).

Q: I am building on my own past work on the WizWoz system. Do I need to rename this system in my paper for purposes of anonymity, so as to remove the implied connection between my authorship of past work on this system and my present submission?

A: Maybe. The core question is really whether the system is one that, once identified, automatically identifies the author(s) and/or the institution. If the system is widely available, and especially if it has a substantial body of contributors and has been out for a while, then these conditions may not hold (e.g., LLVM or HotSpot), because there would be considerable doubt about authorship. By contrast, a paper on a modification to a proprietary system (e.g., Visual C++, or a research project that has not open-sourced its code) implicitly reveals the identity of the authors or their institution. If naming your system essentially reveals your identity (or institution), then anonymize it. In your submission, point out that the system name has been anonymized. If you have any doubts, please contact the Associate Editor.

Q: I am submitting a paper that extends my own work that previously appeared at a workshop. Should I anonymize any reference to that prior work?

A: No. But we recommend you do not use the same title for your submission, so that it is clearly distinguished from the prior paper. In general, there is rarely a good reason to anonymize a citation. One possibility is for work that is tightly related to the present submission and is also under review. When in doubt, contact the Associate Editor.

Q: Am I allowed to post my (non-blinded) paper on my web page? Can I advertise the unblinded version of my paper on mailing lists or send it to colleagues? Can I give a talk about my work while it is under review? How do I handle social media? What about arXiv?

A: We have developed guidelines, described here, to help everyone navigate in the same way the tension between the normal communication of scientific results, which double-blind reviewing should not impede, and actions that essentially force potential reviewers to learn the identity of the authors for a submission. Roughly speaking, you may (of course!) discuss work under submission, but you should not broadly advertise your work through media that is likely to reach your reviewers. We acknowledge there are gray areas and trade-offs; we cannot describe every possible scenario.

Things you may do:

• Put your submission on your home page.
• Discuss your work with anyone who is not on the Review Committee, or with people on the committees with whom you already have a conflict.
• Present your work at professional meetings, job interviews, etc.
• Submit work previously discussed at an informal workshop, previously posted on arXiv or a similar site, previously submitted to a conference not using double-blind reviewing, etc.

Things you should not do:

• Contact members of the Review Committee about your work, or deliberately present your work where you expect them to be.
• Publicize your work on major mailing lists used by the community (because potential reviewers likely read these lists).
• Publicize your work on social media if wide public [re-]propagation is common (e.g., Twitter) and therefore likely to reach potential reviewers. For example, on Facebook, a post with a broad privacy setting (public or all friends) saying, “Whew, PLDI paper in, time to sleep” is okay, but one describing the work or giving its title is not appropriate. Alternatively, a post to a group including only the colleagues at your institution is fine. Reviewers will not be asked to recuse themselves from reviewing your paper unless they feel you have gone out of your way to advertise your authorship information to them. If you are unsure about what constitutes “going out of your way”, please contact the Associate Editor.

Q: Will the fact that PLDI is double-blind have an impact on handling conflicts-of-interest?

A: Double-blind reviewing does not change the principle that reviewers should not review papers with which they have a conflict of interest, even if they do not immediately know who the authors are. Authors declare conflicts-of-interest when submitting their papers using the guidelines in the call-for-papers. Papers will not be assigned to reviewers who have a conflict.

For reviewers

Q: What should I do if I learn the authors’ identity? What should I do if a prospective author contacts me and asks to visit my institution?

A: If you feel that the authors’ actions are largely aimed at ensuring that potential reviewers know their identity, contact the Associate Editor. Otherwise, you should not treat double-blind reviewing differently from other reviewing. In particular, refrain from seeking out information on the authors’ identity, but if you discover it accidentally this will not automatically disqualify you as a reviewer. Use your best judgment.

Q: If I am assigned a paper for which I feel I am not an expert, how do I seek an outside review?

A: PC members should write their own reviews and not delegate them to someone else. If doing so is problematic for some papers (e.g., you do not feel completely qualified), then please take the following steps: First, submit a review for your paper that is as careful as possible, outlining areas where you think your knowledge is lacking. Assuming we have sufficient expert reviews, that could be the end of it: non-expert reviews are valuable too, since conference attendees are by-and-large not experts for any given paper. Second, the review form provides a mechanism for suggesting additional expert reviewers to the PC Chair, who may contact them if additional expertise is needed. Please do not contact outside reviewers yourself.

Q: How do we handle potential conflicts of interest since I cannot see the author names?

A: The conference review system will ask that you identify conflicts of interest when you get an account on the submission system. Feel free to also identify additional authors whose papers you feel you could not review fairly for reasons other than those given (e.g., strong personal friendship).

Q: How should I avoid learning the authors’ identity if I am using web-search in the process of performing my review?

A: You should make a good-faith effort not to find the authors’ identity during the review period, but if you inadvertently do so, this does not disqualify you from reviewing the paper. As part of the good-faith effort, do not use search engines with terms like the paper’s title or the name of a new system being discussed. If you need to search for related work you believe exists, do so after completing a preliminary review of the paper.

Q: When will author identities be revealed?

A: The Review Committee will only learn the identities of authors of accepted papers following the second round of reviewing. The authors of rejected papers will remain anonymous to everyone except the Associate Editor.