CfP:

CALL FOR PAPERS

25th INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON FORMAL METHODS

March 6th - 10th 2023 | Lubeck, Germany | https://fm2023.isp.uni-luebeck.de/

FM 2023 is the 25th international symposium in a series organized by Formal Methods Europe (FME), an independent association whose aim is to stimulate the use of, and research on, formal methods for software development. The FM symposia have been successful in bringing together researchers and industrial users around a program of original papers on research and industrial experience, workshops, tutorials, reports on tools, projects, and ongoing doctoral research. FM 2023 will be both an occasion to celebrate and a platform for enthusiastic researchers and practitioners from a diversity of backgrounds to exchange their ideas and share their experiences.

Important Dates

• Abstract Submission September 4th, 2022 23:59 AoE
• Full Paper Submission(including I-Day) September 11th, 2022 23:59 AoE
• Paper Notification November 15th, 2022 23:59 AoE
• Artefact submission November 20th, 2022 23:59 AoE
• Final Version December 11th, 2022 23:59 AoE
• Camera ready December 11th, 2022 23:59 AoE
• Conference March 6th - 10th, 2023

Topics of Interest

FM 2023 will highlight the development and application of formal methods in a wide range of domains including trustworthy AI, software, computer-based systems, systems-of-systems, cyber-physical systems, security, human-computer interaction, manufacturing, sustainability, energy, transport, smart cities, healthcare and biology. We particularly welcome papers on techniques, tools and experiences in interdisciplinary settings. We also welcome papers on experiences of applying formal methods in industrial settings, and on the design and validation of formal method tools.

The topics of interest for FM 2023 include, but are not limited to:

Interdisciplinary formal methods: Techniques, tools and experiences demonstrating the use of formal methods in interdisciplinary settings. Formal methods in practice: Industrial applications of formal methods, experience with formal methods in industry, tool usage reports, experiments with challenge problems. The authors are encouraged to explain how formal methods overcame problems, led to improved designs, or provided new insights.

Tools for formal methods: Advances in automated verification, model checking, and testing with formal methods, tools integration, environments for formal methods, and experimental validation of tools. The authors are encouraged to demonstrate empirically that the new tool or environment advances the state of the art.

Formal methods in software and systems engineering: Development processes with formal methods, usage guidelines for formal methods, and method integration. The authors are encouraged to evaluate process innovations with respect to qualitative or quantitative improvements. Empirical studies and evaluations are also solicited.

Theoretical foundations of formal methods: All aspects of theory related to specification, verification, refinement, and static and dynamic analysis. The authors are encouraged to explain how their results contribute to the solution of practical problems with formal methods or tools.

We explicitly welcome submissions to the special FM 2023 session on ,,Formal methods meets AI", which is focused on formal and rigorous modeling and analysis techniques to ensure the safety, robustness, etc. (trustworthiness) of AI-based systems.

Submission Guidelines

Papers should be original work, not published or submitted elsewhere, in Springer LNCS format, written in English, submitted through EasyChair:

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=fm2023

Each paper will be evaluated by at least three members of the Programme Committee. Authors of papers reporting experimental work are strongly encouraged to make their experimental results available for use by the reviewers. Case study papers should describe significant case studies, and the complete development should be made available at the time of review. The usual criteria for novelty, reproducibility, correctness and the ability for others to build upon the described work apply. Tool papers and tool demonstration papers should explain enhancements made compared to previously published work. A tool demonstration paper need not present the theory behind the tool, but can focus on the tool's features, how it is used, its evaluation and examples and screenshots illustrating the tool's use. Authors of tool and tool demonstration papers should make their tools available for use by the reviewers and are highly encouraged to participate in the artefact evaluation once their paper is accepted.

We solicit various categories of papers

• Regular Papers (max 15 pages)
• Long tool papers (max 15 pages)
• Case study papers (max 15 pages)
• Short papers (max 6 pages), including tool demonstration papers.
• Short papers present novel ideas (e.g., without an extensive experimental evaluation) or results that can well be presented in 6 pages. Short papers will be given short presentation slots at the conference.

All page limits do not include references and appendices.

For all papers, an appendix can provide additional material such as details on proofs or experiments. The appendix is not part of the page count and is not guaranteed to be read or taken into account by the reviewers. Thus, it should not contain information necessary for the understanding and evaluation of the presented work. Papers will be accepted or rejected in the category in which they were submitted and will not be moved between categories.

At least one author of an accepted paper is expected to present the paper at the conference as a registered participant.

Double Blind Review Process

FM 2023 will employ a double-blind review process except for (a) long tool papers and (b) short tool demonstration papers. Other short papers will be subject to a double-blind policy.

The papers submitted must not reveal the authors' identities in any way: (a) Authors should leave out author names and affiliations from the body of their submission. (b) Authors should ensure that any citation to related work by themselves is written in third person, that is, "the prior work of XYZ" as opposed to "our prior work". (c) Authors should not include URLs to author-revealing sites (tools, datasets). (e) You are encouraged to submit a link to a Web site or repository containing supplementary material (raw data, datasets, experiments, etc.), as long as it is blinded. The visit of such sites should not be needed to conduct the review. The PC will not necessarily consider it in the paper review process. For more information, please read How to disclose data for double-blind review and make it archived open data upon acceptance.

As an alternative to having an external link, the submission form provides an option to attach a replication package. (f) Authors should anonymize author-revealing company names but instead provide general characteristics of the organizations involved needed to understand the context of the paper. (g) Authors should ensure that paper acknowledgements do not reveal the origin of their work.

The double-blind process is "heavy", i.e., the paper anonymity will be maintained during the reviewers' discussion period. Authors with further questions on double-blind reviewing are encouraged to contact the PC chairs by email. Papers that do not comply with the double-blind review process will be desk-rejected.

To prevent double submissions, the chairs might compare the submissions with related conferences that have overlapping review periods. The double submission restriction applies only to refereed journals and conferences, not to unrefereed forums (e.g. arXiv.org). To check for plagiarism issues, the chairs might use external plagiarism detection software.

To facilitate double-blind reviewing, we advise the authors to postpone publishing their submitted work on arXiv or similar sites until after the notification of acceptance. However, if the authors have already published a version of their paper to arXiv or similar sites, we request authors to use a different title for their submission, so that author names are not inadvertently disclosed, e.g., via a notification on Google Scholar.

Best Paper Award

At the conference, the PC Chairs will present an award to the authors of the submission selected as the FM 2023 Best Paper.

Publication

Accepted papers will be published in the Symposium Proceedings to appear in Springer's Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Extended versions of selected papers will be invited for publication in a special issue of a journal.

Program Committee Chairs

• Marsha Chechik, University of Toronto, Canada
• Joost-Pieter Katoen, RWTH Aachen University, Germany & University of Twente, the Netherlands

Program Comittee

• Dalal Alrajeh, Imperial College, UK
• Luis Soares Barbosa, University of Minho, PT
• Ezio Bartocci, TU Vienna, AT
• Nikolaj Bjorner, Microsoft, US
• Sandrine Blazy, University of Rennes, FR
• Borzoo Bonakdarpour, Michigan State University, US
• Pablo Castro, University of Rio Cuarto, AR
• Ana Cavalcanti, University of York, UK
• Milan Ceska, Brno University of Technology, CZ
• Nancy Day, University of Waterloo, CA
• Benrd Fischer, Stellenbosch University, ZA
• Arie Gurfinkel, University of Waterloo, CA
• Reiner Hahnle, TU Darmstadt, DE
• Ichiro Hasuo, National Institute of Informatics, JP
• Keijo Heljanko, University of Helsinki, FI
• Holger Hermanns, Saarland University, DE
• Peter Hofner, Australian National University, AU
• Marieke Huisman, University of Twente, NL
• Adrian Francalanza, University of Malta, MT
• Einar Broch Johnsen, University of Oslo, NO
• Sebastian Junges, Radboud University, NL
• Martin Leucker, University of Lubeck, DE
• Yi Li, Nanyang Technological University, SG
• Lei Ma, University of Alberta, CA
• Mieke Massink, CNR-ISTI, IT
• Christoph Matheja, Technical University of Denmark, DK
• Annabelle McIver, Macquarie University, AU
• Claudio Menghi, McMaster University, CA
• Jan Peleska, University of Bremen, DE
• Andre Platzer, Carnegie Mellon University, USA
• Jan-Oliver Ringert, Bauhaus University Weimar, DE
• Baishakhi Ray, Columbia University, US
• Christina Seceleanu, Malardalen University, SE
• Marjan Sirjani, Malardalen University, SE
• Paola Spoletini, Kennesaw State University, US
• Jun Sun, Singapore University, SG
• Emilio Tuosto, Gran Sasso Science Institute, IT
• Matthias Volk, University of Twente (AE Chair), NL
• Ou Wei, Thales, CA
• Mike Whalen, Amazon Web Services, US
• Mingsheng Ying, University of Technology Sydney, AU
• Naijun Zhan, Chinese Academy of Sciences, CN