skip to main content
ACM Digital Library home
ACM corporate logo
Advanced Search

Author Guidelines

Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages does not accept unsolicited submissions. Each issue of the journal has a Principal Editor and is devoted to a particular subject area (broadly construed) within programming languages. Manuscripts for consideration in a future issue of PACMPL should be submitted in response to an appropriate Call for Papers.

The following essential information is common to all issues of PACMPL:

  • Authors preparing a paper for submission to and publication in PACMPL should be familiar with relevant ACM and SIGPLAN Publication Policies.

  • Listed authors must meet the criteria for authorship and submissions must represent original work, must not currently be under consideration by any other publication venue, and must describe the relationship to any prior publications on which it is based. See Authorship, Republication, and Plagiarism policies for more details.

  • Papers are required to use the acmart format with the acmsmall sub-format. General comments and problems about the acmart format may be communicated through the PACMPL Information Director.

  • The review option is strongly encouraged for submissions --- this option will add line numbers, which make it easier for reviewers to reference specific parts of the paper in their comments, but should have absolutely no other effect on the typesetting.

  • Papers may use color, but should be understandable when printed or viewed in grayscale. See Grayscale and Color for more details.

  • Papers should include proper indexing and retrieval information from the ACM Computing Classification System. See ACM Computing Classification System (CCS) for more details.

  • Accepted papers must be of high-quality in both technical contributions and clarity of exposition; authors should strive to make their papers accessible to a broad audience. See Advice on Writing and Language Service for more details.

  • All accepted papers receive two rounds of reviewing. See Review Process and Reviewing policies for more details.

  • Authors of accepted papers are strongly encouraged to retain copyright of their work and to license their work with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC-BY) license. See Copyright and Licensing for more details.

  • All third-party material in a paper must be appropriately attributed and, unless stipulated by licensing conditions, authors are required to secure written permission from the copyright holders for the use of any third-party material in their paper. See Third-Party Material for more details.

  • Authors of accepted papers may provide additional online-only material, and a brief description thereof, that will be available from the paper's webpage in the ACM Digital Library. See Additional Online-only Material for more details.

  • As a Gold Open Access journal, all papers published in PACMPL are guaranteed permanent free online access to the definitive version in the ACM Digital Library. See Post Publication for more details.

In addition, authors should note any special instructions regarding the preparation of submissions (for example, page limits, anonymization, special paper categories, additional material, or artifact evaluation) and the handling of accepted papers found in the relevant Call for Papers.

Manuscript Preparation

For LaTeX Users

For LaTeX users, the acmart package includes the following essential files for an author:

    class file (acmart.cls)
    bibliography style file (ACM-Reference-Format.bst)

The acmart format is available from ACM’s Master Article Template page and from CTAN (and is distributed with most popular TeX distributions).
The package documentation provides a detailed description of all features. The acmart format is maintained in a GitHub repository.

Please use the following LaTeX commands:

    \documentclass[acmsmall,screen]{acmart}

General comments and problems about the acmart format may be communicated through the PACMPL Information Director .

For Microsoft Word Users

Microsoft Word is not supported for PACMPL papers.

Citations

Papers may use either numeric or author-year citations. In LaTeX, use \citestyle{acmauthoryear} to select author-year citations; nothing needs to be done to use numeric citations, which are the default.

Take note that citations may be used as either a noun phrase or a parenthetic phase. Examples of both in author-year style are "The lambda calculus was originally conceived by Church [1932]", and "The lambda calculus [Church 1932] was intended as a foundation for mathematics", respectively. With numeric citations, the bracketed parts of the reference contain a number that identifies the biblliographic entry, for example "The lambda calculus was originally conceived by Church [8]", and "The lambda calculus [8] was intended as a foundation for mathematics".

Whichever citation format is chosen, use \citet{Church-1932} for citations as a noun phrase, "Church [1932]" or "Church [8]" (author-year and numeric, respectively), and \citep{Church-1932} for citations as a parenthetic phrase, "[Church 1932]" or "[8]"; for details, see Sections 2.3–2.5 of the natbib documentation.

A useful test for correct usage is to make sure that the text still reads correctly when the bracketed portions of any references are omitted. Take care with prepositions; in the first example above, "by" is more appropriate than "in" because it allows the text to be read correctly as a reference to the author. Sometimes, readability may be improved by putting parenthetic citations at the end of a clause or a sentence, such as "A foundation for mathematics was provided by the lambda calculus [Church 1932]".

Grayscale and Color

Papers may use color, but should be understandable when printed or viewed in grayscale. Guidance on how and why to use color, together with specific sets of colors and fonts that work well for grayscale and colorblind viewers, can be found in the paper Why Should Anyone Use Colours? by Marco Patrignani

Although PACMPL is published electronically, authors should be mindful that reviewers and readers may print articles on grayscale printers or view articles on electronic ink devices. Papers that make essential use of colors that are not discriminated when projected to grayscale may be difficult understand. Furthermore, common color visual deficiencies include red-green and blue-yellow, which may make color screen or print versions of an article inaccessible to certain readers, and situational conditions (e.g., bright sunlight on white paper or a mobile screen) may also reduce color discriminability. For more information, please see the ACM Accessibility Recommendations for Publishing in Color.

Review Option

Authors are recommended to turn on the review option in their submissions --- this option will add line numbers, which make it easier for reviewers to reference specific parts of the paper in their comments, but should have absolutely no other effect on the typesetting.

 

Advice on Writing

Accepted papers must be of high-quality in both technical contributions and clarity of exposition; authors should strive to make their papers accessible to a broad audience. Some advice on how to write submissions is provided by the following:

Review Process

After the submission deadline, the Principal Editor may reject any papers that do not comply with any common or special instructions regarding the preparation of submissions found in the Call for Papers and will assign each remaining paper to a minimum of three reviewers.

Two rounds of reviewing contribute to the final selection of papers. The first reviewing round assesses the papers according to the quality criteria outlined in the Call for Papers and results in the selection of a subset of submissions that are either accepted as-is or are deemed potentially acceptable. All other papers are rejected in the first round. Authors of potentially acceptable papers are requested to improve specific aspects of the research and the paper. Authors are given a short period of time to perform the revisions and re-submit the paper. The second and final reviewing round has the same reviewers assess how the revision requests have been acted upon by the authors and whether the final paper maintains, or even improves, the level of contribution of the original submission. Revisions that significantly lessen the contribution of the work, or that fail to adequately address the reviewers' original concerns, will lead to the paper's rejection.

Note that while always conforming to the above guidelines, as well as the principles of the Proceedings of the ACM (PACM) journal series in general, review processes may vary between issues of PACMPL. For example, an issue may or may not employ double-blind review. Similarly, an issue may or may not permit an author-response period during the first reviewing round, to give authors a chance to comment on reviews before the initial decision is made. These review process variations arise from the experience of the community in determining (and experimenting with) what leads to best decisions. The PACMPL Advisory Board considers this dynamism to be a healthy practice that engages the community in continually seeking to improve its editorial processes. The specific review process used will be included in the Call for Papers for and the front-matter of the PACMPL issue.

Post Acceptance

Once a paper is accepted, the authors will be informed and instructed to submit the final version of their paper for transmission to ACM for publication. Authors are expected to submit a "camera-ready" version of their paper, including both source files (LaTeX or Word files, image files, bibliography files, etc.) and generated PDF file; in general, little to no copyeditting is applied to accepted papers. Authors will also be sent information and instructions on electronically filing an ACM rights management form.

As a Gold Open Access journal, PACMPL is committed to making high-quality peer-reviewed scientific research in programming languages free of restrictions on both access and (re-)use. The PACMPL editorial board encourages authors to support open access by licensing their work with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC-BY) license, which grants readers liberal (re-)use rights. CC-BY is used by LIPIcs, <Programming>, and ETAPS, among others. A reasoned argument for CC-BY is given by the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association.

Authors of accepted papers will be required to choose one of the following publication rights:

  • Author retains copyright, licenses the work with a Creative Commons license, and grants ACM a non-exclusive permission-to-publish license (suggested choice of the PACMPL editorial board)
  • 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

For more information, please see ACM Copyright Policy and ACM Author Rights.

To show support for PACMPL's Gold Open Access policy, authors are requested to pay a deeply discounted Article Processing Charge of 400 USD, made possible by generous financial support from SIGPLAN. In the event that authors are unable to pay this fee, SIGPLAN has agreed to cover those costs to ensure that all articles published in PACMPL are Open Access in the ACM Digital Library. PACMPL and SIGPLAN continue to explore the best models for funding open access, with a particular focus on sustainability.

Third-Party Material

All third-party material in a paper must be appropriately attributed. At a minimum, ownership attribution is required, but the copyright holder or licensing conditions of the included content may require additional attribution or acknowledgment.

Unless stipulated by licensing conditions, authors are required to secure written permission from the copyright holders for the use of any third-party material in their paper. Information and permission regarding all third-party material will be required when completing the ACM rights management form.

See ACM Guidance for Authors on Fair Use and ACM Instructions for Including Third-Party Material for more details.

Additional Online-only Material

Authors of accepted papers may provide additional online-only material, and a brief description thereof, that will be available from the paper's webpage in the ACM Digital Library.

  • Supplemental / Refereed material includes extra content that is reviewed with the submitted paper. For example, a proof that is not included in the paper, but is provided in an appendix. Such content, when properly peer-reviewed, is considered to be an integral part of the paper and part of the published work; as such, an author's chosen publication rights for the paper applies to this material.
  • Auxiliary / Unrefereed material includes extra content that is not reviewed with the submitted paper, but the author supplies as an additional resource for readers. For example, a large data set used in the research or a software artifact developed as part of the research. Such content is not considered to be a part of the published work; as such, an author's chosen publication rights for the paper does not apply to this material. Instead, the author will be required to grant ACM permission to serve the auxiliary materials and to assert that the auxiliary materials abide by ACM terms.

The refereed or unrefereed nature of the material will be clearly designated on the paper's webpage along with a short "readme" file describing its content and requirements for using it.

Authors should contact the Principal Editor for advice regarding the status of additional material submitted with the paper at the time of review. Submission of additional material does not guarantee peer-review of such material.

Post Publication

As a Gold Open Access journal, PACMPL is committed to making high-quality peer-reviewed scientific research in programming languages free of restrictions on both access and (re-)use. Through the generous support of ACM and SIGPLAN, all papers published in PACMPL are guaranteed permanent free online access to the definitive version in the ACM Digital Library.

Authors hold many permanent rights pertaining to works published by ACM, including, but not limited to, the rights: to post the author's version of the work (with a DOI pointer to the definitive version of record) on their home page, in their institutional repository, in repository legally mandated by an agency funding the research on which the work is based, and any non-commercial repository or aggregation that does not duplicate the ACM tables of contents; to generate ACM Author-Izer links to the definitive version of record; to reuse any portion of the work in future works, including books, lectures, and presentations; to create major revisions (i.e., 25% or more of new substantive material) that are considered new works. See ACM Author Rights for more details.

Publication Policies

Authors preparing a paper for submission to and publication in PACMPL should review the following ACM and SIGPLAN documents:

ORCID Requirements

ACM requires that all accepted journal authors register and provide ACM with valid ORCIDs prior to paper publication. Corresponding authors are responsible for collecting these ORCIDs from co-authors and for providing them to ACM as part of the ACM eRights selection process. For journals using the ScholarOne submission system, the submitting author will be required to provide their own ORCID upon submission. Authors are strongly encouraged, but not required, to include ORCIDs for all authors in their source files.  Please note: ACM only requires you to complete the initial ORCID registration process. However, ACM encourages you to take the additional step to claim ownership of all your published works via the ORCID site.

ORCID provides a persistent digital identifier that distinguishes you from every other researcher through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission and supports automated linkages between you and your professional activities - ensuring that your work receives proper recognition. This requirement will also enable ACM to provide improvements to the normalization process of ACM Digital Library author profile data, aid in the detection of undeclared conflicts of interest and other publications-related misconduct in ACM Publications, assist with the implementation of ACM Open, and offer a host of other researcher benefits to ACM authors and the scientific community.

Before submission, the corresponding author should register for an ORCID.  Your co-authors should also create their individual ORCIDs at that time and add them to their accounts in the manuscript submission system. Otherwise, you will need to enter them manually into the ACM rights system upon paper acceptance and before publication in the ACM Digital Library. Simple instructions for complying with this mandate are provided inside the ACM eRights system.

ORCID information for all authors will appear on the article’s page in the ACM Digital Library. If ORCIDs are included in an article’s source files, they will also be linked in the published output.

The ACM ORCID FAQ should answer many of your questions.

ACM Policies

ACM Publications Policy on Research Involving Human Participants and Subjects

As a published ACM author, 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.

ACM Conflict of Interest (COI) Policy

The ACM Conflict of Interest (COI) Policy describes what a COI is, who is responsible for being aware of such conflicts, how to manage COIs, and how to report violations.

ACM Peer Review Policy

ACM recognizes that the quality of a refereed publication rests primarily on the impartial judgment of their volunteer reviewers. Expectations of reviewers and ACM can be found in the Reviewer section of the Policy on Roles and Responsibilities in ACM Publishing page.

Templates

Manuscripts accepted for publication in any ACM publication must be formatted using the ACM authoring template. Submissions must also use the ACM authoring templates. ACM style files will closely approximate the final output, enabling authors to judge the page-length of their published articles.

ACM authoring templates and detailed instructions on formatting can be found at http://www.acm.org/publications/authors/submissions. For both Word and Latex technical support, contact [email protected].

ACM Computing Classification System (CCS)

If your paper has been accepted, please read the HOW TO CLASSIFY WORKS USING ACM'S COMPUTING CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM for instructions on how to classify your document using the CCS and insert the index terms into your LaTeX or Microsoft Word source file. Providing the proper indexing and retrieval information from the CCS provides the reader with quick content reference, facilitating the search for related literature, as well as searches for your work in ACM's Digital Library and on other online resources.

Author Rights

ACM authors can manage their publication rights in either of the following ways:

  • A license granting ACM non-exclusive permission to publish—allowing authors to self-manage all rights to their work by choosing to pay for perpetual open access from the ACM Digital Library.
  • A publishing license agreement granting ACM exclusive publication rights—by granting ACM the right to serve as the exclusive publisher of a work and to manage ongoing rights and permissions associated with the work, including the right to defend it against improper use by third parties. (This license is roughly the equivalent of ACM’s traditional Copyright Transfer Agreement except that the author continues to hold copyright.)

As of January 2023, per decision of the ACM Publications Board, the traditional Copyright Transfer Agreement option is no longer available for ACM authors.  ACM will continue to defend all ACM-published works against improper use when allegations of publication-related misconduct are brought to light.  For more information please refer to this article in The Blue Diamond.

Additionally, ACM authors may post all versions of their work, with the exception of the final published "Version of Record", to non-commercial repositories such as ArXiv. See the ACM Author Rights page for additional information.

Learn more, including about posting to pre-print servers and institutional repositories, by visiting the ACM Author Rights page.

Open Access

ACM has made a commitment to become a fully sustainable and Plan S compliant Open Access (OA) scholarly publisher within approximately five years. ACM offers a number of ways to achieve this goal, including Hybrid OA, Gold OA, and the ACM OPEN program.

Most ACM journals, with the following exceptions, are Hybrid OA.  ACM Gold OA journals are:

Click here to view the Article Processing Charges (APCs) to publish your article Open Access.

Additionally, all corresponding authors from an institution participating in ACM OPEN will have their research articles published OA at the time of publication at no cost to the authors.  Click here for a list of participating institutions. To ensure eligibility for the program, corresponding authors from participating institutions must use their institutional email address upon submission.

Language Services

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, and also has significant outreach in China. Editing is available for both Word and LaTeX files. As an ACM author, you will receive a generous discount on ISE editing services. To take advantage of this partnership, visit the Dedicated ACM Editing Service. (Editing services are at author expense and do not guarantee publication of a manuscript.)

Author-izer Service

Once your manuscript is published, this service allows you to generate and post a link on your home page or institutional repository to your published article. This link will let any visitors to your personal bibliography pages download the definitive version of the articles for free from the ACM DL. These downloads will be recorded as part of your DL usage statistics. A detailed description of the service and instructions for its use may be found at the ACM Author-Izer Service page.

LaTeX Collaborative Authoring Tool on Overleaf Platform

ACM has partnered with https://www.overleaf.com/, a free cloud-based, authoring tool, to provide an ACM LaTeX authoring template. Authors can easily invite colleagues to collaborate on their document. Among other features, the platform automatically compiles the document while an author writes, so the author can see what the finished file will look like in real time. Further information can be found at https://www.acm.org/publications/authors/submissions. The ACM LaTeX template on Overleaf platform is available to all ACM authors https://www.overleaf.com/gallery/tagged/acm-official#.WOuOk2e1taQ.

Kudos Article Sharing Platform

Kudos is a free service that you can use to promote your work more effectively. After your paper has been accepted and uploaded to the ACM Digital Library, you'll receive an invitation from Kudos to create an account and add a plain-language description. The Kudos “Shareable PDF” allows you to generate a PDF to upload to websites, such as your homepage, institutional repository, preprint services, and social media. This PDF contains a link to the full-text version of your article in the ACM DL, adding to download and citation counts.

Author Gateway

Please be sure to visit the ACM Author Portal for additional important author information.

Contact Us

For further assistance and questions regarding the journal editorial review process and paper assignment to an issue, contact the journal administrator ([email protected]).