SIGCSE,

Because We Teach ...

 

SIGCSE 2000

The 31st Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

March 8-12, 2000

The Renaissance Hotel, Austin, Texas

Welcome!

Many thanks to all who contributed to the wonderful success of the SIGCSE 2000 Symposium. For historical purposes, you may view the program at http://www.grinnell.edu/sigcse/sigcse2000/program.html . With SIGCSE 2000 such a pleasant memory, it is time to think about SIGCSE 2001.

The following information is obsolete; refer to SIGCSE 2001 for current information.

The following is preserved for historical reference only.

This page provides information about papers and the reviewing process for the SIGCSE 2000 Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education. General information about SIGCSE 2000 (including information on panels, seminars, workshops, Doctoral Consortium, etc.) may be found at http://www.csc.villanova.edu/sigcse .

Building on SIGCSE's recent history, SIGCSE 2000 will provide more options regarding the submission of papers, allowing papers to be submitted either on-line or in hard-copy form. Reviewing will continue last year's practice of on-line reporting. More details are available below on each of these areas:

Deadline for either on-line or hard-copy submissions: Friday, September 10, 1999

Other Dates

On-Line Forms

The following on-line materials are available in conjunction with SIGCSE 2000:

Types of Papers

Papers at SIGCSE 2000 are divided into two categories:

Paper Submissions

Papers may be submitted either on-line or on paper. The appropriate paper formats are specified below. Regardless of the mechanism used for submitting the paper, the final version must follow specific SIGCSE 2000 Instructions for Preparing Final Papers.

For all submissions, two versions of the paper are required: one with normal author/institution information, and one anonymous version with all references to the author(s) removed. The first version provides the Program Committee with the complete text of the paper. The second version facilitates the process of anonymous reviewing.

On-Line Submissions (requires Netscape or Internet Explorer 3.0 or higher):

This year, SIGCSE 2000 is experimenting with electronic submission of papers through a web-based author-submission form. Papers submitted electronically must be in html format as specified below. Regular papes are limited in length to the equivalent of about 5 printed pages (including all figures and appendices); expository papers are limited to about 8 printed pages.

Upon submission of a paper, the primary author will receive confirmation of the paper's receipt through both the web-browser interface and an e-mail message. Each confirmation will contain both a paper number and passwords for both the full and anonymous paper.

Verifying the Paper: After receiving confirmation, authors should use the web-based author-viewing form to view their papers on line and check that the papers have been received correctly. (To maintain appropriate security, access to all papers requires both the paper number and password. These are sent to the primary author when a paper is submitted.) One of the authors should send e-mail to sigcse@cs.grinnell.edu if there are any troubles with the paper as received electronically. If troubles in the electronic materials received for a paper cannot be resolved quickly, the fallback position will be to request that the author submit a hard-copy version of the paper, following the hard-copy submission instructions below. If the trouble arises after the submission deadline, then authors will have 3 additional days (until the end of Monday, September 13, 1999) to submit the hard-copy version of their papers.

Deadline: All on-line submissions must be received by Friday, September 10, 1999. (In the unlikely event that web server http://www.cs.grinnell.edu or http://www.grinnell.edu is down for 1 or more hours on either September 9 or 10, then the on-line submission date is automatically extended until Monday, September 13 or until 48 hours after either server comes back up -- whichever is later.)

Hard-Copy Submissions:

The paper may be submitted in printed form, following specific SIGCSE 2000 Paper Templates. Regular papers are limited to 5 pages, including all figures and appendices; expository papers are limited to 8 pages. To submit paper copy, please include the following information: Even for papers submitted in hard-copy format, you are encouraged to submit the cover sheet using a web-based, cover-sheet form. Send all other information to:

Henry M. Walker, SIGCSE 2000 Program Chair
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
Grinnell College
Grinnell, IA 50112

Deadline: All hard-copy submissions must be postmarked by Friday, September 10, 1999.

Paper Formatting

Papers may be submitted either on-line in html format or in hard-copy form. Regardless of the mechanism used for submitting the paper, if a paper is accepted, the author(s) will be expected to resubmit the paper in a format conforming to specific SIGCSE 2000 Instructions for Preparing Final Papers.

Format for On-Line Submissions: Papers submitted electronically must follow these guidelines:

Format for Hard-Copy Submissions: All hard-copy submissions must conform to specific SIGCSE 2000 Paper templates, which can be found at http://cs.uwp.edu/SIGCSE2000/templates.html .

Accessing Papers

To maintain appropriate security, access to each paper requires knowledge of both the paper number and the password. Thus, authors will be given the paper number and passwords of both the full and anonymous versions of their papers. Referees will be given the paper number and password for each paper they are to review. Papers then may be accessed through an authors' web-based paper-viewing form.

Reviewing Process for Papers

Papers are reviewed according to categories indicated by the authors when the papers are submitted. The Program Chair hopes to have each paper reviewed by at least 4 referees, although it is possible that practical constraints will require that some papers will be reviewed by fewer people.

For all papers submitted on-line, referees will receive via e-mail the paper number and password for each paper they are to review. Access to papers will be through a web-based paper-viewing form and referees will fill out a web-based referee report for each paper. We anticipate that anyone who has access to versions 3.0 or later of either Netscape or Internet Explorer will be able to participate in the reviewing process.

For papers submitted in hard-copy form, referees will be mailed a copy of the paper. Referees still will fill out the web-based referee report for each hard-copy paper.

Study of the Reviewing Process: In addition to the traditional reviewing of papers for SIGCSE 2000, the Program Chair is leading a project to carefully study the reviewing process. For example, we plan to investigate the natural variance among ratings of a paper by various referees. A report of this analysis may be expected in future years.

Group Refereeing: One element to be considered in the study of the reviewing process will be possible differences in ratings between reviews done by groups and those done by individuals. As part of this effort, groups of 5 or more are encouraged to contact Henry Walker, the SIGCSE 2000 Program Chair, at sigcse@cs.grinnell.edu. It is expected that a group of 5 or more people might be asked to review about 6 papers and to file a single report for the group as well as individual reports on the papers. For more information, please send e-mail to sigcse@cs.grinnell.edu .

Referee Registration

All SIGCSE members are encouraged to participate in the paper reviewing process, and the SIGCSE Symposia Program Committees maintain a database of referees' names, addresses, and areas of interest. This year, all referee reports will be handled on-line, using a web-based referee reporting form.

For New Referees: If you are interested in reviewing papers for SIGCSE 2000, you are invited to fill out the web-based referee-information form to register as a referee.

For Those Who Have Reviewed Before: All people currently listed in the referee database will receive an e-mail message during July with the current recorded information.

Study of the Reviewing Process:

The on-line reviewing materials and scripts for SIGCSE 1999, developed by SIGCSE 1999 Program Chair Robert Noonan at the College of William and Mary, provided the initial source for the web-based materials for SIGCSE 2000.

Web-Development and Reviewing-Research Team:

Modifications of these materials, together with the materials for the on-line submission and viewing of papers, have been done by the research team which is investigating the variance of ratings by various referees:

Henry M. Walker, SIGCSE 2000 Program Chair (walker@cs.grinnell.edu)
Weichao Ma (ma@ac.grin.edu) and Dorene Mboya (mboya@math.grin.edu), Student Researchers
Wayne Twitchell, Instructional Multimedia Technology Specialist for Science (twitchew@grinnell.edu)

This document is available on the World Wide Web as 

http://www.cs.grinnell.edu/~sigcse/2000/index.html

created January 7, 1999
last revised August 28, 1999 by Henry M. Walker, walker@cs.grinnell.edu