Author Guidelines: ACM Student Research Competition

Date Due Friday, October 18, 2019
Time Due 23:59 AoE (Baker Island, UTC-12h)
Submission Limits 2 pages (including abstract of 250 words)
Duration 3.25 hours (first round: poster session) and 1.25 hours (second round: presentation)
Submission Link SIGCSE 2020 EasyChair
Notification to Authors Friday, November 15, 2019
Camera-Ready Deadline Wednesday, December 11, 2019

ACM Student Research Competition

The ACM Student Research Competition held at the SIGCSE Technical Symposium will consist of two categories of competition, graduate and undergraduate, with prizes awarded based on judging during the conference. A submission to the Student Research Competition should describe recently completed or ongoing student research in any area of Computer Science. All graduate submissions must represent a student’s individual research contribution–neither supervisors or other students are allowed as co-authors. Undergraduate submissions may represent individual or team research contributions. Research completed while the student was an undergraduate may be submitted to the undergraduate category even if the student is now a first-year graduate student. A student must be an ACM student member to qualify for awards and travel grants (up to $500 may be available for students who do not have another source of funding).

Preparing your ACM Student Research Competition Submission

Students will submit extended abstracts of 2 pages maximum, which will be reviewed to determine acceptance into the ACM Student Research Competition (SRC) at SIGCSE. If accepted into the ACM SRC, an abstract of 250 words will be published (see below).

Qualifying research may come from any area of Computer Science, as described by the Call for Participation. The author submitting the abstract must still be a student at the time the abstract is due. Each submission should include the author’s name, affiliation, and email address; research advisor’s name; ACM student member number; category (undergraduate or graduate); research title; and an extended abstract (maximum 2 pages - references may be on the third page) containing the following sections:

  • Abstract: max 250 words

  • Problem and Motivation: This section should clearly state the problem being addressed and explain the reasons for seeking a solution to this problem.

  • Background and Related Work: This section should describe the specialized (but pertinent) background necessary to appreciate the work. Include references to the literature where appropriate, and briefly explain where your work departs from that done by others. Reference lists do not count towards the limit on the length of the abstract.

  • Approach and Uniqueness: This section should describe your approach in attacking the problem and should clearly state how your approach is novel.

  • Results and Contributions: This section should clearly show how the results of your work contribute to computer science and should explain the significance of those results.

The extended abstract submission is limited to a maximum of 2 pages plus a page for references and must adhere to ACM’s publication guidelines:

SIGCSE 2020 is NOT participating in the new ACM workflow, template, and production system. Word Authors, please use the Interim Tempalte. LaTex Authors, please use the official ACM Master with the ACM_SigConf template.

If your submission is accepted into the ACM SRC, you will have a chance to modify your abstract of 250 words before it is published.

A PDF version of your submission should be uploaded using EasyChair, the online submission system.

Selection Process for ACM Student Research Competition

No more than three research projects will be accepted from a single department and no more than two of those can be in a single category (graduate and undergraduate). Departments are determined by the location of the research advisor. Submissions for the research competition should describe the results of recently completed or ongoing computer science research conducted primarily by students.

Upon Acceptance of your ACM Student Research Competition Submission

Authors of all accepted submissions will receive instructions on how to submit the publication-ready copy of an abstract of 250 words that serves as a succinct description of the project. Deadline and instructions regarding publication-ready submissions are emailed to accepted authors.

A travel grant covering expenses for travel to SIGCSE, including conference registration, transportation, lodging, and meals, up to a limit of US $500 may be provided to each student whose submission was accepted to the Student Research Competition. Students must be members of ACM to qualify for these awards.

At the Conference

Judges will include professional computer scientists attending the conference activities. Students’ research will be evaluated on the quality and significance of the work, and the quality and clarity of both an oral and visual presentation.

At SIGCSE, the first round of the competition evaluates the research during a poster presentation. Those students who are selected by the judges to advance to the second round will continue in the competition by giving a formal, short, conference presentation of their research (10 minute presentation with 5 minutes for Q&A). The top three winners in the undergraduate and graduate categories as determined by the judges’ evaluation of the conference presentations will receive the prizes of $500, $300, and $200, respectively.

Additional competition details, including information about past winners, can be found on the ACM Student Research Competition home page (https://src.acm.org/).

Round 1: Poster Presentation

Your poster will be displayed for a 4-hour time period Thursday afternoon. You will be expected to “present” your poster at that time and be available during judging. The space available for your poster will be 4 feet high by 8 feet wide, possibly with a small shelf below. Power sources are not available.

Round 2: Presentation

Students selected to participate in the Round 2 portion of the ACM SRC will have 15 minutes to present their work during one of the Friday afternoon sessions. Additional details about expectations will be provided prior to the conference.

After the Conference

Accepted Student Research Competition abstracts (max 250 words) will be distributed in the SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education proceedings. They will be placed in the ACM Digital Library, where they will remain accessible to thousands of researchers and practitioners worldwide.

The first-place winners from each category (graduate and undergraduate) will advance to the ACM Grand Finals of the Student Research Competition where the winners of several ACM conferences compete for more prizes and recognition.

How Do I Submit My Proposal?

Write your submission using the format specified above.

Please limit the number of topic choices to no more than 5. This will help match your submission with reviewers.

Convert your submission-ready paper into Adobe PDF format. Refer to our Creating Adobe PDF Documents page page for assistance.

A PDF version of your submission should be uploaded using the online submission system - EasyChair.

Please do not wait until the last minute to submit your documents because that is when everyone else will be connecting to our server!

Make note of the proposal ID number and password assigned to your submission. You will receive an e-mail message confirmation. Spam filters sometimes trap these automatically generated messages so you may need to check your spam trap for the confirmation and later, acceptance or rejection notification.

After receiving confirmation, go to the submission site to review your submission for accuracy. Send e-mail to the chair(s) (see below) if there are any problems.

By SIGCSE policy, at least one contributor is required to register, attend and present a student research competition poster and/or presentation. See our full policy for more information.

Questions

If you have questions about anything discussed above, please contact the ACM Student Research Competition Team.