ACM Student Research Competition Submission Information

ACM Policy : Prior Publication and Simultaneous Submissions

Under no circumstances shall a paper (or substantially the same paper) be simultaneously submitted to two or more publications, or to a second publication while still under review elsewhere, without a letter of notification to the Editor-in-Chief (EiC) or Program Chair (PC) of each affected publication. Failure to adhere to this policy is cause for rejection of the manuscript. Repeated violations may lead to a ban on future submissions at the discretion of the EiC or PC.”

The ACM website has the full policy.

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).

Single-Anonymous Review Process

Initial submissions to the ACM Student Research Competition track are reviewed with the single-anonymous review process, where the submissions are not anonymized but reviewers are anonymous to each other and to the authors. During the discussion of a submission in EasyChair, reviewers can refer to each other by their reviewer number on that submission’s review.

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:

Be sure to use US letter size pages that measure 8.5” by 11”, that’s 215.9mm by 279.4mm.

SIGCSE 2021 is not participating in the new ACM workflow, template, and production system. Word Authors, please use the Interim Template. 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 the SIGCSE Technical Symposium, 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 the SIGCSE Technical Symposium, 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). 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 website.

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 ACM Student Research Competition?

SIGCSE TS 2021 is not participating in the new ACM workflow, template, and production system. MS Word Authors, please use the Interim Template. LaTeX Authors, please use the official ACM Master with the ACM_SigConf template.

Submissions use the English language. If you desire editing services, consider the following from the ACM.

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. Editing services are at author expense and do not guarantee publication of a manuscript.

• Prepare your ACM Student Research Competition submission using the format specified above.

• Recall that you will also need to copy-and-paste or type your text abstract description into a text box in the submission form. Be sure that the same text appears in the submission and in the abstract text box in the submission form.

• Be sure to choose the appropriate topic areas when submitting. Your choices help in assigning appropriate reviewers to your submission, and assist the reviewers in evaluating the paper from an appropriate perspective.

The opening of submissions will be announced through the SIGCSE mailing list, social media, and the front page of this website.

Follow the SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Twitter and SIGCSE on Facebook.

By SIGCSE policy, at least one contributor is required to register, attend, and present a acm student research competition. Our full policy (to be posted) has more information.

Questions

If you have questions about anything discussed above, please contact:

ACM Student Research Competition Team

Email: src@sigcse2021.org

• Stan Kurkovsky
  Central Connecticut State University
• Muztaba Fuad
  Winston-Salem State University

Presenting at SIGCSE TS 2021

Important Dates

• January 29 2021 AOE - (OPTIONAL) Submit 1-2min teaser video through the submission form emailed to corresponding authors
• February 12 2021 AOE - Submit PDF of your poster through the submission form emailed to corresponding authors

How will I be presenting my work? (Student Research Competition)

Authors should prepare a poster as usual, a PDF of which is required to be submitted by February 12th and will be made available to attendees roughly two weeks before the Technical Symposium begins on Pathable. Prepare the Poster keeping in mind the following:

• Use landscape orientation using a 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio, you can achieve this by setting the size of the poster to be 64” wide by 36” high.
• Use resolution of 2560 by 1440 so that the text and images are readable and not blurry when zoomed in.
• Test different zoom levels of your PDF to ensure content is accessible

Poster authors have the option to submit a prerecorded “teaser” presentation 1-2 minutes long which provides attendees a brief audio/video explanation of the work to be presented in the poster and to be discussed during its live presentation. Authors are encouraged to use this opportunity to concisely highlight their work, seeking to pique the interest of registrants to attend the live poster presentation; authors should focus the video presentation on the work/research presented in the poster.

Attendees will have the opportunity to access all available content on Pathable during the weeks leading up to the Technical Symposium and will have access for a year following the end of the Symposium.

Round 1: Poster Presentation

Your poster will be scheduled for presentation on Monday March 15 from 4 to 6:45pm ET. You will be expected to “present” your poster at that time and be available during judging.

Round 2: Presentation

Students selected to participate in the Round 2 portion of the ACM SRC will have 10 minutes to present their work on Thursday March 18 from 4 to 6:45pm ET.

Additional details about expectations will be provided prior to the conference.