The ACM PEARC21 Technical Program Committee (TPC) invites you to submit technical content proposals for the ACM PEARC21 Conference – Evolution Across All Dimensions which  will be held from July 19th to July 22nd, 2021. Submissions may address any topic related to advanced research computing and data, but topics consistent with one or more of the following three technical tracks are of particular interest. Submissions may take several forms as indicated below. Authors need to plan for virtual delivery in their presentations. All proposers (including Tutorial and Workshop submissions) must take this into account.

Student paper, poster and panel submissions are welcome and encouraged. There is not a separate student submission process.

Technical Tracks for ACM PEARC21

Workforce Development, Training, Diversity, and Education: Practice and experience in developing and sustaining advanced research computing as a profession, and developing a highly proficient workforce that realizes the full potential of people in all demographic groups. Examples of relevant topics: training in advanced research computing; curriculum development for STEM, computer science, data science, and computational sciences; learning technologies; case studies with underserved communities and groups traditionally underrepresented in STEM fields; career and workplace improvement (leadership opportunities, coaching  and or mentoring opportunities as part of a leadership development experience, community recognition of the value of research computing and data professionals, creating an inclusive environment); professional development in relevant professional and technical skills, defining research computing, and data career tracks. 

Applications and Software: Practice and experience relating to the use of advanced research computing to address problems in the physical and life sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities, computer science, engineering, education, manufacturing, government and other fields. Submissions to this track may include, but are not limited to: development of domain-specific software; applications of and application software for GPUs, novel CPUs, FPGAs, or other advanced hardware; optimization, parallelization or other enhancements to existing software; advanced visualization techniques; science gateways and other novel modes of leveraging advanced computing; workflow management systems; cost-effective use of cloud and on-premise HPC resources; advanced user support; scientific results, insights or breakthroughs enabled by research computing; tools, libraries and frameworks that lead to more effective use of computational and data resources; approaches to scientific code design patterns, security and reusability.

Systems and System Software: Practice and experience relating to the system (compute, storage, visualization, containerization, infrastructure and networking hardware) and system software that drives the “hardware” and operations side of cyberinfrastructure and research computing environments. Examples of relevant topics: GPUs, CPUs, containerized solutions, and FPGAs as computational environments; job scheduling; monitoring and usage analysis; fault detection and repair; software stack management; experience with advanced storage systems; hardware and systems for data-centric computing; networking challenges; design and use of visualization environments; design, deployment and maintenance of virtualized environments, funding and operating of advanced research computing facilities (including considerations of cost of locally-sited hardware vs. remote hardware such as cloud facilities), systems procurement, systems administration, cybersecurity, practice and experience in facilitating the acquisition, operation, and use of advanced hardware, software, networks and services to securely and sustainably advance research, scholarship, and creativity; performance comparisons and performance aspects of cloud environments. Submissions covering both established state of practice as well as novel research in operations are welcome.

Submission Requirements for ACM PEARC21

General guidelines and submission timeline:  Manuscripts must be submitted to EasyChair (https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=pearc21#) by the associated date for each submission type, listed below. All submissions will be peer reviewed for quality and relevance to the ACM PEARC community. Authors should submit to the track that fits their manuscript or submission, but their submission may be re-assigned by the TPC based on track-relevance. Only accepted Full Papers and Short Papers (described below) will be included in the ACM PEARC21 proceedings. Proceedings will be published when the conference opens.

Full and Short Paper Authors: Please read the ACM Author Representation Policy. Also note that at least one author of an accepted Full or Short paper must attend the conference to present the work.

Authors need to plan for virtual delivery in their presentations. All proposers (including Tutorial and Workshop submissions) must take this into account.

It is an ACM requirement that we review papers in the ACM 1-column format, but publish papers in the ACM 2- column format. This means that authors WILL have to reformat their papers between time of original submission and final published versions.

Step 1: Authors should prepare their Full and Short papers using the two-column ACM Primary Article Template. This is the publication format, and should be used for authoring to ensure your Full and Short papers conform to the length constraints described below. 

Step 2: ACM requires that the version of your paper submitted for review follow a single column format, and the workflow to produce this review version is different for Word and LaTeX users:

• For LaTeX users: Once you have your submission ready, use the “manuscript” call to create a single column format for review. See step 1 on the ACM Publication workflow page for details. 
• For Word users: Once you have your submission ready using the “Interim Template”, you must copy your paper into the Submission Template (Review Submission Format) described in step 3 on the  ACM Publication workflow page. We recognize this is additional work, and appreciate your understanding. You may wish to consider the Overleaf tools that provide a collaborative authoring platform for LaTeX supporting both ‘Rich Text mode’ or regular ‘Source Mode.’

ACM has partnered with Overleaf, a free cloud-based, collaborative authoring tool, to provide an ACM LaTeX authoring template. See more about this on the ACM Publication workflow page. Note that Overleaf can import .bib bibliography files (e.g., from EndNote); see this article for details. For those having difficulty working with the templates, please reach out for support via [email protected] before the submission deadline.

Full papers (6-8 pages as laid out in the 2-column publication format; it will likely be longer in the 1-column review submission layout) are expected to represent significant, novel work relevant to the ACM PEARC conference community. Some (but not necessarily all) Full paper submissions that are not judged by reviewers to meet the threshold for acceptance may be invited to edit (for length) and resubmit as a Short paper. The invitation to re-submit does not guarantee acceptance, and the re-submitted Short paper is still subject to the standard review process.
Full Paper submissions are due March 9, 2021.
Invited Short paper re-submissions are due April 20, 2021.

Short papers (3-4 pages as laid out in the 2-column publication format; it will likely be longer in the 1-column review submission layout) describe work in progress or less substantial results (e.g., lacking full implementation or evaluation, etc.).
Short Paper submissions are due April 13, 2021.

Student Papers: To qualify as a student paper (either a Full or Short paper), the primary author must be a student, and the work must be primarily that of the primary author and collaborating students (although staff and faculty collaborators are fine). At least one student author of an accepted student paper must attend the conference to present the work.

Authors of accepted Full and Short papers should address reviewer comments for the final version, and must provide Camera-ready final versions using the ACM Template by May 25, 2021. The Camera-Ready manuscript deadline will be an upcoming date, and Authors should expect to hear from ACM soon. Authors should begin preparing their Camera-ready final version. If you experience difficulties with uploading your camera-ready files into the ACM TAPS platform, submit a help ticket to TAPS or reach out to [email protected] as soon as possible; someone will be able to help you with your submission.

Paper Novelty (applies only to Full Papers and Short Papers): ACM PEARC will review all papers in accordance with published SIGHPC policy and the ACM Plagiarism Policy. Under no circumstances should authors submit previously published work, submit the same work simultaneously to multiple venues, or submit papers that plagiarize the work of other authors. These rules also apply to self-plagiarization without proper attribution. Like other conferences and journals, ACM PEARC prohibits these practices and may take action against authors who have engaged in them. In some cases, the program committee may share information about submitted papers with other conference chairs and journal editors to ensure the integrity of papers under consideration. If the Technical Program Committee discovers a violation of these principles, sanctions may include, but are not limited to, contacting the institutions of the authors and publicizing the details of the case.

The ACM policy on simultaneous submission considers technical reports as not a concurrent publication.

AUTHORS TAKE NOTE: The official publication date is the date the proceedings are made available in the ACM Digital Library. This date may be up to two weeks prior to the first day of your conference. The official publication date affects the deadline for any patent filings related to published work.  (For those rare conferences whose proceedings are published in the ACM Digital Library after the conference is over, the official publication date remains the first day of the conference).

Layout guidelines for all submission types other than Full and Short papers (which must use the ACM templates as described above): no template for these submission types is required, but authors should use standard Letter pages (8 ½” by 11”), at least a 10 pt. font, no more than 6 lines per inch, and at least 1 inch margins on all sides.

Tutorials and Workshops: These may be proposed as either a full-day (6-hour) session or a half-day (3-hour) session, and should allow for breaks (which are in addition to the 3 or 6 hours of material). Given the virtual format of the conference, tutorial and workshop organizers should plan reasonable breaks to reduce screen fatigue. 

Tutorials: Tutorials provide participants with in-depth training in the use, facilitation, or operation of research computing and data resources and services. Tutorials should emphasize hands-on, practical content over lecture content, should specify the proportion of hands-on activities, and specify the target audience as Introductory, Intermediate, or Advanced in the proposed topic. 

Workshops: Workshops provide a focused, in-depth venue for presentations, discussion, and interaction. Submissions will be selected with a preference for topics that inspire deep and interactive dialogue on important topics within the research computing and data communities. 

Tutorial and Workshop submissions must be 2-4 pages in length (following the layout guidelines above), and include a detailed description of the tutorial/workshop; the length, structure and format; goals; target audience and expected background and/or skill levels; expected attendance; relevance to ACM PEARC21 attendees. A list of proposed instructors/speakers and their roles must also be provided, along with a list of recent offerings of similar tutorials/workshops by the same or similar organizers.
Tutorial and Workshop submissions are due February 9, 2021. Tutorial and Workshop submissions are not included in proceedings.

Panels: Panel sessions are 90 minutes in length and will be scheduled as part of the technical sessions. Panel submissions should outline the names of the organizer(s) and panelists, and describe the specific contributions of each organizer or panelist. For panels that are similar to those presented previously by the same or similar organizer(s), the submission should identify the venues of recent offerings and differentiate the ACM PEARC21 submission from prior offerings. Panel submissions should be 2-4 pages in length (following the layout guidelines above).
Panel submissions are due May 9, 2021. Panel submissions are not included in proceedings. 

Birds of a Feather (BoF) sessions: BoF sessions are one hour in length and will virtually gather community members to discuss a topic of shared interest. BoF submissions should include the proposed topic, list the names of the organizer(s) and panelists/presenters (if any), and describe the specific contributions of each organizer or panelist/presenter (if any). For BoF sessions that have been presented previously by the same or similar organizer(s), the submission should identify the venues of recent offerings and differentiate the PEARC21 submission from prior offerings. BoF submissions should be 2-4 pages in length (following the layout guidelines above).
BoF submissions are due May 9, 2021. BoF submissions are not included in proceedings.

Posters: Posters summarize projects, information, research, etc., concisely and attractively to help publicize it and generate discussion. The poster is usually a mixture of a brief text mixed with tables, graphs, pictures, and other presentation formats. Accepted posters will be presented virtually in a poster session at PEARC21 and author(s) are present while other participants can view the presentation and interact with the author(s). A poster submission has two main components: the poster itself and an extended abstract of the work presented in the poster. Posters should be in PDF format with a maximum size of 10MB. There are no restrictions on dimensions, but keep in mind that while it is possible to zoom in to any section of the poster, we recommend keeping the poster to a size that is comprehensible on a screen. We also recommend keeping text to a minimum and using a large font size (e.g. 18-24 pt) to facilitate comprehension. Extended abstracts are 1-2 pages (following the layout guidelines above). Proposers are encouraged to include a preliminary mockup of the poster presentation (as a third page of the submission). You are encouraged to add a link or QR code to multimedia elements within your poster, linking to results, videos, graphics, datasets, code, etc. The goal is to advance the presentation of work in the poster.
Poster submissions are due May 16, 2021

Student Posters: To qualify as a student poster, the primary author must be a student, and the work must be primarily that of the primary author and collaborating students (although staff and faculty collaborators are fine). At least one student author of an accepted student poster must attend the conference to present the work.

Hints for new Poster authors: State the contribution and originality of your work clearly and explicitly: What is the problem? How does your approach help? Why is it better than other available approaches? Focus on the contribution of your work rather than the background, including just enough background to make clear how your work differs from significant prior work. Poster submissions may be accepted based either on the significance of the problem or on the originality of your approach. 

Visualization Theater:  ACM PEARC21 will include a visualization theater where the latest breaking visualizations and visualization-associated research projects will be presented in a special event as part of the conference. Submissions should consist of a movie file of a minimum resolution of 1920×1080 and no more than 3 minutes in length including title and credit. The movie file should contain a voice track and/or subtitles that narrates the video and/or a music track. See the following for examples: 

• https://youtu.be/yrSyi1RWcUw 
• https://youtu.be/8TGOo_EvvNU 
• https://youtu.be/dyxLzDbicbo 

The submission should be accompanied by a 2 page abstract (following the layout guidelines above). The abstract should include the following information: name and affiliation of the creator(s), a picture of the visualization, a description of what is being visualized, where the data was obtained from the computational application that generated the data, any special or novel visualization techniques, tools, or software developed or used in the production of the visualization. Note that authors are responsible for obtaining permission from the rights holder for any third-party material (e.g., music) used in visualizations. Submissions should consist of a movie file of a minimum resolution of 1920×1080 and no more than 3 minutes in length including title and credit.   The movie file should be in mp4, avi or mov format and contain a voice track and/or subtitles that narrates the video and/or a music track.  Submissions should include a link to where the movie file can be downloaded.
Visualization submissions are due May 23, 2021. Visualization submissions are not included in proceedings.

Note: All submission deadlines will be at 11:59 PM Pacific Time on the specified date.