Paper Format (Full-length and Short)
The submission should be formatted according to the style guidelines for Computers & Graphics. Full-length papers should not exceed 12 pages, and short papers should not exceed 6-8 pages, including figures and references. We strongly recommend using the LaTeX template to format your paper. We also accept papers formatted by MS Word according to the style guidelines for Computers & Graphics. The file must be exported to pdf file for the first round of submission. For format details and LaTeX template, please refer to the Computer & Graphics Journal Guide for Authors.
Double-blind review
The SMI 2016 conference will use a double-blind review process. Consequently, all submissions must be anonymous.
Submission
All papers should be submitted directly via the journal online submission system of Computers & Graphics:
http://ees.elsevier.com/cag/default.asp?pg=login.asp
When submitting your paper to SMI 2016, please make sure that the type of article is specified as "SI: SMI 2016".SMI Reproducibility Stamp
All papers submitted at SMI 2016 will be subject to a rigorous review process where experts in the field evaluate the technical correctness and reproducibility of the scientific results in the paper. The *reproducibility stamp* is an additional recognition for authors of accepted papers who are willing to go one step further, and in addition to publishing the paper, provide a complete open-source implementation of their algorithm. Note that the reproducibility stamp is not meant to be a measure of scientific quality of the paper or of the usefulness of presented algorithms. Rather, it is meant to be an endorsement of the reproducibility of the results presented in the paper and the recognition of the service provided to the community by releasing the code. Submissions for the reproducibility stamp will be considered only *after* the paper has been accepted at SMI and any accepted SMI submission can apply for the reproducibility stamp, including short papers.
Submissions for which the results can be reproduced based on the source code will receive additional exposure by being listed both as “highlights” to the preface of the journal special issue and on the website together with a link to the source code. It will also be possible to use the "stamp" in the conference program and in the slides to highlight the commitment to push the state of the art by helping the community easily build on top of their research work. Papers with the reproducibility stamp will also have an optional extra 5 to 10 minutes in their presentation to give a live demo, in addition to getting an additional recognition in the closing ceremony.
The purpose of this award is to promote reproducibility of research results and to allow scientists and practitioners to immediately benefit from state-of-the-art research results, without spending months re-implementing the proposed algorithms and trying to find the right parameter values. We also hope that it will indirectly foster scientific progress, since it will allow researchers to reliably compare with and to build upon existing techniques, knowing that they are using exactly the same implementation.
The application process is very lightweight: a link to a github repository with the source code and instructions on how to compile and reproduce the results has to be sent to the Reproducibility Stamp Chair (marco.attene (at) ge.imati.cnr.it). The code should compile on a vanilla installation of any one of the major operating systems (Linux, MacOSX, Windows), have a license that allows free academic usage, and only depend on libraries that are free for academic use. The code quality will not be evaluated, the purpose of the stamp is only to simplify reproducibility of the results: in its simplest form, the code should reproduce the data used to generate every result figure shown in the paper, using a fresh installation on one of the operating systems mentioned above.
Detailed guidelines
To ensure a fair and efficient review of the code submissions, the following guidelines must be followed when you prepare your submission. If there are technical problems to comply with the requirements please contact the chair (marco.attene (at) ge.imati.cnr.it) as soon as possible and describe the issue.
1. Distribution
The software must compile and run on *at least one* of the following operating systems, using exactly one of the versions listed below:
Windows 10 or newer
Ubuntu 14.04.3 LTS or newer LTS
MacOSX 10.11 or newer
Note that you can pick whichever operating system you developed your code on. Your code does not need to compile on all of them to obtain the stamp.
The code should compile and run on a vanilla installation, without any software installed. If you need specific software to be installed, you should provide a script that automatically downloads and installs all the required dependencies. In the case of Windows, a text file with precise installation instructions will also be accepted.
The software should be written in any programming language, as long as the compiler/interpreter is free to use for academic purposes. One exception is Matlab, which will be accepted (version 2015b or newer) since it is very popular in our community: you can use any standard or custom toolbox and you can have mex functions, as long as they satisfy the license requirements described below.
Detailed instructions to install the compilers/interpreter and the dependencies should be available in a read file.
2. Reproducing results
An independent script should be provided for every figure or table of the paper that contains a result generated with the algorithm. The script should run without parameters and generate the data that is shown in the figure or listed in the table. If the produced data is not in a standard format, please describe the format in a text file attached to the submission. The script may either generate the image or the data that has been used to create the image in the paper.
The review process will only ensure that the code runs and is able to reproduce the material for the figures. The quality, robustness and running time of the code will not be evaluated and they will have no impact on the review process.
3. License
The code itself and all of its dependencies should have a license for free academic use. Note that this does not preclude charging your users for a fee for commercial use, see the CGAL project for a successful example of this code distribution model.
For example, you can use mosek or gurobi, since they are free for academic purposes, while knitro cannot be used since their academic license is not free. The only exception to this rule is the usage of Matlab, due to its popularity in our community. In case your project cannot satisfy this rule, please contact the chair to discuss the special case.
4. Interactive application
If your application is interactive and it is not possible to script it to reproduce the results in the paper, you must provide one short movie clip capturing the screen while you use your software to reproduce the figure. The reviewers will then follow step by step the video to reproduce the same results. If you want to use this option, you will have to provide a short description as to why it is not possible to script the generation of the results.
5. Hardware requirements
We encourage the authors to provide code that runs without requiring a specific GPU (or other hardware), to favor portability and simplify the reproduction of the results. However, if this is not possible, we will accept submissions that run on specific hardware as long as this is justified in the submission. In this case, the review of the code will be done in a skype/hangout conference call if the reviewer does not have a compatible hardware setup.
6. Exceptions
The previous rules are general guidelines: If your software cannot satisfy one of the previous requirements, please write as soon as possible to the chair to explain the reasons. In many cases, it will be possible to lift any of the previous requirements if there is a good reason for doing that. In particular, there might be cases where the data used in a paper cannot be publicly released: in these cases, the stamp can still be awarded, but the data must be separately sent to the reviewers for the evaluation process.
7. Timeline and format of the submission
The submission for the stamp is submitted only after the paper is accepted and it is not blind. A single reviewer will be assigned to each submission and the reviewer will work together with the authors to ensure that the submission is improved until it satisfies all the guidelines.
The deadline for the submission is: May 20th 2016 23:59 CET
The submission for the reproducibility stamp will not use Elsevier’s system: The authors have to create a github repository, commit all the material there and then send an email with a link to the github repository to marco.attene (at) ge.imati.cnr.it. A confirmation email will be sent within 24 hours. If you do not receive it please contact the chair.
The repository should contain:
a. A txt file containing the title of the paper, the authors, and the operating system required
b. A script that automatically downloads all required dependencies and compiles the code. If this is not possible (for example if matlab needs to be installed), then a text file with precise instructions should be provided. The instructions need to be precise and describe all the software dependencies that need to be installed, together with detailed compilation instructions. Please always specify entire paths: for example, do not write "change the cmake variable sx to point to the directory where solver x is installed" but instead tell the user to install the solver x in "c:/solverx" and always use absolute paths assuming a vanilla installation of the operating system.
c. The source code
d. A script for every result figure created with the proposed algorithm (in case of a comparison figure, the script should reproduce only the part created with the proposed algorithm), that launches the provided implementation and generates the data used to create the figure. The script does not necessarily need to create a figure: if the figure shows a triangle mesh, it is sufficient to export the triangle mesh to a text file.
Reproducibility Stamp Chair:
Marco Attene (marco.attene (at) ge.imati.cnr.it)