 Verus: Verifying Rust Programs using Linear Ghost Types

Andrea Lattuada, Travis Hance, Chanhee Cho, Matthias Brun, Isitha Subasinghe, Yi Zhou, Jon Howell, Bryan Parno, Chris Hawblitzel
 DOI

Call for Papers

The OOPSLA issue of the Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages (PACMPL) welcomes papers focusing
on all practical and theoretical investigations of programming languages, systems and environments. Papers may target
any stage of software development, including requirements, modeling, prototyping, design, implementation, generation,
analysis, verification, testing, evaluation, maintenance, and reuse of software systems. Contributions may include the
development of new tools, techniques, principles, and evaluations.

OOPSLA 2023 will have two separate rounds of reviewing, with Round 1 submission deadline: October 28,
2022 and and Round 2 submission deadline: April 14, 2023
In each round, papers will have a final outcome of Accept, Revise, or Reject—see Review Process for details.

Papers accepted at either of the rounds will be published in the 2023 volume of PACMPL(OOPSLA) and invited to be
presented at the SPLASH conference in October 2023.

Review Process
PACMPL(OOPSLA) has two rounds of reviewing. The final outcome of each round can be one of Accept, Revise or
Reject.

Accept: Accepted papers will appear in the 2023 volume of PACMPL(OOPSLA).

Revise: Papers in this category are invited to submit a revision to the next round of submissions with a specific set of
expectations to be met. When authors resubmit, they should clearly explain how the revisions address the comments of
the reviewers, by including a document describing the changes and – if possible – a diff of the PDF as supplementary
material. The revised paper will be re-evaluated, and either accepted or rejected. Resubmitted papers will retain the
same reviewers throughout the process. Papers with a Revise outcome in Round 2 and an Accept outcome in the
subsequent Round 1 will appear in the 2024 volume of PACMPL(OOPSLA).

Reject: Rejected papers will not be included in the 2023 volume of PACMPL(OOPSLA). Papers in this category are not
guaranteed a review if resubmitted less than one year from the date of original submission. A paper will be judged to be a
resubmission if it is substantially similar to the original submission. The judgment that a paper is a resubmission of the
same work and whether, in this case, it will be reviewed or not is at the discretion of the Chair. Obviously, this same
policy applies to papers that were rejected for inclusion in the 2022 volume of PACMPL(OOPSLA).

Each round of reviewing consists of two phases. The first phase evaluates the papers and results in an early notification
of Reject, Revise, or Conditional Accept. During the first phase, authors will be able to read their reviews and respond to
them. The second phase is restricted to conditionally accepted papers. Authors must make a set of mandatory revisions.
The second phase assesses whether the required revisions have been addressed. The outcome can be Accept, Revise
or Reject.

Submissions
Submitted papers (including resubmissions) must be at most 23 pages using the template below. The references do not
count towards this limit. No appendices are allowed on the main paper, instead authors can upload supplementary
material with no page or content restrictions, but reviewers may choose to ignore it. The PACMPL templates used for
SPLASH (Microsoft Word and LaTeX) can be found at the SIGPLAN author information page. In particular, authors using
LaTeX should use the acmart-pacmpl-template.tex file (with the acmsmall option). Papers are expected to use author-
year citations. Author-year citations may be used as either a noun phrase, such as “The lambda calculus was originally
conceived by Church (1932)”, or a parenthetic phase, such as “The lambda calculus (Church 1932) was intended as a
foundation for mathematics”.

PACMPL uses double-blind reviewing. Authors’ identities are only revealed if a paper is accepted. Papers must

1. omit author names and institutions,

2. use the third person when referencing your work,
3. anonymise supplementary material.

Nothing should be done in the name of anonymity that weakens the submission; see the DBR FAQ. When in doubt,
contact the Review Committee Chairs.

Papers must describe unpublished work that is not currently submitted for publication elsewhere as described by
SIGPLAN’s Republication Policy. Submitters should also be aware of ACM’s Policy and Procedures on Plagiarism.
Submissions are expected to comply with the ACM Policies for Authorship.

Artifacts
Authors should indicate with their initial submission if an artifact exists, describe its nature and limitations, and indicate if
it will be submitted for evaluation. Accepted papers that fail to provide an artifact will be requested to explain the reason
they cannot support replication. It is understood that some papers have no artifacts.

Publication
PACMPL is a Gold Open Access journal, all papers will be freely available to the public. Authors can voluntarily cover the
article processing charge ($400), but payment is not required. The official publication date is the date the journal are
made available in the ACM Digital Library. The journal issue and associated papers may be published up to two weeks
prior to the first day of the conference. The official publication date affects the deadline for any patent filings related to
published work.

FAQ
Selection Criteria
We consider the following criteria when evaluating papers:

Novelty: The paper presents new ideas and results and places them appropriately within the context established by
previous research.

Importance: The paper contributes to the advancement of knowledge in the field. We also welcome papers that diverge
from the dominant trajectory of the field.

Evidence: The paper presents sufficient evidence supporting its claims, such as proofs, implemented systems,
experimental results, statistical analyses, case studies, and anecdotes.

Clarity: The paper presents its contributions, methodology and results clearly.

Artifacts
Q: Are artifacts required?

No! It is understood that some papers have no artifacts. But if an artifact is not provided when the claims in the paper
refer to an artifact, the authors must explain why their work is not available for repetition.
Q: Can a paper be accepted if the artifact is rejected?
Yes! The reasons for rejecting an artifact are multiple and often stem from the quality of the packaging.

Double-Blinding Submissions (Authors)

Q: What exactly do I have to do to anonymize my paper?

Use common sense. Your job is not to make your identity undiscoverable but simply to make it possible for reviewers to
evaluate your submission without having to know who you are. The specific guidelines stated in the call for papers are
simple: omit authors’ names from your title page, and when you cite your own work, refer to it in the third person. For
example, if your name is Smith and you have worked on amphibious type systems, instead of saying “We extend our
earlier work on statically typed toads [Smith 2004],” you might say “We extend Smith’s [2004] earlier work on statically
typed toads.” Also, be sure not to include any acknowledgements that would give away your identity.
Q: Should I change the name of my system?
No.
Q: My submission is based on code available in a public repository. How do I deal with this?
Cite the code in your paper, but remove the URL and, instead say “link to repository removed for double blind review”. If
you believe reviewer access to your code would help during author response, contact the Review Committee Chairs.
Q: I am submitting an extension of my workshop paper, should I anonymize reference to that work?

No. But we recommend you do not use the same title, so that it is clearly distinguishes the papers.
Q: Am I allowed to post my paper on my web page or arXiv? send it to colleagues? give a talk about it? on social media?

We have developed guidelines to help navigate the tension between the normal communication of scientific results and
actions that essentially force potential reviewers to learn the identity of authors. Roughly speaking, you may discuss work
under submission, but you should not broadly advertise your work through media that is likely to reach your reviewers.
We acknowledge there are gray areas and trade-offs. Things you may do:

Put your submission on your home page.

Discuss your work with anyone not on the review committees or reviewers with whom you already have a conflict.
Present your work at professional meetings, job interviews, etc.
Submit work previously discussed at an informal workshop, previously posted on arXiv or a similar site, previously
submitted to a conference not using double-blind reviewing, etc.

Things you should not do:

Contact members of the review committee about your work, or deliberately present your work where you expect
them to be.
Publicize your work on social media if wide public [re-]propagation is common (e.g., Twitter) and therefore likely to
reach potential reviewers. For example, on Facebook, a post with a broad privacy setting (public or all friends)
saying, “Whew, OOPSLA paper in, time to sleep” is okay, but one describing the work or giving its title is not
appropriate. Alternately, a post to a group including only the colleagues at your institution is fine.

Reviewers will not be asked to recuse themselves from reviewing your paper unless they feel you have gone out of your
way to advertise your authorship information to them. If you are unsure about what constitutes “going out of your way”,
please contact the Review Committee Chairs.