Charter
ICTSS Charter
Management
ICTSS is an IFIP conference (WG 6.1) whose proceedings are published by Springer under the Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series. It is managed by a steering committee (SC) that normally contains two members elected by IFIP WG 6.1 (including the chair) and the organisers of the previous three editions of ICTSS.
The steering committee is responsible for directing ICTSS, with consideration for its long-term health. It is also responsible for deciding upon future events and the technical programme committee of instances of ICTSS.
Conference venues and applying to run ICTSS
Those interested in organising ICTSS are encourage to discuss hold discussions with steering committee members before producing a formal application. They should also check the guidance for those applying (this can be obtained from members of the SC).
The organising committee of ICTSS will normally have two or three members and ideally should include at least one individual with experience in organising international conferences and workshops. It is highly desirable to include individuals with a high profile in the testing community and ideally also at least one person with significant industrial expertise. Naturally, conference chairs should not submit to the conference.
Conference dates
ICTSS will normally be held in the autumn. While there is scope to organise it at a slightly different time, it is important to ensure that this does not clash with related events.
Conference sponsorship and structure
Organisers are strongly encouraged to have affiliated workshops and tutorials, with an associated call (which could be with the call for papers). There is also value in finding industrial sponsorship. Typically, a sponsor might expect their name and logo to appear on the website and on marketing material. Some conferences have a range of options (e.g. gold, silver, bronze) or allow organisations to sponsor individual aspects such as the conference dinner or the social event. The organisers should liaise with the SC regarding sponsorship arrangements.
The Technical Programme Committee (TPC)
In producing a proposed TPC the organisers should consider several factors including the following:
The balance between the need for some continuity but also the desire to make changes in order to widen the ICTSS community and avoid stagnation.
The importance of having expertise to cover the expected range of submissions.
The need to have TPC with sufficient experience in reviewing and who understand ICTSS.
It being desirable to have a sufficiently large TPC so that reviewing loads are not excessive, ideally not exceeding five per TPC member.
The organisers of an ICTSS event must send a list of the proposed TPC members to the SC at least a month before they invite any members of the TPC. The SC can require that changes are made to the proposed TPC.
It is important that ICTSS is open to the wider software testing community. As a result, the following rules are intended to ensure that the TPC changes significantly over time.
No one can be a member of the TPC for more than three consecutive years, with the exception of the chairs for the current year and the following year.
The above rule will be phased in as follows.
For 2013, at least a third of those who were on the TPC in all of the 2010, 2011, and 2012 events will be removed from the TPC. Of those remaining, at least half will be removed from the TPC for the 2014 event.
The rule will apply in full after the 2014 event.
In addition, new members of the TPC should normally either be:
Someone who has show recent commitment to ICTSS (either attending ICTSS or co-authoring an ICTSS paper in the last five years); or
Someone who has not previously been on the TPC of ICTSS but has been in the TPC of relevant testing conferences; or
Someone with relevant experience and who either is based in the country where the event is being held or has valuable expertise that otherwise is missing or scarce. The chairs should briefly justify the inclusion of each such person.
Those in the third category should normally constitute no more than 10% of the TPC. Conference chairs should also understand that those who have not previously been on the TPC of a testing conference might require some additional guidance.
Anti-harassment policy
We are not aware of any evidence of harassment at ICTSS events and we hope that this reflects the reality and that this remains the case. We have an anti-harassment following policy in order to discourage harassment, and to encourage it being reported where it occurs. The following text should be included in any emails promoting ICTSS (e.g. call for papers/workshops/participation).
ICTSS is dedicated to a harassment-free conference experience for everyone. Our anti-harassment policy can be found at: ICTSS Anti-harassment policy
The full anti-harassment policy should also be provided on the conference website as indicated above.
The text and full policy (given in a separate document) are based on the example policy from the Geek Feminism wiki, created by the Ada Initiative and other volunteers. See: conference anti-harassment policy.
Short papers
Short papers can be included in the proceedings. However, these should be in a separate section of the proceedings and the title of each short paper should start with ‘Short paper:’. The chairs might also choose to allow some papers, submitted as regular papers, to be revised to form short papers. However, they should be carefully choose such in consultation with the reviewers and possibly the TPC: some papers are suitable (for example, where a paper contains interesting ideas but is rejected due to lack of evaluation) but some are not.
After an ICTSS event
After an edition of ICTSS has been held, the chairs of this will send to the SC a report containing the following information:
A brief summary of the event.
Feedback that could be used to improve future events.
A list of TPC members who either did not complete their reviews or produced reviews that were not of an acceptable standard. A brief explanation should also be given for each such TPC member.