Objectives and scope

In recent years, we have witnessed a proliferation of approaches that integrate several modelling, verification and simulation techniques, facilitating more versatile and efficient analysis of software-intensive systems. These approaches provide powerful support for the analysis of different functional and non-functional properties of the systems, complex interaction of components of different nature as well as validation of diverse aspects of system behaviour. The iFM conference series is a forum for discussing recent research advances in the development of integrated approaches to formal modelling and analysis. The conference covers all aspects of the design of integrated techniques, including language design, verification and validation, automated tool support and the use of such techniques in software engineering practice.

Areas of interest include but are not limited to:

• Formal and semi-formal modelling notations
• Combining formal methods with different simulation and system analysis techniques
• Program verification, model checking, and static analysis
• Theorem proving, decision procedures, SAT/SMT solving
• Runtime analysis, monitoring, and testing
• Program synthesis
• Analysis and synthesis of hybrid, embedded, probabilistic, distributed, or concurrent systems
• Abstraction and refinement
• Model learning and inference
• Approaches to integrating formal methods into software engineering practice

Submission guidelines

iFM 2020 solicits high quality papers reporting research results and/or experience reports related to the overall theme of formal method integration.

We accept papers in the following categories:

(1) Regular papers (limit 18 pages) on

• original scientific research results
• tools, their foundation and evaluations
• applications of formal methods, including rigorous evaluations

(2) Short papers (limit 8 pages) on

• any subject of interest in the area of formal methods that can be described with sufficient detail within the page limit

Page limits include bibliography. Appendices may be included, which will only be read by a reviewer at their discretion.

Regular and short papers submitted in categories (1) and (2) must be original, unpublished, and not submitted for publication elsewhere. Papers in these two categories will undergo a thorough review process. Submissions will be judged on the basis of significance, relevance, correctness, originality, and clarity.

The submissions will be reviewed and selected for the presentation based on the abovementioned criteria as well as suitability to the conference’s technical program.

How to submit

Submissions for all categories should be made using the iFM 2020 Easychair site:

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ifm2020

Submissions must be in PDF format, using the Springer LNCS style files.

Springer requires that authors should consult Springer’s authors’ guidelines and use their proceedings templates, for the preparation of their papers. Springer encourages authors to include their ORCIDs in their papers. After a paper is accepted, the corresponding author of each paper, acting on behalf of all of the authors of that paper, must complete and sign a Consent-to-Publish form. The corresponding author signing the copyright form should match the corresponding author marked on the paper. Once the files have been sent to Springer, changes relating to the authorship of the papers cannot be made.

Proceedings

The conference proceedings will be published in Springer’s Lecture Notes in Computer Science series. A special issue of the Formal Aspects of Computing - FAOC journal is planned for extended versions of selected papers from iFM 2020.

All accepted papers must be presented at the conference . Their authors must be prepared to sign a copyright transfer statement. At least one author of each accepted paper must register to the conference by the early registration date, and present the paper. Since iFM 2020 will be a virtual conference, presentations will take place online. The conference organisation will define details and schedule of the virtual event and communicate them to authors.