oopsla-topic-selection

OOPSLA Topic Selection

OOPSLA is the broadest seat at the SIGPLAN table: its published scope covers

programming languages "from design to implementation and from mathematical

formalisms to empirical studies," and its verified exemplars include a

benchmark suite, a measurement-methodology critique, a corpus/survey study,

a soundness counterexample, a language experience report, and a formalized

runtime mechanism (resources/exemplars/library.md). The routing question

is therefore rarely "is this PL?" but "is OOPSLA's breadth the asset, or

would a narrower sibling reward this paper's center of mass more?"

The center-of-mass test

State the one sentence a reviewer would repeat to the committee. Route on

what that sentence is about:

| The sentence is about... | First-choice venue | OOPSLA case exists when... |

| --- | --- | --- |

| A metatheoretic result, calculus, logic | POPL | The formalism explains a deployed mechanism or design choice |

| Compiler/runtime performance engineering | PLDI | The insight is the design trade-off, not the speedup |

| Typed/functional language technique | ICFP | The audience is OO/imperative/multi-paradigm practice |

| A provocative vision without full evidence | Onward! (same SPLASH building) | Evidence has matured past position-paper strength |

| OO language design, European community | ECOOP (AITO, not PACMPL) | PACMPL journal publication or the SPLASH audience matters |

| Testing/analysis practice at SE scale | ISSTA / ICSE / FSE | The finding changes how languages are designed, not just tools |

| Human factors of programming | CHI or OOPSLA's human-aspects lane | The methodology meets study-design scrutiny (oopsla-experiments) |

Signals the project is genuinely OOPSLA-shaped

• The contribution couples layers — a semantics plus its implementation

consequences, a design plus the empirical study of its use — rather than

living purely in one.

• The paper would still matter if a competing implementation shipped: the

claim is about the design space, not the artifact's existence.

• Experience and applications carry analysis: OOPSLA has a real lane for

"we built and deployed it; here is what generalizes" (the Julia paper is

the model), which PLDI/POPL reward less.

• Empirical questions about programs and programmers at scale — adoption,

API misuse, bug taxonomies — with instrument-grade methodology.

Signals to route away

• The evaluation is the contribution and it's a speedup: PLDI's

benchmark-first culture is the better courtroom.

• The theorem stands alone without an implementation story: POPL.
• The idea needs permission to be speculative: Onward!, and return to OOPSLA

a volume later with evidence — a deliberate SPLASH-internal pipeline.

• The novelty is a product description: no SIGPLAN venue; consider an

industry track or experience venue outside the family.

Two-round consequence for routing

Because OOPSLA offers two doors a year with a revision system, it is often

the fastest family member from "solid evidence" to "published journal

article" — a legitimate tiebreaker when a paper fits two venues. It is a bad

reason to submit work whose center of mass is elsewhere: family reviewer

pools overlap heavily, and a misrouted paper burns goodwill you will meet

again (oopsla-review-process).

Decision procedure

1. Write the one-sentence claim; identify its center of mass (table above)
2. Check exemplar precedent: which library entry shape matches?  none → doubt
3. Ask the coupling question: does the paper bridge ≥2 layers?  no → sibling
4. Verify current scope text on the live track page (topics drift by volume)
5. Commit to a round (oopsla-workflow) or a re-route with a named venue

Output format

[Center of mass] <one sentence + layer(s) it lives in>
[Routing] OOPSLA / POPL / PLDI / ICFP / Onward! / ECOOP / SE venue / other
[Precedent] exemplar shape matched, or none
[Fit risk] the objection the committee would raise
[Commitment] target round or re-route action