popl-related-work

POPL Related Work

At POPL the related-work section is part of the proof of novelty: reviewers are

specialists who know the three closest systems, and the section must say — precisely

— what your formalism can do that each of them cannot, or what assumption of theirs

you discharge. Venue-form facts below were checked 2026-07-08.

Delta sentences, not tours

Weak: "Much work has studied gradual typing [1-9]." Strong: each nearest neighbor

gets a sentence with a technical object in it —

• "[X]'s soundness needs whole-program compilation; our Theorem 5 holds under

separate compilation because the logical relation is defined on open terms."

• "Our rules coincide with [Y] on the pure fragment (Prop. 2) and diverge exactly at

effect handlers, which [Y] does not treat."

If you cannot write the delta sentence, you have not finished reading the neighbor

paper — or the delta does not exist, which is a popl-topic-selection conversation.

The neighborhood map

| Where the closest work lives | Typical relationship to your POPL paper |

|---|---|

| POPL / PACMPL Issue POPL | The direct predecessors; deltas must be theorem-level |

| ICFP, OOPSLA, PLDI (same PACMPL journal) | Same idea family, different evidence culture — compare formal content, not venue prestige |

| LICS, CSL, FSCD | The logic-side siblings; cite them for the semantic foundations you build on |

| CAV, TACAS, CPP, ITP | Verification tools and mechanization techniques; CPP is co-located with POPL itself |

| TOPLAS, JFP, LMCS | Journal-length versions of conference lines — cite the mature statement when one exists |

| ESOP, APLAS | The European/Asian PL circuit; recent near-neighbors often debut here |

Coverage duty is highest for the last two POPL/PACMPL cycles: a 2026 paper on your

exact judgment form, missed, reads as either carelessness or concealment under full

double-blind.

Cite the PACMPL era correctly

Since POPL joined PACMPL, "a POPL 2018 paper" is bibliographically a journal

article. Get the form right before reviewers do:

@article{RustBelt2018,
  author  = {Jung, Ralf and Jourdan, Jacques-Henri and
             Krebbers, Robbert and Dreyer, Derek},
  title   = {RustBelt: Securing the Foundations of the Rust Programming Language},
  journal = {Proc. ACM Program. Lang.},
  volume  = {2},
  number  = {POPL},
  pages   = {66:1--66:34},
  year    = {2018}
}

Volume anchors verified on the ACM DL: Vol 2 = POPL 2018, Vol 7 = POPL 2023,

Vol 10 = POPL 2026.

Verify before attributing

PL folklore misfiles its classics. Check dblp before writing "at POPL": separation

logic's canonical paper (Reynolds 2002) is LICS, not POPL; Milner's type

polymorphism paper is JCSS 1978; "Theorems for Free!" is FPCA 1989. Genuine

POPL landmarks that are safe to cite as POPL — each dblp/ACM-DL verified

2026-07-08 — include Cousot & Cousot 1977 (abstract interpretation), Damas & Milner

1982, Necula 1997 (proof-carrying code), Leroy 2006 (certified compilation), and

Jung et al. 2015 (Iris). See resources/exemplars/library.md.

Output format

[Nearest neighbors] <3-5 systems with one-line technical deltas>
[Coverage gaps] <last-two-cycle POPL/PACMPL items not yet cited>
[Attribution audit] <claims of venue/priority verified on dblp? failures listed>
[Citation form] <PACMPL journal-form errors found>