Author Guidelines

Essays will be rigorously peer-reviewed, using a process similar to (but separate from) the reviewing process for technical papers. An essay should have these characteristics:

• Significance: the essay should argue something significant.
• Persuasiveness: the case must be compelling.
• Clarity: the essay must be written to communicate.
• Voice: the writing should be distinctive and the author must shine through the words.
• Artistry is welcome to the extent that it is crucial to the case and its presentation.
• Craftsmanship is essential.

Important: Essays may be on any topic related to software; the themes and topics of OOPSLA and Onward!/Essays are unrelated. That is, ties to objects and OO are not required. Onward!/Essays look to explore software in all its marvelous expanse. Co-location is not destiny.

Examples

To get your imagination going, here are a couple of (strongly contrasting) past essays:

• Dan Grossman "The transactional memory / garbage collection analogy"
• Dick Gabriel "Designed as Designer"
  
• Friedrich Steimann "The paradoxical success of aspect-oriented programming"
  
• Glenn Vanderburg "A Simple model of Agile Software Processes"
  

Submission

1. Electronic submission of essays is required. Details of submission system will be made available on this page before the submission deadline.
2. Submissions must be in ACM SIGPLAN 10 point format; templates for Microsoft Word and LaTeX are available. For ease of reviewing, please include page numbers in your submission. (Note that the SIGPLAN formats differ from the standard ACM formats in some respects.)
3. Essays must be submitted in PDF format. PDF files must be created to allow printing, and must be readily printable on a modestly configured color laser printer.
4. Final camera-ready essays must also be formatted to conform to SIGPLAN Proceedings requirements. Details will be released once your essay has been accepted.
5. Essays must be both no longer than 10,000 words and no longer than 20 pages when formatted under the SIGPLAN templates. Papers violating these guidelines will be rejected without review; contact the essays chair in advance if you have any doubts about the length of your paper.
6. Onward! and OOPSLA provide a number of other publication venues; papers that are not accepted to the essays program may, at the discretion of the committee, be forwarded for consideration for the OOPSLA research program or as an Onward! paper.
7. Essays must not have been previously published, and must not be concurrently submitted for publication elsewhere (including journals and formal proceedings of conferences and workshops). Violation of this policy will result in rejection of the essay. See the SIGPLAN republication policy for more details.