Reviewer Guidelines
Constructive Reviewing
TOPLAS seeks innovative, theoretical, experimental, and survey papers. Reviewers must adapt their standards as appropriate to each submission. As the premier programming language journal, the accepted papers must meet the highest standards in its domain and be accessible to a wide audience. Regardless of the reviewer's recommendation, reviews should always provide feedback that assists the authors in producing the best quality work possible to the benefit of the authors and to the benefit of the scientific community.
Conflict of Interest Guidelines
TOPLAS seeks unbiased reviewers, associate editors, and editors-in-chief. TOPLAS prohibits those who have a conflict of interest with the authors of the submission from influencing its outcome. TOPLAS considers a conflict of interest to be:
- Your Ph.D. advisor and Ph.D. students, forever.
- Family relations by blood, marriage, or domestic partnership, forever.
- People at your current institution.
- If you or the author changed institutions within the past three years, people at the prior institution.
- People whose research you fund or who fund you.
- Collaborators in the past five years, including co-authors of paper or grant submissions, regardless of status (accepted, rejected, pending).
- Others with whom you believe that you have a conflict of interest (check with the associate editor or editor-in-chief).
Editorial Board Submissions
Members of the editorial board may submit to TOPLAS, per standard policy for ACM journals. Their papers are held to the same standards as for any other author. The reviewing system prevents authors from viewing their own submissions in any capacity other than author, and therefore the anonymity of the reviewing process will be not be compromised by such submissions.
Editor Guidelines
TOPLAS Guidelines for Editors are located at https://dl.acm.org/journal/toplas/editor-guidelines.
Guidance for editorial board members can be found in this ACM video: