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 GUIDELINES

Thank you very much for considering the submission of a paper to TOOLS. The following informal notes are meant to help you make sure that your proposal will have the best chance of acceptance by the program committee.

 GENERAL

TOOLS is a scientific conference with emphasis on applications. This means that contributions should be scientifically valid and at the same time carry significant interest for industry practitioners.

The program committee's task is to build a high-quality conference program which will be interesting and informative for conference participants as well as readers of the Proceedings. In other words, the program committee acts as a ``consumer's advocate'' for these two groups of (tough) consumers. Your task is to convince the committee that your paper, if selected, will please that audience, and that it should be made part of the program.

Remember, the Committee is not so much trying to ``judge'' you as it is thinking about how it will be judged by its constituency - attendees and readers.

One more general note - about the OO in TOOLS. The Conference's theme is Object-Oriented technology. While there is no universally accepted definition of what ``object- orientedness'' exactly means, professionals in the field usually agree that they
``recognize it when they see it''. We assume that you are one of these professionals and have no doubt that your contribution fits within the general framework of object-oriented methods, techniques, tools, languages, systems, libraries and environments.

 GENERAL

Any contribution should include the following components:

• Introduction stating precisely the problem addressed in the paper.
• Mention of and comparison with other relevant work, including bibliography.
• Clear explanation of the impact of object-oriented technology on the work described, and/or conversely.
• Description of concepts or experiences; if a system is described, basic pecification, design or implementation decisions, major problems encountered, nature of solutions devised.
• Conclusion assessing the results of the work described and its limitations.

 CONCEPTUAL PAPERS

Any contribution describing new concepts, or new aspects of existing concepts, should emphasize the potential relevance of these concepts to practitioners.

Not all the concepts described need be new. The novelty may be in a better presentation of known concepts, or in newly discovered consequences. In all cases, the paper should make it clear what is new with the author and what is not.

 EXPERIENCE REPORTS

Any paper describing a practical experience (e.g. application of a certain method, language, tool to a certain problem) should  describe:

• The exact elements used (e.g. version X of environment Y).
• Any external constraints that may have affected the outcome (e.g. hardware choices, available manpower and other resources, level of expertise, deadlines).
• Differences and similarities with standard practice for other projects (the state of the art), especially within the same organization.
• The place of the project in the author's organization (e.g. experiment in a research laboratory, pilot project with no immediate consequence on the organization's operational activities, full-scale operational development).
• Evaluation of results obtained so far (acceptance by the organization, use as basis for new developments, rejection of results, etc.), indicating what criteria where used for evaluation (authors' opinion only, management assessment) and whether the evaluation is subjective only or is based on more systematic criteria (e.g. metrics).
• The brand of object-oriented technology used and its role in the experience.
• An analysis of benefits and limitations of the experience, with emphasis on lessons to be drawn for similar undertakings by others.

 EXTENDED ABSTRACTS

TOOLS accepts submissions in the form of extended abstracts in lieu of full papers. To avoid the impression of ``hand-waving'' that an extended abstract may sometimes give, please keep in mind the following if you decide to make your submission in this  form:

• Include the most salient parts of the full paper in the extended abstract.     
• Don't make promises. The program committee will judge on the basis of what it sees in the extended abstract, not of what the extended abstract says will be in the full paper. By the very definition of the notion of extended abstract, some elements of the full paper will be missing; what is there should be convincing enough that the program committee will trust that you will fill these missing parts at a high level of quality.
• The time imparted between notification of acceptance and submission of the final camera-ready copy is invariably short.
• Do not leave out any part that you would not have time to finish.

If your submission is an extended abstract, it should be marked clearly as such to avoid any confusion.

 QUALITY OF ENGLISH

The Program Committee realizes that English, the official language of TOOLS, is a foreign language for many authors. It is the Committee's responsibility, however, to make sure that listeners to your presentation at the Conference, and readers of your paper in the Proceedings, will be able to benefit from your work - which implies that they will understand it. You are not expected to write like F. Scott Fitzgerald (and you are strongly advised against writing like William Faulkner). But your English should be
grammatically correct, and understandable by competent professionals worldwide. The last comment, by the way, also means that if you are a native English speaker you should stay away from colloquialisms as well as pompous or conceited style.

If you are uncertain as to the acceptability of a certain term or phrase, try to find a native speaker to help you. If this is impossible, go for the simplest and the clearest form of expression, using a good grammar and dictionary.

Regardless of whether or not you are a native speaker, there is no excuse for spelling mistakes. Your computing system almost certainly has a spelling checker; use it. Remember, the program committee cannot accept your contribution if it is not confident
that you can produce an acceptable paper for inclusion in the conference proceedings.

Both the British and American brands of English are acceptable (this note uses the American form). But you must be consistent: if you use center (American for centre), then do not write behaviour (British for behavior).

The rest is up to you. Thanks again, and the best of our encouragements.