Please read these guidelines carefully. They were written to help you give your submission its best possible chance to be accepted. (As you know, the Program Committee can't accept every paper submitted to the conference.) Generally speaking, we are looking for papers that span a broad range of practical issues in the field of object-oriented technologies.

CONFERENCE DATES:

The 5th Conference on Object-Oriented Technologies and Systems will be held May 3-7, 1999, in San Diego, CA.

• Paper submissions due: November 6, 1998
• Tutorial submissions due: November 6, 1998
• Notification to authors: December 16, 1998
• Camera-ready final papers due: March 23, 1999

THE CALL FOR PAPERS:

• Authors must submit a full paper which should consist of a traditional abstract which summarizes the content/ideas of the entire paper, followed by the full paper. It should include references to related work, and graphs, figures, and tables that are central to understanding the paper.

• THE NEXT STEP IS VERY IMPORTANT. PLEASE READ CAREFULLY.

  All submissions must include an additional, detached page (if the manuscript is printed) or a separate E-mail message (if the manuscript is submitted electronically) listing:

  • The title and authors of the manuscript.
  • The name of one author who will serve as a contact, with regular and electronic mail addresses, daytime and evening telephone numbers, and a fax number.
  • An indication of which, if any, of the authors are full-time students.

• One copy of a full paper must be submitted by email (Postscript, PDF,or ASCII) to: coots99papers@usenix.org. All submissions will be acknowledged.

• The paper should be at least 8 but no more than 20 pages in length.

TO GET A COPY OF THE CALL FOR PAPERS:

A complete copy of the Call For Papers for this conference is available on the Web. You also can get a copy by sending email to info@usenix.org, and including the line: send coots papers in the body of your email.

WHAT KINDS OF PAPERS DOES USENIX PUBLISH?

The most important thought to keep in mind when deciding whether to submit a paper is "What will the audience or readers learn from my paper?" We don't expect every paper to report on a major breakthrough, but we do look for something new, potentially useful, and not entirely obvious. Think about how different your work is from previously published papers; it may be good work but if there is nothing new to learn, it isn't worth reading (or writing) a paper about it. Think about how other people might find your work useful; can they apply what you are teaching them to their own systems? And, does your work really improve upon the previous state of the art? Or does it show how other people have been confused? "Negative results" that contradict the conventional wisdom are often more important than positive results.

Trying to decide if something is non-obvious isn't easy (patent lawyers make lots of money arguing about this), and sometimes the best ideas seem obvious in hindsight; but if lots of people have done the same thing, and you are simply the first person to have considered writing a paper about it, perhaps it's too obvious.

The Program Committee will also be trying to decide if papers will lead to a good 25-minute presentation. Some papers are just too complex to be presented this way (perhaps you should focus on just one aspect); other papers just don't have enough to talk about for that long. On the other hand, a few rare papers are accepted mostly because the committee expects them to produce an interesting talk, but that might not otherwise merit publication.

Again, when you are writing your paper, keep in mind "what do I intend to teach the reader?" That means keeping the paper focused on one or a few main points. Don't try to cram too many big issues into the paper, and don't fill it up with irrelevant details. But do include enough background for the reader to understand why your problem is important, how your work relates to previous work in the field, and how it might fit into a practical system. Also, provide enough detail for the reader to put your performance measurements in context. It is vitally important to provide a good bibliography, both so that you give proper credit to previous work, and so that a reader can know where to turn to find additional background information. The program committee will not look kindly on a paper if the author doesn't appear to be familiar with the current literature.

MORE INFORMATION IS AVAILABLE

Lots of papers and books have been written about how to write a good paper. We'd like to suggest that you read a paper called An Evaluation of the Ninth SOSP Submissions; or, How (and How Not) to Write a Good Systems Paper. This was written by Roy Levin and David D. Redell, the program committee co-chairs for SOSP-9, and first appeared in ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review, Vol. 17, No. 3 (July, 1983), pages 35-40.

Although SOSP and USENIX papers do differ somewhat, Levin and Redell give good advice for authors of any kind of systems paper.

The authors have graciously agreed to make this paper available online. You can also retrieve a separate copy by sending email to info@usenix.org, including the line: send advice papers in the body of your email.

We also recommend that you read the proceedings of some recent USENIX conferences to get an idea of what kinds of papers are published. Not every one of these papers is perfect (or even great), but most of them are better than most of the ones that got rejected.

Finally, if you have any other questions, feel free to send mail to the Program Chair at coots99chair@usenix.org.

HOW SHOULD I GET MY MANUSCRIPT TO YOU?

The Program Committee would prefer to receive submissions via electronic mail, but there are occasionally problems in printing them. That is the main reason why we also accept printed copies of your submission, as a last resort.

Submissions via email can be made in several formats. Flat text files are always easy to print, but if you have any figures or graphics this probably won't work. If you do use flat text, please remember to format it neatly and keep lines under 80 columns in width.

PostScript files are usually the best format, BUT some PostScript generators are quite buggy and we may not be able to print their output. For example, lots of software generates PostScript that can only be printed on Apple Laserwriters. If you send PostScript, remember the following:

• Use only the most basic of fonts (TimesRoman, Helvetica, Courier). Other fonts are often not available with every printer or previewer.
• PostScript that requires some special prolog to be loaded into the printer won't work for us. Don't send it.
• If you used a PC or Macintosh-based word processor to generate your PostScript, print it on a more generic PostScript printer before sending it, to make absolutely sure that the PostScript is portable.

We also accept PDF files (processable by Acrobat) and Microsoft Word. Please indicate in your message which version of Word you have used so that we can process it correctly.

Since electronic mail systems have been known to mangle mail, it is always a good idea to wrap up your submission using shar(1), cpio(1), or tar(1). Note, if you use cpio or tar, or, if your email contains any non-printing characters, use uuencode(1) to convert your email to pure ASCII characters.

If the paper you submit via email is missing illustrations that are present in your hardcopy or fax submission, please indicate this with a prominent note.

Overseas authors should make sure that their abstract prints properly on US-style 8.5x11 inch paper. Please make sure that you leave enough room for top and bottom margins.