Lightning TalksSIGCSE TS 2025

Lightning Talks are expected to explore tentative or preliminary work, or even ideas for possible work. Lightning Talks describe works in progress (tentative or preliminary work), new and untested ideas (ideas for possible work), or opportunities for collaborative work. Presentations of mature work will not be considered. The purpose of a Lightning Talk can be to start a discussion, find collaborators, or receive input and critique about an idea.

Authors submitting work to SIGCSE TS 2025 are responsible for complying with all applicable conference authorship policies and those articulated by ACM. If you have questions about any of these policies, please contact program@sigcse2025.sigcse.org for clarification prior to submission.

ACM has made a commitment to collect ORCiD IDs from all published authors (https://authors.acm.org/author-resources/orcid-faqs). All authors on each submission must have an ORCiD ID (https://orcid.org/register) in order to complete the submission process. Please make sure to get your ORCID ID in advance of submitting your work.

Presentation Modality

At least one author of accepted submissions in this track must register and present their work in-person at the conference. There will be no remote presentations of lightning talks.

Deadlines and Submission

Lightning Talk submissions consist of answers to a series of prompts, on EasyChair, including a 250-word short abstract, a description about the work, and references.

Lightning Talk submissions to the SIGCSE TS 2025 must be made through EasyChair no later than Monday, 14 October 2024. The track chairs reserve the right to desk reject submissions that are incomplete after the deadline has passed.

Important Dates

Authors may find it useful to read the Instruction for Reviewers and the Review Form to understand how their submissions will be reviewed. Also note that when submitting, you will need to provide between 3-7 related topics from the Topics list under Info.

Abstract, Description and References

All Lightning Talk submissions must have a plain-text abstract of up to 250 words which will be published in the proceedings. Abstracts should not contain subheadings or citations. The abstract should be submitted in EasyChair along with the submission metadata, the description of the talk, and References.

Double Anonymized Review

Authors must submit ONLY an anonymized version of the submission. The goal of the anonymized version is to, as much as possible, provide the author(s) of the submission with an unbiased review. The anonymized version should have ALL mentions of the authors removed (including author’s names and affiliation plus identifying information within the body of the submission such as websites or related publications).

Self-citations need not be removed if they are worded so that the reviewer doesn’t know if the writer is citing themselves. That is, instead of writing “We reported on our first experiment in 2017 in a previous paper [1]”, the writer might write “In 2017, an initial experiment was done in this area as reported in [1].

Submissions to the Lightning Talk track are reviewed with the dual-anonymous review process. The reviewers are unaware of the author identities, and reviewers are anonymous to each other and to the authors.

The reviewing process includes a discussion phase after initial reviews have been posted. During this time, the reviewers can examine all reviews and privately discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the work in an anonymous manner through EasyChair. This discussion information can be used by the track chairs in addition to the content of the review in making final acceptance decisions.

The SIGCSE TS 2025 review process does not have a rebuttal period for authors to respond to comments, and all acceptance decisions are final.

ACM Policies

By submitting your article to an ACM Publication, you are hereby acknowledging that you and your co-authors are subject to all ACM Publications Policies, including ACM’s new Publications Policy on Research Involving Human Participants and Subjects (https://www.acm.org/publications/policies/research-involving-human-participants-and-subjects). Alleged violations of this policy or any ACM Publications Policy will be investigated by ACM and may result in a full retraction of your paper, in addition to other potential penalties, as per ACM Publications Policy. See also the authorship policies.

ACM has made a commitment to collect ORCiD IDs from all published authors (https://authors.acm.org/author-resources/orcid-faqs). All authors on each submission must have an ORCiD ID (https://orcid.org/register) in order to complete the submission process. Please make sure to get your ORCID ID in advance of submitting your work.

Additional details are in the instructions for authors.

Getting ready

• Make sure that all authors have obtained an ORCiD identifier. These identifiers are required for paper submission.
• Check the author list carefully now and review with your co-authors. The authors on the submission must be the same as the authors on the final version of the work (assuming the work is accepted). Authors may not be added or removed after submission and must also appear in the same order as in the submission.
• Identify at least one author who is willing to review for the symposium. Have that author or those authors sign up to review at https://tinyurl.com/review-sigcse25. (If they’ve done so already, there is no need to fill out the form a second time.) Researchers listed as co-authors on three or more submissions must volunteer to review. (Undergraduate co-authors are exempt from this requirement.)
• Review the additional resources.
• Review the instructions for reviewers and the Review Form to see what reviewers will be looking for in your paper.
• Look at the list of topics in the Info menu on this site or on EasyChair and pick 3-7 appropriate topics for your submission.
• Look at the EasyChair submission page to make sure you’ll be prepared to fill everything out. Note that you are permitted to update your submission until the deadline, so it is fine to put draft information there as you get ready.
• NOTE: the abstract will be submitted in easy chair separately from the Description and the References.

The submission on EasyChair

Note: EasyChair does not let you save incomplete submission forms. Please fill out all of the fields in one sitting and save them. After that, you can continue to update the information in the fields and your submission until the deadline.

• Ensure that your submission is accessible. See accessibility tips for authors for further details.
• Ensure that your submission does not exceed the word or character limits given on EasyChair.
• For the double anonymous review process, ensure that your submission contains no author names or affiliations, but that you have left space for them, as per the instructions for authors.
• Submit the final version by 11:59 p.m. AOE, Monday, 14 October 2024.

What Gets Published?

The full text of accepted lightning talk submissions will not appear in the ACM digital library. Only the title, author metadata, and the 250-word abstract will be included in the official conference proceedings.

Presentation Details

By SIGCSE policy, at least one author of an accepted Lightning Talk is required to register, attend, and present the work.

In-person Presentations

For the presentation, you can either use your device to play the slides or upload them to a USB flash drive. Therefore, please arrive 15 minutes early before the session starts to set up the presentation and troubleshoot any issues. The lightning talk itself should be limited to 5 minutes. Right after each lightning talk, there will be a 5-minute period for Q&A discussions, before the next lightning talk starts.

Sample Lightning Talk Proposal - ACM Format.pdf

Sample Lightning Talk Proposal - ACM Format.doc

For sample abstracts of accepted Lightning Talks, see prior SIGCSE TS proceedings. E.g., https://dl.acm.org/doi/proceedings/10.1145/3478432

Language Editing Assistance

ACM has partnered with International Science Editing (ISE) to provide language editing services to ACM authors. ISE offers a comprehensive range of services for authors including standard and premium English language editing, as well as illustration and translation services. Editing services are at author expense and do not guarantee publication of a manuscript.

Table of Contents

• Overview
• Submission and Review System
• Dual-Anonymous Review Process
• Getting Started Reviewing
• Lightning Talk Review Guidlelines
• Discussion
• Recalcitrant Reviewers

Overview

Lightning Talks describe works in progress (tentative or preliminary work), new and untested ideas (ideas for possible work), or opportunities for collaborative work. Presentations of mature work will not be considered. The purpose of a Lightning Talk can be to start a discussion, find collaborators, or receive input and critique about an idea. Proposals will be reviewed with a dual-anonymous process for acceptance. Lightning Talk presentations will be a maximum of 5 minutes each. For virtual presentations, the presenter may provide a pre-recorded video of their presentation.

Submission and Review System

The review process for SIGCSE TS 2025 will be done using the EasyChair submission system (https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=sigcsets2025) . Reviewers will be invited to join/login into EasyChair, update their profile, and select 3-5 topics that they are most qualified to review. To do so, reviewers select SIGCSE TS 2025 > Conference > My topics from the menu and select at most 5 topics. More topics make it harder for the EasyChair system to make a good set of matches. Reviewers also identify their Conflicts of Interest by selecting SIGCSE TS 2025 > Conference > My Conflicts.

Dual-Anonymous Review Process

Authors must submit ONLY an anonymized version of the submission. The goal of the anonymized version is to, as much as possible, provide the author(s) of the submission with an unbiased review. The anonymized version should have ALL mentions of the authors removed (including author’s names and affiliation plus identifying information within the body of the submission such as websites or related publications). However, authors are reminded to leave sufficient space in the submitted manuscripts to accommodate author information either at the beginning or end of the submission. LaTeX/Overleaf users are welcome to use the anonymous option, but are reminded that sufficient room must exist in the submission to include all author blocks when that option is removed. Authors may choose to use placeholder text in the author information block, but we encourage authors to use obviously anonymized placeholders like “Author 1”, “Affiliation 1”, etc.

Self-citations need not be removed if they are worded so that the reviewer doesn’t know if the writer is citing themselves. That is, instead of writing “We reported on our first experiment in 2017 in a previous paper [1]”, the writer might write “In 2017, an initial experiment was done in this area as reported in [1].

Submissions to the Lightning Talk track are reviewed with the dual-anonymous review process. The reviewers are unaware of the author identities, and reviewers are anonymous to each other and to the authors. The reviewing process includes a discussion phase after initial reviews have been posted. During this time, the reviewers can examine all reviews and privately discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the work in an anonymous manner through EasyChair. This discussion information can be used by the track chairs in addition to the content of the review in making final acceptance decisions.

The SIGCSE TS 2025 review process does not have a rebuttal period for authors to respond to comments, and all acceptance decisions are final.

Getting Started Reviewing

Before starting your review, you may be asked by the Track Chairs to declare conflicts with any submitting authors. Please do so in a timely manner so we can avoid conflicts during assignment.

As a Reviewer, we ask that you carefully read each submission assigned to you and write a constructive review that concisely summarizes what you believe the submission to be about. When reviewing a submission, consider:

• the strengths and weaknesses,
• the contribution to an outstanding SIGCSE TS 2025 program and experience for attendees, and
• how it brings new ideas or extends current ideas through replication to the field and to practitioners and researchers of computing education.

Lightning Talk Review Guidelines

As you write your review, please keep in mind that Lightning Talks are meant to describe works in progress, new ideas, or opportunities.

We strongly recommend that you prepare your review in a separate document; EasyChair has been known to time out.

Review the proposal based on the following questions:

• Does the proposed talk fit into the 5-minute time frame?
• Is the subject of interest to the SIGCSE TS audience?
• Does the talk present a timely and innovative idea?
• Is it clear what the proposer intends to gain from presenting the talk?
• In the event that a proposal contains a link to a website with supplementary materials, reviewers should not consider these materials in their review as the abstract should be self-contained and sufficient.

Please provide constructive feedback and clearly justify your choice of rating to help the authors. A review that gives a low score with no written comments is not helpful to the authors since it simply tells the authors that they have been unsuccessful, with no indication of how or why. Reviewers will be asked to summarize the work, provide their familiarity with the submission topic, describe the expected audience, identify strengths and weaknesses of the submissions, and provide an overall evaluation. Reviewers may provide confidential comments to the program committee to address concerns about the submission. These comments will not be shared with submitting authors.

While your review text should clearly support your scores and recommendation, please do not include your preference for acceptance or rejection of a submission in the feedback to the authors. Instead, use the provided radio buttons to make a recommendation (the authors will not see this) based on your summary review and provide any details that refer to your recommendation directly in the confidential comments to the APC or track chairs. Remember that as a reviewer, you will only see a small portion of the submissions, so one that you recommend for acceptance may be rejected when considering the other reviewer recommendations and the full set of submissions.

Discussion

The discussion and recommendation period provides the opportunity for the Track Chairs to discuss reviews and feedback so they can provide the best recommendation for acceptance or rejection to the Program Chairs and that the submission is given full consideration in the review process. We ask that Reviewers engage in discussion when prompted by other reviewers and the Track Chairs by using the Comments feature of EasyChair. During this period you will be able to revise your review based on the discussion, but you are not required to do so.

The Track Chairs will make a final recommendation to the Program Chairs from your feedback.

Recalcitrant Reviewers

Reviewers who don’t submit reviews, have reviews with limited constructive feedback, do not engage effectively in the discussion phase, or submit inappropriate reviews will be removed from the reviewer list (as per SIGCSE policy). Recalcitrant reviewers will be informed of their removal from the reviewer list. Reviewers with repeated offenses (two within a three-year period) will be removed from SIGCSE reviewing for three years.

The following text represents the review form.

Summary: Please provide a brief summary of the submission, its audience, and its main point(s).

Familiarity: Rate your personal familiarity with the topic area of this submission in relation to your research or practical experience.

Overall evaluation: Please provide a detailed justification that includes constructive feedback that summarizes the strengths & weaknesses of the submission and clarifies your scores. Both the score and the review text are required, but remember that the authors will not see the overall recommendation score (only your review text). You should NOT directly include your preference for acceptance or rejection in your review.