ESOP Management Rules

(approved July 2026)

Steering Committee

The ESOP Steering Committee guides the long-term direction, oversees operations, and selects key leadership for the European Symposium on Programming Languages and Systems (ESOP) conference.

The Steering Committee (SC) is formed by six members: three permanent members, including the SC Chair; three rotating members, formed by the Program Committee (PC) Chairs of the previous, current, and next editions of ESOP. In the case of several co-chairs they will count collectively as a single member. In case one of the permanent members is also a rotating member then the PC Chair of the two editions before sits in the SC.

The main activities of the ESOP SC are the following ones: Select the PC Chairs of the (n+2)-th edition right after the n-th edition of ESOP Elect new permanent members and SC Chair to replace members whose mandate has ended. Maintaining ESOP continuity and quality as a top venue in its field and handling major policy or format changes.

Steering Committee Chair

The regular duration of the ESOP SC Chair mandate is 4 years. The next ESOP SC Chair is selected by the ESOP SC committee via an election, based on a list of eligible candidates. (1) Eligible candidates are prominent members of the ESOP community who typically have served as ESOP PC Chairs or/and as members of the ESOP SC. (2) The list of candidates is composed by the current members of the SC plus extra names proposed by SC members (to be sent directly to the SC Chair). (3) The election should generate a preference ordering of the proposed names. (4) After the election closes, the SC Chair will then start invitations following the preference order. If after step (3) the process does not converge, it will be restarted from step 1.

Program Committee Chair

The Program Committee (PC) Chair is responsible for selecting the members of the PC, organizing the selection process, and preparing the final program and the proceedings. The PC Chair has great latitude in organizing her/his tasks. However, since ESOP is part of ETAPS, the PC Chair must abide some common rules. In particular she/he:

• must propose to the ETAPS Steering Committee the composition of the Program Committee and some substitute members before contacting them. This is necessary to let the ETAPS SC verify whether there is any overlap on the PC's of the six main conferences composing ETAPS.
• must strictly adhere to the deadlines set by the ETAPS Steering Committee. In particular she/he must not extend the submission, rebuttal and final version deadlines, and must strictly respect the dates of notification and the dates for sending to the ETAPS SC the proposals of PC members, invited speaker, and paper nominations (see below).
• must enforce the ETAPS multiple submission policy
• must comply with the decision of the ETAPS SC Chair on the maximum number of accepted papers (usually the minimum between 33% of the submissions and the number of slots available for the conference).
• must choose with the PC an invited speaker for ESOP
• must decide with her/his Program Committee whether among the accepted papers there enough of them that would match the acceptance criteria and the prior publication policy of TOPLAS and, if so, handle the preparation of a ESOP collected papers issue of TOPLAS (see timetable below).
• must take part in the selection of the two ETAPS unifying speaker
• must nominate papers for the EAPLS, EATCS and EASST Best Paper awards
• must be present at the conference
• must prepare a conference report to be presented in person at the ETAPS steering committee
• must sit in the ETAPS SC for two years and in the ESOP SC for three years
• Finally the PC Chair of ESOP X must sit in the committees of the ETAPS (X+1) "PhD dissertation award" and the ETAPS (X+3) "Test of the time award"

The PC Chair is advised to consult the following Handbook where she/he can find useful information to organize the selection process. The PC Chair is also advised to add the PC Chair of the following year to the PC, even though she/he will be designated after the CFP are printed and distributed.

PC submissions are welcome and will be handled by the program committee (there is no ERC). The PC chair must not submit. As all discussions will be electronic, the below policy should suffice to ensure a fair evaluation of PC submissions and avoid strong bias in favor or against them.

• Each PC submission will receive an extra review from an external reviewer.
• PC submissions are accepted only if:
  • they do not face strong opposition after the discussion and
  • they are not involved in discussions of relative merits. That is, if there are more papers above the bar than can be accepted (ESOP has a limited number of paper slots determined by ETAPS) and if the group of relatively-weakest papers in this range includes PC submissions, then those get rejected first.

Timetable for ESOP 20nn

Starting 2025, ESOP adopted two submission rounds, a first deadline around late May and a second deadline coinciding with the October ETAPS deadline.

• After ESOP nn-2 (right after summer break): ESOP SC chooses the ESOP nn PC Chair and designates her/him as representative for ESOP in the ETAPS SC
• Fall nn-2 PC chair proposes PC members and ETAPS SC comments on the proposals; ideally, PC chair finalizes the PC by November.
• Late Fall nn-2: ETAPS SC proposes, debates and elects unifying speakers; ideally, unifying speakers are confirmed by the end of September nn.
• Early Winter nn-2: PC chair proposes ESOP invited speaker, SC comments on the proposal, and then PC chair invites the speaker. Ideally, the ESOP invited speaker is confirmed by the end of October.
• Early Winter nn-2: PC chair proposes to ETAPS SC the text for the call for papers, PC chair fixes the text by early January.
• Late May nn-1: First Round Deadline for submission.
• Early October nn-1: Second Round Deadline for submission.
• October/November nn-1: ETAPS SC chair decides maximum number of papers that can be accepted for each conference, based on submission rates
• Mid December nn-1: Notifications.
• Mid December nn-1: The PC Chair and the PC determine whether there are enough candidates for TOPLAS submission and, if so, sends to TOPLAS Editor in Chief (EIC) a list of papers for approval.
• Late December nn-1: PC Chair proposes sessions; ideally the final program is finalized before Christmas. PC chair nominates papers for the EAPLS, EATCS and EASST Best Paper awards.
• January nn: Camera ready version.
• End of January nn: PC Chair invites authors of selected papers to submit an extended and revised version of their paper to the TOPLAS submission site by the end of April nn
• March/April nn: ETAPS

TOPLAS Journal-First and Journal-After ESOP submissions

ESOP has an agreement with ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems to publish extended and revised versions of papers submitted to the conference. In particular, revised and expanded versions of accepted ESOP research papers are eligible for the ESOP Journal-After TOPLAS channel. The procedure in place for each ESOP edition is detailed in each CFP.