European Symposium on Programming (ESOP)
The conference
ESOP is a member conference of the European Joint Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software (ETAPS), which is the primary European forum for academic and industrial researchers working on topics relating to Software Science.

ESOP is devoted to fundamental issues in the specification, design, analysis, and implementation of programming languages and systems. ESOP seeks contributions on all aspects of programming language research including, but not limited to, the following areas:

  • Programming paradigms and styles: functional programming, object-oriented programming, aspect-oriented programming, logic programming, constraint programming, extensible programming languages, domain-specific languages, synchronous and real-time programming languages;
  • Methods and tools to write and specify programs and languages: programming techniques, logical foundations, denotational semantics, operational semantics, meta programming, module systems, language-based security;
  • Methods and tools for reasoning about programs: type systems, abstract interpretation, program verification, testing;
  • Methods and tools for implementation: program transformations, rewriting systems, partial evaluation, experimental evaluations, virtual machines, intermediate languages, run-time environments;
  • Concurrency and distribution: process algebras, concurrency theory, parallel programming, service-oriented computing, distributed and mobile languages.
Contributions bridging the gap between theory and practice are particularly welcome.
Submission Guidelines
Papers must be written in English, unpublished and not submitted for publication elsewhere. The proceedings are published in the Springer-Verlag Lecture Notes in Computer Science series. Submissions must be in PDF format, formatted in the LNCS style and be at most 25 pages long. Papers longer than 25 pages are rejected without review.
ESOP Collected Papers in TOPLAS
new ESOP has an agreement with the ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems to produce an issue of the journal collecting selected papers of the conference. The PC Chair of ESOP has the task to determine whether among the accepted papers there are enough of them that would match both the acceptance criteria and the prior publication policy of TOPLAS. In January, the authors of the selected papers will be invited to prepare a revised and expanded version of their work to be submitted to TOPLAS right after the conference. In order to ensure rapid decision and, in case of acceptance, timely publication, the PC Chair of ESOP will forward the reviews of the papers to TOPLAS. The papers will follow the normal TOPLAS reviewing process but TOPLAS will grant them a speedier treatment so that the composition of the TOPLAS issue will be known before and announced on the website of the next ESOP edition.
Comité de Pilotage
The Steering Committee (SC) is formed by six members: three permanent members, including the SC Chair, elected for at most six years by the steering committee itself; three rotating members, formed by the Program Committee (PC) Chairs of the previous, current, and next editions of ESOP. In 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 SC must assolve essentially three tasks:
  1. Select right after the n-th edition of ECOOP the PC Chairs of the (n+2)-th edition
  2. Elect the new permanent members and SC Chair to replace members whose mandate has ended
  3. Ensure the quality and criteria of the selection process over the different editions.
The current (as of April 2017) composition of the Steering Committee is The Steering Committee of ESOP was created in 1998, when the ETAPS cluster was created with ESOP as one of the key conference. Before that ESOP was a biannual conference and was looked after by Reinhard Wilhelm, one of the founding fathers of ESOP. Since its creation the ESOP Steering Committee was chaired by:
Président du Comité de Programme
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 seat 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.

See also the Wikipedia page on ESOP.

Timetable for ESOP nn
  • 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.
  • Early October nn-1: 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
  • April nn: PC Chair sends the reviews of the submitted papers to TOPLAS EIC. TOPLAS EIC dispatches the papers to the associated editors together with the reviews and with the recommendation that the whole acceptance process MUST be completed before March nn+1 or the papers would not be included in the "collected papers" issue.
  • March nn+1: All accepted papers are collected in a single TOPLAS issue and announced on the ESOP nn+1 website.
Past and forthcoming editions
EditionPlaceProgram Chair(s)Acceptance rate
ESOP 2018Thessaloniki, GreeceAmal Ahmed
ESOP 2017Uppsala, SwedenHongseok Yang36/112
ESOP 2016Eindhoven, The NetherlandsPeter Thiemann29/89
ESOP 2015London, UKJan Vitek33/113
ESOP 2014Grenoble, FranceZhong Shao27/109
ESOP 2013Rome, ItalyMatthias Felleisen, Philippa Gardner31/120
ESOP 2012Tallinn, EstoniaHelmut Seidl28/92
ESOP 2011Saarbrücken, GermanyGilles Barthe24/93
ESOP 2010Paphos, CyprusAndrew D. Gordon30/121
ESOP 2009York, United KingdomGiuseppe Castagna26/98
ESOP 2008Budapest, HungarySophia Drossopoulou27/104
ESOP 2007Braga, PortugalRocco De Nicola34/136
ESOP 2006Vienna, AustriaPeter Sestoft21/87
ESOP 2005Edinburgh, UKShmuel Sagiv29/114
ESOP 2004Barcelona, SpainDavid A. Schmidt27/118
ESOP 2003Warsaw, PolandPierpaolo Degano27/99
ESOP 2002Grenoble, FranceDaniel Le Métayer21/73
ESOP 2001Genova, ItalyDavid Sands26/76
ESOP 2000Berlin, GermanyGert Smolka26/84
ESOP 1999Amsterdam, The NetherlandsS. Doaitse Swierstra18/44
ESOP 1998Lisbon, PortugalChris Hankin17/59
ESOP 1996Linköping, SwedenHanne Riis Nielson23/64
ESOP 1994Edinburgh, UKDonald Sannella31/110
ESOP 1992Rennes, FranceBernd Krieg-Brückner18/40
ESOP 1990Copenhagen, DenmarkNeil D. Jones24/75
ESOP 1988Nancy, FranceHarald Ganzinger23/75
ESOP 1986Saarbrücken, GermanyBernard Robinet, Reinhard Wilhelm28/100
Contact
Giuseppe Castagna : IRIF, Université Paris Diderot.