In order to be reviewed, papers must be in scope (that is, adress some form of timing requirement) and follow the submission instructions. Submissions are evaluated by the program committee according to the following criteria:
The following table explains the evaluation criteria of the Foundations, Methodologies & Theory Track and Tools, Implementations & Practical Experience Track.
| Criterion | Foundations, Methodologies & Theory Track | Tools, Implementations & Practical Experience Track |
| Overall Acceptance Signal | “This advances real-time theory” | “This works in practice and teaches us something important” |
| Nature of the main contribution | Theoretical models, formal methods, analytical techniques, proofs, bounds, scheduling approaches | Tools, prototypes, implementations, case studies, deployment experience |
| Problem Framing | Abstract but well-justified problem formulation grounded in RTS theory | Realistic problem driven by practical constraints or industrial needs |
| Novelty Expectation | Novel theory or fundamentally new methodology | Novel tool/system, or novel application with clear practical insight |
| Technical Soundness | Correctness of design, e.g. mathematical correctness, proof completeness, rigor of formal reasoning | Correctness of design, e.g. correctness of implementation; engineering soundness |
| Validation Method | Formal proofs, theoretical analysis, analytical comparisons | Strong experimental evaluation, measurements, case studies |
| Evaluation Focus | Correctness, tightness, and generality of analytical results | Realism, repeatability, and relevance of experiments or deployments |
| Comparison to SoA | Comparison with existing theory and analytical results | Comparison with existing tools, methods, or industrial practice |
| Generality of Results | Broad applicability across models or classes of systems | Transferability of lessons beyond a specific platform or case |
| Reproducibility | Reproducibility through formal definitions and proofs | Reproducibility through artifacts, code, and experimental scripts |
| Artifacts | Optional; not required but welcome | Strongly encouraged or expected |
| Practical Impact | Indirect; discussed as implications or potential use | Direct; demonstrated through implementation or deployment |
Note: Some submissions may naturally fall at the intersection of the two tracks, combining theoretical or methodological contributions with tool support, implementations, or practical validation. In such cases, authors are encouraged to submit their article to the track that best reflects the primary contribution and evaluation focus of the work. The program committee may reassign submissions between tracks when appropriate.
Contribution
We welcome theoretical and practical contributions to the state of the art in the design, implementation, verification, and validation of real-time embedded and cyber-physical systems. This includes case studies, implementations, tools, benchmarks, application scenarios, technology transfer success stories (or failures), and open problems.
We particularly encourage papers on industrial case studies, the application of real-time technology to real systems, and system-level implementations. We believe that our community needs to validate the proposed assumptions and methodologies with respect to realistic applications. We welcome practical contributions even without novel theoretical insights, provided they are of interest to the research community and/or industry. In such cases, authors should make an effort to provide proper motivation and justification of the relevance of their work and report on lessons learned.
The models, assumptions, and application scenarios used in the paper must be properly motivated.
Authors (of both practical and theoretical works) must demonstrate the applicability of their approach to real systems (examples of realistic task models can be found here). Deviations from such models or strong simplifications require justification. In particular, papers relying on simple models must have more fundamental theoretical insights than papers that include more details by construction, such as system-level implementations.
Whenever relevant, we strongly encourage authors to present experimental results. These can be obtained on real implementations, from simulations, or via the use of data from case studies, benchmarks, or models of real systems. The use of synthetic workloads or models is permitted, but authors are strongly encouraged to properly motivate and justify the choices made in designing their synthetic evaluation.
Originality
Authors are expected to clearly explain the relationship between their work and the existing state-of-the-art (including their own prior work). In addition, they must, whenever relevant, compare their work with the state-to-the-art to show the size, scope, and significance of the improvements they have made. Experimental evaluations should cover a broad but realistic range of parameters. Authors should avoid selecting specific cases where there may be a bias in favor of their approach. As well as explaining the advantages of their new approach with respect to the state-of-the-art, authors should also give a balanced view of its disadvantages.
Technical correctness
Technical correctness is a mandatory requirement for acceptance. We consider it to be the duty of the authors to convince the reviewers of the technical correctness of their paper by whatever means the authors consider appropriate. We encourage open-source initiatives and computer-assisted proofs in order to increase confidence in practical and theoretical results and to improve their reusability. We acknowledge that due to IP constraints, implementation papers may not be able to provide all details. In this case, the authors should strive to provide sufficient information for the paper to remain of interest to the reader.
Writing quality
The writing quality of the paper is very important. The paper must be well structured and clearly written to ensure that the reader can precisely understand and evaluate the technical contribution. We expect the authors to proofread their paper and to reduce the number of typos and grammatical mistakes. Note that concision is a hallmark of good academic writing; contribution is not judged based on the length of the submitted manuscript, and authors should not unnecessarily pad the paper to reach the page limit.
Prospective authors can find here suggestions (which are not mandatory rules) for structuring and writing their paper that are likely to be appreciated by the reviewers.