brycewang-stanford OOPSLA Workflow
OOPSLA gives a paper two doors per year into the same PACMPL volume — for 2026, October 10, 2025 (Round 1 → Issue OOPSLA1, published from April 1, 2026) and March 17, 2026 (Round 2 → Issue OOPSLA2, from October 1, 2026), with all outcomes presented at SPLASH (Oakland, October 4–9, 2026; OOPSLA talks October 5–7). Planning an OOPSLA campaign is therefore a routing problem over rounds and revision outcomes, not a countdown to a single deadline. As of 2026-07-08 the next open door is the 2027 volume's Round 1, CFP not yet posted (待核实) — re-anchor every date below to live pages.
Door choice: October vs March
| Factor | Favors the October round | Favors the March round |
|---|---|---|
| Revision insurance | Major Revision lands in March, same volume | Major Revision waits ~7 months for next volume's R1 |
| Publication timing | April issue; citable before the conference | October issue; publishes near conference time |
| Evidence maturity | Requires the evaluation done by early fall | Buys a winter of experiments |
| Team calendar | Summer build, fall write | Fall build, winter write |
| Talk lead time | Long runway to SPLASH | Acceptance close to travel booking |
Default heuristic: enter the earliest round where the evidence (not the prose) is complete — the revision insurance of the early round compounds, because the most likely non-accept outcome for solid work is a revision, and same-volume revision is the cheapest one available anywhere in the SIGPLAN family.
Campaign state machine
PLAN ──> ROUND N SUBMITTED ──> RESPONSE WINDOW ──> outcome?
Accept ─────────────► CAMERA-READY ► ARTIFACT ► ISSUE ► SPLASH TALK
Minor Revision ─────► execute list, same round ► (as Accept)
Major Revision ─────► revise against expectations ► ROUND N+1 (same
reviewers where possible)
Reject ─────────────► diagnose ► re-route (oopsla-topic-selection)
or rebuild ► a later round
Each transition has an owner and a date pulled from the live track page.
Backward plan from a target round (T = deadline)
- T-12 to T-8 weeks — freeze claim list; run
oopsla-experimentsrouting; start the demand matrix and reproducibility ledger. - T-8 to T-4 — full draft in the 23-page frame; related-work family
sweep (
oopsla-related-work); internal red-team read using the four SIGPLAN pillars. - T-4 to T-1 — style pass (
oopsla-writing-style); appendix layering (oopsla-supplementary); Data-Availability Statement drafted from the ledger. - Final 72 hours — the filing-day sequence in
oopsla-submission. - Post-submission — pre-write response scaffolding: the concerns you already know about, with PDF pointers ready for the four-day window.
Revision-path budgeting
Reserve capacity after submission: the two most probable outcomes for competent work — Minor and Major Revision — both demand engineering time on a fixed clock. A team that disbands to other projects the week after the deadline systematically converts Minor Revisions into missed opportunities. Rule of thumb: hold 20% of the build team's time in reserve until the outcome letter, then re-plan against the actual expectation list.
Post-acceptance rail
Camera-ready reconciliation (oopsla-camera-ready) → artifact kick-the-tires
and badges (oopsla-artifact-evaluation) → Zenodo DOI into the final
statement → issue publication → SPLASH registration, talk, and optional
poster. The talk lands months after OOPSLA1 publication — plan it as a
presentation of known work, and budget travel to the SPLASH city early.
Output format
[Cycle anchor] current volume + next open round (live URL + date checked)
[Door choice] round + rationale from the table
[State] position in the state machine
[Reserve] revision capacity held + expiry
[Next transition] owner, date, blocking items