The Principles of Database Systems (PODS) symposium series, held in conjunction with the SIGMOD conference series, provides a premier annual forum for the communication of new advances in the theoretical foundations of data management, traditional or nontraditional (see https://databasetheory.org/PODS).

Topics of Interest

For the 40th edition, PODS continues to aim to broaden its scope, and calls for research papers providing original, substantial contributions along one or more of the following tracks:

    deep theoretical exploration of topical areas central to data management
    new formal frameworks that aim at providing a basis for deeper theoretical investigation of important emerging issues in data management
    validation of theoretical approaches from the lens of practical applicability in data management. Papers in this track should provide an experimental evaluation that gives new insight in established theories. Besides, they should provide a clear message to the database theory community as to which aspects need further (theoretical) investigation, based on the experimental findings.

Topics that fit the interests of the symposium include, but are not limited to:

    concurrency & recovery, distributed/parallel databases, cloud computing
    data and knowledge integration and exchange, data provenance, views and data warehouses, metadata management
    data-centric (business) process management, workflows, web services
    data management and machine learning
    data mining, information extraction, search
    data models, data structures, algorithms for data management
    data privacy and security, human-related data and ethics
    data streams
    design, semantics, query languages
    domain-specific databases (multi-media, scientific, spatial, temporal, text)
    graph databases and (semantic) Web data
    incompleteness, inconsistency, uncertainty in data management
    knowledge-enriched data management
    model theory, logics, algebras, computational complexity

Submission Format

Submitted papers must be formatted using the standard ACM proceedings stylesheet (https://www.acm.org/publications/proceedings-template) with the sigconf document class (\documentclass[sigconf]{acmart}). Submitted papers should be at most twelve pages, including bibliography. Additional details may be included in an appendix that should be incorporated at the submission time (online appendices are not allowed). However, such appendices will be read at the discretion of the program committee. Papers that are longer than twelve pages (including bibliography but excluding the appendix) or do not cohere with the ACM proceedings style risk rejection without consideration of their merits. PODS 2021 specifically encourages the submission of shorter papers as well as papers that make use of the full page allowance. The submission process will be through the Web at https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=pods2021. Note that PODS does not use double-blind reviewing, and therefore PODS submissions should have the names and affiliations of authors listed on the paper.

The results of a submitted paper must be unpublished and not submitted elsewhere, including the formal proceedings of other symposia or workshops. Authors of an accepted paper will be expected to sign copyright release forms, and one author is expected to present it at the conference. PODS supports the open-access of published research. It is therefore expected that authors of accepted papers will make the final version of their papers also freely accessible on arXiv by the camera-ready deadline.

Inclusion and Diversity in Writing

We value Diversity and Inclusion in our community and professions. Both are important in our writing as well. Be mindful in your writing of not using language or examples that further the marginalization, stereotyping, or erasure of any group of people, especially historically marginalized and/or under-represented groups (URGs) in computing. Also be vigilant and guard against unintentionally exclusionary examples. Reviewers will be empowered to monitor and demand changes if such issues arise. Going further, also consider actively raising the representation of URGs in your writing. Diversity of representation in writing is a simple but visible avenue to celebrate and ultimately help improve our community’s diversity. 

Please visit this page for many examples of both exclusionary writing to avoid and inclusive writing that celebrates diversity to consider adopting: http://2021.sigmod.org/calls_papers_inclusion_and_diversity.shtml