The primary objective of the Foundations Track is to provide a forum for original scientific research on model-based methods for software and systems engineering. Papers submitted to the Foundations Track should describe original, high quality, unpublished research of a standard suitable for a major international conference. Regular papers in the Foundations Track should document theoretical, empirical and/or conceptual research that has been thoroughly and systematically evaluated. Vision papers in the Foundations Track should describe radical new ideas and, although they are not held to the same standard of evaluation, should provide enough evidence to assess their validity. The MODELS organizers solicit papers on any topic of modeling for software and systems engineering, including, but not limited to:

We solicit two types of papers in the Foundations Track. Regular papers should describe innovative and significant original research relevant to the MODELS scope, as defined above. Vision papers are intended to challenge the status quo by either

Whilst research papers are expected to have a solid and complete evaluation, vision papers will primarily be assessed based on their level of originality and potential for impact on the field in terms of promoting fresh thinking.

All papers will be thoroughly reviewed by at least three members of the Foundations Track Program Committee. Both types of papers will be assessed based on originality, rigour, presentation and comparison to related work. Vision papers will also be assessed based on potential "game changing" impact. Although vision papers are not expected to have an evaluation as thorough as that for a research paper, preliminary investigations that provide evidence to support the ideas are particularly welcome. The review process will include an Author Response phase Reviews will be provided to authors who will then have 48 hours to prepare a short (500 word) optional response. The response is to be used for the purpose of clarification, correction or to respond to questions asked by the reviewers. Author responses will be used in the decision making process. Authors should, however, be realistic in their expectations of the Author Response phase: reviews cannot be updated to reflect the author response and it is likely that only decisions on borderline papers will be affected (in 2010, decisions on 9 out of 43 borderline papers were changed as a result of the author response).

Papers for consideration should not have been published or be currently under review elsewhere. In the case of dispute, Springer's Policy on Publishing Integrity will be followed. Paper submissions must conform to the Springer LNCS formatting guidelines. Regular papers are limited to 15 pages in length. Vision for the Foundation Track are limited to 10 pages in length. These page limits include all text, references, figures, appendices and annexes. The title of vision papers must be preceded by "Vision Paper:". All submissions must be written in English. Submissions must be in PDF format. Any submission that does not conform to the page limits or formatting instructions will be desk rejected without review.

Papers must be submitted electronically through the conference submission page.

Accepted papers (both regular and vision) will be published in the conference proceedings by Springer in the LNCS series. Authors of best papers from the conference will be invited to revise and submit extended versions of their papers for a special issue of the Journal Software and Systems Modeling (Springer Verlag).