RAMS^® 2024 CALL FOR PAPERS, PRESENTATIONS & TUTORIALS

Theme: “Integrating R&M throughout the Digital Engineering Ecosystem”

ABSTRACT SUBMISSION DEADLINE — April 30, 2023

The 70th Annual Reliability & Maintainability Symposium (RAMS®) will be held at the Clyde Hotel, Albuquerque, New Mexico during the week of January 22-25, 2024. The theme for RAMS® 2024 is “Integrating R&M throughout the Digital Engineering Ecosystem”. With the ongoing shift to a digital engineering approach, a Digital Engineering Ecosystem enables stakeholders, whether from government, industry, and/or academia, to work collaboratively and securely within and through a digital environment using shared knowledge and resources across the lifecycle from concept to disposal. R&M engineering and data is one of the essential artifacts within the Digital Engineering Ecosystem to be shared with stakeholders for the data-driven acquisition, development, and operations. There is an urgent need to effectively and efficiently integrate R&M engineering and data utilizing all the techniques discussed in prior RAMS® including utilizing Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) with Big Data, digitally transforming data into model-based system engineering, etc.

We invite you to share interesting theoretical or practical findings of your research, engineering case studies, success stories, lessons learned, R&M based analyses and simulations, or R&M discoveries at RAMS® 2024 in Albuquerque. Tell us how you are designing, optimizing, and supporting systems (both hardware and software) through the execution of RAMS® disciplines. RAMS® is the premier forum for sharing your experience, knowledge, and road maps to success. Make your contribution to the advancement of the RAMS disciplines and enjoy participating in the rich exchange of ideas and solutions. We want you to contribute your unique experience to our synergistic symposium sponsored by eight professional societies. Start planning to submit your paper or tutorial now.

RAMS® seeks to provide a mix of regular papers, presentations only, and tutorials.

• Regular papers are the best medium to document advancements in the state-of-the-art research, and those accepted after being properly peer reviewed will be published. A short technical presentation with discussion period (approximately half an hour) will be given for each paper. It is the policy of RAMS® to publish all papers presented at RAMS® in IEEE Xplore.
• Presentations only topics is a new option for those that do not wish to pursue a paper for publishing but will follow similar processes as paper presentations.
• Tutorials provide exposure to more fundamental topics. Their technical depth ranges from introductory to advanced. Tutorials are presented in two-hour in-depth sessions. Examples of the most recent written papers and tutorials are available in the 2023 Proceedings and the 2023 Tutorial Notes.

Your submission should address topics pertinent to Reliability and Maintainability and that are relevant to our theme. Abstract topics are:

If you wish to present a paper, presentation, or tutorial at RAMS® 2024, now is the time to begin your preparation. The paper must represent your original work and should not be published or presented in any other journals or conferences. Presentations must be based on the conference theme and topic areas above. Tutorials must address broad areas of interest in reliability and maintainability engineering. You must submit your abstracts via rams.org and the abstract submission process will be available from March 1, 2023, until April 30, 2023.

To submit an abstract for a regular paper, presentation only or tutorial, an author must provide the following:

• A title of no more than 80 characters
• An abstract (all text—no equations, figures, or tables) of no more than 1000 words
• Names and contact information for all authors
• An indication of which author will present the paper (if it is accepted for the Symposium)
• Relevant topic areas for their paper (from the list on the previous page of this Call for Papers)

The name(s) of the author(s) should not be included in either the title or in the abstract. Regular paper can have no more than four authors, presentations only can have only one author/presenter, tutorial can have no more than two authors.

Authors will also be asked to indicate if any authors are full-time students (to assess qualification for the RAMS® student paper award), and to which (if any) of the nine RAMS® sponsoring societies each author belongs. Membership in a RAMS® sponsoring society is not required for acceptance. Each author can submit no more than four paper abstracts and no more than four tutorial abstracts for consideration. Authors cannot be added to a paper or tutorial after the abstract submission deadline.

Upon receipt of your abstract, you will receive a confirmation e-mail from RAMS® that your abstract was received. Therefore, it is critical that all authors provide and maintain a valid e-mail address that can accept e-mails. If an author moves or changes addresses, the author must provide their new contact information to the RAMS® Program Committee.

Note that all correspondence regarding papers, presentations and tutorials will be sent to the e-mail address of the author who submits the abstract.

Review Procedure for Abstracts

In May 2023, the RAMS® Program Committee selects abstracts that will proceed to develop draft/candidate papers, presentations and tutorials. Selections are based on innovativeness, technical merit, clarity, and relevance to the Symposium theme and topics listed previously. Authors will be notified of abstract approval in June 2023. For papers, authors are required to submit complete drafts of both the paper and presentation slides by the end of July 2023. Draft or candidate papers shall be submitted without author identification on the paper in order to accommodate a blind peer review. The specific requirements for papers and presentation slides will be communicated to authors in a timely fashion. Submitted draft papers will be subjected to review by the Program Committee and RAMS® Editorial Board. The draft papers will also be submitted to IEEE CrossCheck plagiarism detection tool. Authors will be given feedback on their draft papers and presentation slides by the end of August 2023 with follow on additional editorial changes as necessary. Final paper and presentation slides are due by the end of September 2023. Final papers will be reviewed by both the Program Committee and the RAMS® Proceedings Editor. At this time, authors must also complete a RAMS® Copyright Form, and at least one author of papers must register (at a reduced fee) for the Symposium.

By submitting an abstract for a paper, the author is accepting the condition that a paper may be rejected at any time if the Program Committee determines that the author is failing to comply with RAMS® deadlines or policies, or if the Program Committee determines that the content of the paper is not of sufficient quality to merit publication in the Proceedings. For more information contact the Program Chair at programs@rams.org. The author is accepting the condition that if their paper is ultimately accepted into the Proceedings, at least one author on the paper will attend the Symposium, and present the paper at the Symposium in reasonably fluent English.

The review procedure for presentations only will follow similar process, conditions, and deadlines as papers. For more information on presentation only, contact the Program Chair at program@rams.org.

The review procedure for tutorials is identical to the review procedure for papers except that they are reviewed by a Tutorial Committee and are not subjected to a blind review. Authors of accepted tutorials receive gratis registration for Symposium. For more information, contact the Tutorials Chair, at tutorials@rams.org. By submitting an abstract for a tutorial, the author is accepting the condition that if their tutorial is ultimately accepted for the Symposium, the author and/or co-author will attend the Symposium and deliver the tutorial at the Symposium in reasonably fluent English.