What is IPCO?

IPCO (Integer Programming and Combinatorial Optimization) is a conference that is sponsored by the Mathematical Programming Society. IPCO is a forum for researchers and practitioners working on various aspects of integer programming and combinatorial optimization. The aim is to present recent developments in theory, computation, and applications of integer programming and combinatorial optimization. There are two key features of the IPCO conferences:
• First, there are no invited talks. Instead, a program committee selects the contributions on the basis of extended abstracts submitted by prospective participants.
• Second, the papers at the meeting are presented in a single stream (no parallel sessions), and preliminary versions of all papers are provided to participants at the beginning of the meeting.
The presented papers are published in the proceedings of the conference. These proceedings serve as a conference record as well as a means of rapid dissemination of results, since they are published within six months of submission. Most journals, including Mathematical Programming, Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS Journal on Computing, Operations Research, SIAM Journal on Computing, SIAM Journal on Discrete Mathematics, SIAM Journal on Optimization, Theoretical Computer Science do not view publication of an early version of a paper in an IPCO proceedings as a prior publication which would make the paper unacceptable.

What is the scope of IPCO?

The two themes of IPCO - integer programming and combinatorial optimization - are viewed in a broad sense, to include algorithmic and structural results in topics such as
• approximation algorithms
• branch and bound algorithms
• branch and cut algorithms
• computational biology
• computational complexity
• computational geometry
• cutting plane algorithms
• diophantine equations
• geometry of numbers
• graph and network algorithms
• integer programming
• matroids and submodular functions
• on-line algorithms and competitive analysis
• polyhedral combinatorics
• randomized algorithms
• random graphs
• scheduling theory and scheduling algorithms
• semidefinite programs
In all these areas, IPCO welcomes structural and algorithmic results. IPCO is not restricted to theory. Computational and practical work, implementations, novel applications of these techniques to practical problems, and revealing computational studies, are most welcome.

Which type of paper is appropriate for IPCO?

The main acceptance criteria used by the program committee are the quality and originality of the research, plus its interest to people working in the field. These acceptance criteria have made it possible for younger, less established researchers to present their results in an attractive format to a large audience of active researchers.
The program committee normally consists of researchers from a broad variety of fields. Therefore, someone preparing an extended abstract can safely assume that a large portion of the program committee will not be experts in the topic of the paper. These are precisely the readers to whom the abstract should be directed. It also is crucial that the importance of the work is understood by the committee. And of course, the claimed results should be correct and new.

The timing of IPCO

IPCO is held in every year in which no MPS (Mathematical Programming Society) International Symposium takes place: 1990, 1992, 1993, 1995, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2005, ... ... Since the MPS meeting is triennial, IPCO conferences are being held twice in every three-year period. As a rule, in even years IPCO is somewhere in America, and in odd years it is somewhere in Europe.
The submission deadline usually is in the late fall of the year preceding the meeting. All submissions are read by the program committee. Approximately two months after the deadline, the program committee meets and decides which papers to include in the meeting. Authors are usually notified of the decision of the program committee in the end of January. Authors of accepted papers are asked to submit a final version (which may again be an extended abstract or a full paper) by early spring. These final versions are printed in the proceedings of IPCO, which are provided to all participants at the conference. Finally, the IPCO conference then takes place in May or June. An IPCO conference usually takes three days. During these three days, approximately thirty-three papers are presented; each lecture is thirty minutes long.

Back to the IPCO homepage

Maintained by G.J. Woeginger. Revised: 5 July 2000