ANTS 2024

Travel grants

Thanks to the generous support of the Center for the Advanced Study of Collective Behavior (CASCB), applications for travel support are invited, to facilitate researchers from developing countries to attend the ANTS conference. Researchers and students from developing countries as determined by the IEEE Developing Country Listing are eligible.

Important dates:

• Application deadline: June 10, 2024
• Notification of award: June 28, 2024

Application process:

To complete an application, an applicant is asked to provide:

• Basic information about the applicant
• Name, country
• Contact information (email, website)
• Their academic affiliation including their position or study programme and semester
• Itemized estimated costs of travel (in Euro)
• Information about their accepted ANTS papers (if applicable)
• A statement about how attendance to ANTS 2024 will impact the applicant
• Resume/CV of the applicant
• In addition, for a student applicant, the application requires a transcript and an endorsement by the student's faculty advisor

To submit a travel grant application, send your complete application as a single PDF file to jonas.kuckling@uni-konstanz.de and heiko.hamann@uni-konstanz.de with the keywords "ANTS 2024 travel grant" in the subject line. For questions regarding the travel support, please contact the same addresses.

Applications are reviewed on a competitive basis with priority given to authors of accepted papers at ANTS.

In order for an award recipient to claim the travel grant they must provide proof of attendance (registration) and of travel (boarding passes and ticket receipt). Instructions regarding the reimbursement process will be provided at a later date.

Registration Fee

The ANTS2024 registration fee is 450 EUR.

The conference fee includes:

• Admission to all technical sessions
• One copy of the conference proceedings
• Admission to the conference dinner

Coffee breaks and a conference dinner will be offered by the organizing committee.

Registration Procedure

Register here for the conference!

The Award

Continuing with a tradition started at ANTS 2002, the "Best Paper Award" at ANTS 2024 consists of a sculpture of an ant specially made for the ANTS conference series by the Italian sculptor Matteo Pugliese.

Oral presentations:

Oral presentations for accepted full papers will last 20 minutes sharp (15 minutes presentation plus 5 minutes for questions-and-answers). Oral presentations for accepted short papers will last 15 minutes sharp (10 minutes presentation plus 5 minutes for questions-and-answers). Oral presentations in the biology track will last 10 minutes sharp (6 minutes presentation plus 4 minutes for questions-and-answers). A computer running PowerPoint and Acrobat Reader will be available for your presentation. You can use this computer for your presentation or bring your own laptop.
Papers presented orally will be also presented during the poster session on the same day of the presentation. Please refer to the on-line program for the details.

Posters:

Posters should be of size A0 portrait. There is no standard template for the poster, every author can choose what best fits their work. Material to fix the poster on the stand will be available.

Preview highlights:

Papers that are not presented orally will be introduced by the author in a 2 minute highlight, using a SINGLE slide. This slide must be sent to us in advance. We will preload this slide onto the computer and project it for you during your presentation.

Camera-ready submission instructions

Accepted papers are to be revised and submitted as a camera-ready version. Reviewers’ comments should be taken into account and should guide appropriate revisions. The camera-ready submission must include the compiled PDF and all source files needed for compilation—including the LaTex file, reference file, and figures.

By submitting a camera-ready paper, the author(s) agree that at least one author will attend the conference and give a presentation of the paper. At least one author must be registered by the deadline for camera-ready submissions.

Camera-ready submissions that do not comply with all given requirements might have to be excluded from the conference proceedings.

After formatting the paper as explained below, please follow the subsequent instructions for submitting a zip/tar file that contains your camera-ready paper sources:

1. Visit the EasyChair website and log in.
2. Choose Role: author for the conference ANTS 2024.
3. Click on the magnifying lens symbol in the column View for your submission(s).
4. Click on Add or update files at the top right of the page.
5. Upload either a zip archive or a tgz archive by clicking on Choose file.
6. Finalize your submission by clicking on Submit.

Deadline for submission: June 10, 2024

Copyright form

You must fill in and sign the Springer's copyright form. The form should be emailed to ants.conf@gmail.com with the subject: “Copyright form paper <paper number> - <last name of first author>”.

Please make sure to include the following information in the completed form:

• Proposed Title of the Contribution (i.e., the title of your paper)
• Author(s) Full Name(s)
• Corresponding Author Name
• Handwritten signature in the field "Signed for and on behalf of the Author"
• Print name (i.e., the name of the signer)
• Date
• Address
• Email

Formatting instructions

Papers must be prepared in the LNCS Springer LaTeX style, using the default font and font size. Authors should consult Springer’s authors’ guidelines and use their proceedings template for LaTeX, for the preparation of their papers. Please download the LNCS Springer LaTeX template package (zip, 322 kB) and authors' guidelines (pdf, 147 kB) directly from the Springer website. The LaTeX class and references style (llncs.cls and splncs04.bst) included in this package should not be modified. Please also download and consult the ANTS 2024 sample LaTeX document (zip, 129 kB), which shows the correct options to use within the Springer template.

Your submission should be uploaded as a compressed archive (zip, tgz), containing the final camera-ready versions of the following:

• the compiled PDF (pdf),
• the main LaTeX file (tex),
• the references file (both in bib and bbl),
• and all figures, where applicable (pdf, eps, png, jpeg, tiff, bmp).

Figures should be in their original vector format (pdf, eps), if applicable. Otherwise, figures provided in raster format (png, jpeg, tiff, bmp) must be high-resolution (if including linework, at least 800 dpi at the final size, otherwise, at least 300 dpi at the final size).

Although figures in the digital proceedings will be in full color, the print proceedings of ANTS 2024 will be printed in grayscale. Authors should therefore ensure that their figures will be appropriately legible when printed in grayscale.

Springer encourages authors to include their ORCIDs in their papers. In addition, the corresponding author of each paper, acting on behalf of all of the authors of that paper, must complete and sign a Consent-to-Publish form. The corresponding author signing the copyright form should match the corresponding author marked on the paper. Once the files have been sent to Springer, changes relating to the authorship of the papers cannot be made.

Number of pages

Full-length Papers are strictly limited to 11 pages + references, and Short Papers are strictly limited to 7 pages + references.

These page limits include figures, tables, and all supplementary sections (e.g., Acknowledgements). The only exclusion from these page limits is the reference list, which should have an appropriate length with respect to the state of the art.

Extended Abstracts are strictly limited to 2 pages (including references).

All page limits refer to papers prepared in the LNCS Springer LaTeX template, according to the instructions provided here. Do not modify the template defaults, such as those for margins, line spacing, or font size.

Using the LNCS Springer LaTeX style

Submissions must be prepared in LaTeX, and the source files (tex, bib, bbl) must be provided. Authors should use the LaTeX class and references style files (llncs.cls and splncs04.bst) as provided in the LNCS Springer LaTeX template package. These files should not be modified. Also, do not add formatting modifications to the main document (tex) to override the template defaults. Do not use, for instance, any line spacing modifications (e.g., \vspace{} or \\*[0pt]), or font size modifications (e.g., \fontsize{}). Please do not add any special fonts. Please do not add packages or custom commands that change the formatting (e.g., do not use the package subcaption, as it overrides the default caption formatting in the template).

During the final preparation of the proceedings, any formatting modifications in the main document (tex) will be removed if they do not match the template, potentially causing a change in paper length. Springer will also recompile all papers using their original llncs class file (llncs.cls). If authors make any modifications to the llncs file, their paper will not compile correctly in the final step, and cannot be included in the proceedings.

References must be formatted using the provided references style file (splncs04.bst). In this references style, in-text citations will appear as numbers, and the numbered reference list will be ordered alphabetically.

For further information, please refer to the class documentation included in the LNCS Springer LaTex package, and to the LNCS Springer authors’ guidelines.

ANTS 2024 formatting details

It is mandatory that submissions to ANTS 2024 follow certain options within the LNCS Springer template. The ANTS 2024 sample LaTeX document (zip) shows the correct template options to use. These mandatory template options are as follows.

Running header:

• The running header option should be activated. This is activated by starting your LaTeX document (tex) with the command: \documentclass[runningheads]{llncs}.
• In the author-running field: \authorrunning{}, give the initial of the first name(s) and the full surname. Always give the first author's name. If there are precisely two authors, then give both the first and second authors' names. If there are more than two authors, use ‘et al.’ after the name of the first author.
• If the title is too long for the header, specify a shorter header title using the title-running field: \titlerunning{Abbreviated paper title}.

Title and headings:

• The title, headings, and subheadings should be capitalized according to standard ‘Title Case’ style (i.e., all words should be capitalized, except for articles, prepositions, and conjunctions).
• Do not use a \newline command with the title.
• Headings and subheadings should be aligned to the left.

Author names and affiliations:

• Follow the naming convention in which the surname is the last name.
• Using the LaTex \author{} field, provide the full first name (not only the initial).
• Do not include academic titles (e.g., Prof. or Dr.).
• Springer encourages the inclusion of author ORCIDs. These can be optionally included using the LaTex field \orcidID{} within the LaTex field \author{}.
• Author affiliation information should include the following, using the \institute{} and \email{} fields: department, faculty, university, company (if applicable), city, country, and email address. Do not include the street address or ZIP code (it is not a postal address). The email address of the corresponding author is mandatory to include in the \institute{} and \email{} fields.
• After the \institute{} entries, include an \index{} entry for each author, giving the full surname, followed by the full first name(s).

For further details, please refer to the documentation of the llncs class.

Acknowledgements:

• Acknowledgements, if any, should be given as the last subsubsection of the paper, just before the list of references.
• Do not format acknowledgments as a footnote, anywhere in the paper.

Keywords:

• Do not include keywords in your manuscript; they will not be included in the proceedings.

For contributions accepted as Extended Abstracts:

• Extended Abstract submissions must not contain an abstract, and must not include any section headings (or subheadings) in the main body. (Other than the title, the only headings in the manuscript should be for the References and Acknowledgments, if applicable).

Proceedings and journal special issue

Conference proceedings are published by Springer in the LNCS series.

The journal Swarm Intelligence will publish a special issue dedicated to ANTS 2024 that will contain extended versions of the best research works presented at the conference.