Call for Papers: ICSE 2021 Software Engineering in Practice

Madrid Spain | 23-29 May 2021
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Submissions Due: 18 October 2020

The Software Engineering in Practice (SEIP) Track is the premier venue for practitioners and researchers to discuss insights, innovations, and solutions to concrete software engineering problems. The number of researchers is steadily increasing in industry and society is more dependent on software now than ever. Business success in software development heavily relies on excellence in utilizing novel software engineering (SE) techniques and algorithms. The growth of increased automation and digitalization, as well as the AI-impact, result in excellent data collection which in turn contributes to higher maturity and usability of data.

SEIP provides a unique forum for networking, exchanging ideas, fostering innovations, and forging long-term collaborations to address SE research that impacts directly on practice. SEIP will gather highly-qualified industrial and research participants that are eager to communicate and share common interests in software engineering. The track will be composed of invited speeches, paper presentations, reviewed talks, interactive sessions with a strong focus on software practice.

Submissions

We are seeking the following types of submissions, all of which must be written exclusively in English. We do not use double-blind review (i.e., authors do not have to hide their identities in their papers). Paper limits include references.

Full papers (8-10 pages)

Full papers address industrially-relevant problems through systematic investigations. Each paper should describe a problem of practical importance, explain how the problem was investigated and in what context, and present evidence for the paper’s conclusions. The submission should have technical and empirical soundness. Other aspects that should be included if appropriate are: discussing why the resolution of the problem is innovative, (cost-) effective, or efficient; providing a concise explanation of the approach, techniques, and methodologies employed; and explaining the insights or best practices that emerged, tools developed, and/or software processes involved.

Full papers will appear in the ICSE SEIP Companion proceedings. IEEE Software will recognize the best paper of the SEIP track with an award at the conference.

Two-stage Talk proposals (2 pages)

Talks present topics that are likely to be relevant and interesting to both practitioners and researchers. Talk proposals should include the title, the name, and affiliation of each presenter, a short abstract (150 words), and up to 8 keywords. In addition, the proposal should describe what the talk will be about, highlighting its key points and the reason why it is interesting to ICSE-SEIP attendees (500 words). Submissions should include a speaker biography and history, and they can include supporting materials such as whitepapers or videos.

Please note that the target audience of the talk proposal is the SEIP program committee. Talk proposals will be reviewed in two phases. The outcome of the first phase is either rejected or conditionally accepted for the next phase. In the second phase, submitters will be required to prepare the complete presentation. The target audience of the second phase talk proposal is the attendees of the SEIP track and readers of the proceedings. The committee will then review the presentations and make the final accept/reject decisions. Each accepted talk will be of 30 minutes duration and will be allowed two pages for an “extended abstract” in the ICSE SEIP Companion proceedings.

Interactive proposals (2 pages)

Interactive sessions are aimed at practitioners but should be attractive for all audiences. Interactive sessions will be 60 minutes’ duration and will explore an aspect of practice in-dept. They may take the form of, for example, a panel discussion or live coding session (but should not aim to promote a specific proprietary tool). We welcome new and thought-provoking ideas and formats and encourage submitters to contact the chairs at any time with their suggestions before making a formal proposal. Interactive proposals should include a title, the name, and affiliation of each presenter, a short abstract that describes the focus of the session and the outcomes for attendees (150 words), and up to 8 keywords. In addition, the proposal should describe why the session focus is important, outlining the session structure and the reason why it is interesting to ICSE-SEIP attendees (500 words). Like talk proposals, interactive proposals will be reviewed in two phases. The outcome of the first phase is either rejected or conditionally accepted for the next phase. In the second phase, submitters will be required to prepare a detailed plan of the session and a complete set of materials to be used. Each interactive session will be allowed two pages for an “extended abstract” in the ICSE SEIP Companion proceedings.

Formatting and Submission Links

Submissions must conform to the IEEE formatting instructions IEEE Conference Proceedings Formatting Guidelines (title in 24pt font and full text in 10pt type. LaTeX users must use \documentclass[10pt,conference]{IEEEtran} without including the compsoc or compsocconf options). Submission page: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=icseseip2021

Evaluation

All submissions will be reviewed by members of the SEIP Program Committee. Submissions will be evaluated based on relevance to industry, the significance of contribution, and the quality of presentation.

By submitting to this track, authors acknowledge that they are aware of and agree to be bound by the ACM Policy and Procedures on Plagiarism and the IEEE Plagiarism FAQ. In particular, papers submitted to ICSE 2021 must not have been published elsewhere and must not be under review or submitted for review elsewhere whilst under consideration for ICSE 2021. Contravention of this concurrent submission policy will be deemed a serious breach of scientific ethics, and appropriate action will be taken in all such cases. To check for double submission and plagiarism issues, the chairs reserve the right to (1) share the list of submissions with the PC Chairs of other conferences with overlapping review periods and (2) use external plagiarism detection software, under contract to the ACM or IEEE, to detect violations of these policies.

By submitting to this track, authors acknowledge that they conform to the authorship policy of the ACM, and the authorship policy of the IEEE.

Special Issue

A selection of the best papers will be invited to be revised and extended for consideration in a specific special issue on SEIP2021 of the Empirical Software Engineering (EMSE) journal edited by Springer.

Important Dates for Paper submissions

SEIP Papers Submissions Deadline: 18 October 2020
SEIP Papers Acceptance Notification: 7 January 2021
SEIP Papers Camera Ready: 12 February 2021

Important Dates for Talk and Interactive submissions

SEIP Talk and Interactive – Phase 1 Submissions Deadline: 18 October 2020
SEIP Talk and Interactive – Phase 1 Acceptance Notification: 22 November 2020
SEIP Talk and Interactive – Phase 2 Submissions Deadline: 7 December 2020
SEIP Talk and Interactive – Acceptance Notification: 7 January 2021
SEIP Talk and Interactive – Camera Ready: 12 February 2021

Conference Attendance Expectation

If a submission is accepted, at least one author of the paper is required to register for and attend the full 3-day technical conference and present the paper. The presentation is expected to be delivered in person, unless this is impossible due to travel limitations (related to, e.g., health, visa, or COVID-19 prevention).

Contact

If there are queries regarding the CFP, please contact the SEIP chairs, Sigrid Eldh and Davide Falessi.