Goal and Scope

IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME) is the premier forum for researchers and practitioners to present and discuss the most recent innovations, trends, experiences, and challenges in software maintenance and evolution. We invite high quality submissions describing significant, original, and unpublished results related to but not limited to any of the following software maintenance and evolution topics (in alphabetical order):

Change and defect management	
Productivity of software engineers
Code cloning and provenance	
Release engineering
Concept and feature location	
Reverse engineering and re-engineering
Continuous integration/deployment	
Run-time evolution and dynamic configuration
Empirical studies of software maintenance and evolution	
Service oriented and cloud computing
Evolution of non-code artefacts	
Software and system comprehension
Human aspects of software maintenance and evolution	
Software migration and renovation
Maintenance and evolution of model-based methods	
Software quality assurance
Maintenance and evolution processes	
Software refactoring and restructuring
Maintenance and evolution of mobile apps	
Software testing theory and practice
Mining software repositories	
Source code analysis and manipulation

ICSME welcomes innovative ideas that are timely, well presented and evaluated. All submissions must position themselves within the existing literature, describe the relevance of the results to specific software engineering goals, and include a clear motivation and presentation of the work. To establish a consistent set of expectations in the review process, the authors are asked, as part of the online submission process, to identify their papers with one or more of the following categories:

    Technological

    A paper in which the main contribution is of a technical nature. This includes novel tools, new algorithms, new theories, modeling languages, infrastructures, processes, methods and other technologies. Such a contribution does not necessarily need to be evaluated with humans. However, clear arguments, backed up by evidence as appropriate (whether through a proof, complexity analysis, or run-time analysis, among others), must show how and why the technology is beneficial, why a new method is needed, whether it is in automating or supporting some user task, refining our modeling capabilities, improving some key system property, etc.

    Empirical

    A paper in which the main contribution is the empirical study of a software evolution technology or phenomenon. This includes controlled experiments, case studies, and surveys of professionals reporting qualitative or quantitative data and analysis results. The authors should provide convincing arguments, with commensurate experiences, why certain methods or models are needed. Such a contribution will be judged on its study design, appropriateness and correctness of its analysis, and threats to validity. Replications are welcome.

    Perspectives

    A paper in which the main contribution is a novel perspective on the field as a whole, or part thereof. This includes assessments of the current state of the art and achievements, systematic literature reviews, framing of an important problem, forward-looking thought pieces, connections to other disciplines, and historical perspectives. Such a contribution must, in a highly convincing manner, clearly articulate the vision, novelty, and potential impact.

All papers should be full papers, and papers may belong to more than one category.

Evaluation

All submissions that meet the submission criteria (see below) and fit the scope of the conference will be reviewed by three members of the program committee. Submissions will be evaluated on the basis of soundness, importance of contribution, originality, quality of presentation, appropriate comparison to related work, and convincing evaluation of the proposed approach. Submissions that are not in compliance with the required submission format or that are out of the scope of the conference will be rejected without being reviewed. Submitted papers must comply with IEEE plagiarism policy and procedures. Papers submitted to ICSME 2019 must not have been published elsewhere and must not be under review or submitted for review elsewhere while under consideration for ICSME 2019. Submitting the same paper to different tracks of ICSME 2019 are also not allowed.