ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM) publishes original, significant, reproducible and archival results in all areas of software engineering research. The published articles, in general, provide substantial solutions to problems that make it difficult and costly to engineer complex and long-lived software systems with appropriate characteristics. The articles may also identify significant challenges for software engineering research based on thoughtful insights derived from practical experience.

Published TOSEM articles present results that:

    are based on formal, experimental, or other scholarly approaches to problems in software engineering research, providing an evaluation of the research that is appropriate to and commensurate with the research claims;

    address any phase or phases in the software lifecycle, using models, languages, methods, analyses, tools, and other suitable approaches in the research; and

    consider the longer-term potential of the research (such as extensibility, scalability, and practical relevance).

As with other computing research areas, the characteristics of published TOSEM papers evolve slowly over time. Recently published papers are usually characteristic of the style and topics that successfully complete the rigorous reviewing process.

Short contributions and technical correspondence about published papers may appear, as is customary in scientific journals.