Designing and building a large, complex software system is a tremendous challenge. ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM) publishes papers on all aspects of that challenge: specification, design, development and maintenance. It covers tools and methodologies, languages, data structures, and algorithms. TOSEM also reports on successful efforts, noting practical lessons that can be scaled and transferred to other projects, and often looks at applications of innovative technologies. The tone is scholarly but readable; the content is worthy of study; the presentation is effective. Follow us at @acm_tosem.

Open Continuous Special Section on Security and SE

We invite contributions for a continuous special section on Security and Software Engineering in ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM). Software systems are flexible and vulnerable. This leaves the possibility of exploiting such vulnerabilities to the detriment of the infra-structures operated by such software systems. The importance of confidential data in the modern society and the sensitivity in handling such data by software systems have raised the need to satisfy privacy considerations. The possibility of software systems to co-opt artificial intelligence (AI) components and open the door to novel attacks and defense has come to the fore, raising questions about security, privacy, and robustness.

The TOSEM continuous special section aims to provide high visibility to studies and results in security and privacy issues in engineering software systems. We welcome contributions on design, implementation, and applications of trustworthy software systems, ranging from proactive protection to reactive defense, from general to domain-specific areas, such as financial technologies. Contributions in this continuous special section may address but are not restricted to any of the following topics.

Design and verification:

Software security by design, formal specifications, security requirements, formal verification techniques to ensure security, a priori program partitioning or isolated / enclaved execution to ensure security and confidentiality.

Attack detection and defense: 

Testing and analysis methods to enhance software security, fuzz testing, program hardening, patching of security vulnerabilities, program analysis methods for enhancing security such as taint analysis or symbolic analysis.

Attack surfaces in specific technology domains:

Mobile security, IoT security, mobile app analysis, ensuring IoT software security with movement to 5G.

Application domains covering different economy sectors:

Blockchains and smart contracts for fintech, privacy of confidential data in healthcare applications and any other relevant application domains, governance and policy frameworks for software certification in critical application domains, compliance to policies.

TOSEM continuous special sections are journal sections that span across several consecutive issues and focus on emerging hot topics. Special section papers can be submitted at any time during the submission window and are reviewed within 90 days from the submission and within 45 days in the case of requests for a major revision. Special section papers shall be fast-impact track papers (papers that report completely new research results or present novel contributions that significantly extend and were not previously reported in prior work, with a page limit of 45 TOSEM pages not including bibliography) and in the scope of the call.

The call The call is open, and submissions are welcome at any time.

Submission: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/tosem
Kindly choose Special Section on Security and SE as submission type. Papers submitted to this special section are handled as fast-impact track papers. Hence, they must comply with the constraints of such track:

(1) they must qualify as journal-first papers;

(2) their length can be at most 45 pages (excluding bibliography).