Call for Papers: ICSE 2021 Software Engineering in Society

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

Call for Papers

Goals

We are looking for insightful and thought-provoking papers that address the various roles of software engineering in society. Specifically, we are seeking contributions that highlight how software engineering can address the opportunities and challenges posed by the rapidly accelerating pace of technological advances that are impacting the economic, political, environmental, social and technical aspects of society. We would also like to discuss emerging trends in the development of software that is part of larger systems and whose development is tackled within the specific disciplines listed below. This development should be able to proceed with only the limited, if any, involvement of software engineering experts. The goal is to investigate the reasons for these trends, to analyze possible novel contributions from the Software Engineering community, and to identify novel research challenges that these disciplines pose to software engineering methods and practices.

SEIS Welcomes

  • Innovative, inspiring research with a clear impact on software engineering challenges, directions, methods, and tools,
  • Engagement with a broad spectrum of disciplines including, but not limited to:
    • Health (e.g., Health Informatics, software technologies for ageing);
    • Physical Sciences (e.g., Computational Chemistry, Genomic, Biotechnologies)
    • Environmental Sciences (e.g., Sustainability, Urban Planning, Ecology, Climate Change);
    • Social Sciences (e.g., Ethics, Software Fairness, Regulatory Compliance);
    • Management (e.g. socio-technical ecosystems, technical debt, social debt);
    • Economics (e.g., Electronic payments, Blockchain technologies);
    • Computing and Engineering (e.g., HCI, AI, Data Science, Distributed Computing);
    • Security and Privacy (e.g., security and privacy preserving software development);
    • Policing (e.g., combating and investigating crime);
    • Manufacturing (e.g., Industry 4.0, smart factory);
    • Engineering emerging cyber-physical systems (e.g., autonomous vehicles, smart cities);
    • The Arts (e.g. Digital Art, Performing Arts) and Crafts (e.g. DIY electronics);
    • Interdisciplinary research (e.g. Cognitive Science, Digital Social Innovation);
  • Work emerging from research partnerships with communities, NGOs, cultural institutions, and the public and private sector,
  • Research reflections on the long-term implications of digital technology interventions on all aspects in society (e.g., economics, social, political, environmental, technical),
  • Research directions towards new development models, tools, and methods for specific application environments,
  • Research findings supported by empirical studies and experimentation

Scope

We are interested in technical research approaches that have been applied to address or to support solutions to societal problems. Equally, we are interested in sharing case studies, success stories, failures and lessons learned from working in highly complex problem spaces such as climate change, public health, cyber security and democracy. We are interested in software engineering tools, processes, architectures, and methods that are relevant in these settings. SEIS authors are encouraged to contribute soundly motivated research, both mature and novel. SEIS welcomes multi- and inter-disciplinary research showcasing how software engineering can contribute to the many dimensions of software embedded in and influencing society.

Evaluation

The primary criteria for acceptance of a paper submitted to SEIS are the scientific quality of the paper and the extent to which a paper meets the SEIS track goals and fits the scope. The SEIS program committee will undertake the assessment with regard to the following criteria: relevance to the Software Engineering community, soundness of the technical contribution, originality of the paper, appropriate consideration of relevant literature, and clarity of presentation. Each submission will be reviewed by at least three members of the program committee.

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.

Format

  • Full paper, up to 10 pages, including references, documenting results and findings, where the research presented has followed established research methods;
  • Short paper, up to 4 pages, including references, reporting novel approaches that have not been fully evaluated, which will be presented as a poster;
  • Case study paper, up to 10 pages, including references, reporting on real-world problems and innovative solutions, or tools.

How to Submit

All 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).

Note, we do not use double-blind review (i.e., authors do not have to hide their identities in their papers).

Submit your paper here

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).

Important Dates

  • SEIS Submissions Deadline: 18 October 2020
  • SEIS Acceptance Notification: 15 December 2020
  • SEIS Camera Ready: 12 February 2021

Organization and Contact

If there are queries regarding the CFP, please contact the SEiS Co-Chairs:

  • Birgit Penzenstadler
  • Oscar Pastor