This workshop aims to bring together researchers at various points in their career and practitioners alike, for discussing the systematic description and evaluation of software engineering research.
The workshop is motivated by two observations:
writing and reviewing software engineering research results is often hindered by the lack of a community understanding what are important questions (hypotheses) to validate research and which methods are suitable, appropriate and needed for demonstrating evidence;
retrieving research results just through syntactical terms of the paper title (or even abstract) is often very hard, and, as a consequence, comprehensively relating research results to each other in terms of support, strengthening or contradiction is rarely done.
Therefore, in PROPSER we want to discuss in particular:
The workshop aims to discuss these subjects as such, it is not meant to be a platform for original research results in a specific software engineering topic. Therefore, we intentionally do not require original new ideas to be submitted. Of course, for inclusion in the proceedings a paper should be original text.
| 09:00-10:30 | General EASE Keynote | Mark Harman |
| 10:30-10:40 | Coffee Break | |
| 10:40-10:50 |
Welcome Introduction Antonia Bertolino, ISTI-CNR, Italy Anne Koziolek, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany Ralf Reussner, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) / FZI Research Centre | |
| Paper Session 1 (Session Chair: Willi Hasselbring) | ||
| 10:50-11:05 | On implicit assumptions underlying software engineering research | Lutz Prechelt, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany |
| 11:05-11:20 | A classification for managing software engineering knowledge |
Angelika Kaplan, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany Maximilian Walter, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany Robert Heinrich, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany |
| 11:20-11:35 | Towards an automated classification approach for software engineering research |
Angelika Kaplan, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany Jan Keim, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany |
| 11:35-11:50 | About the assessment of grey literature in software engineering |
Guglielmo De Angelis, IASI_CNR, Italy Francesca Lonetti, ISTI-CNR, Italy |
| 11:50-13:00 | Lunch Break | |
| Paper Session 2 (Session Chair: Lutz Prechelt) | ||
| 13:00-13:15 | If you want better empirical research, value your theory: On the importance of strong theories for progress in empirical software engineering research | Klaus Schmid, University of Hildesheim, Germany |
| 13:15-13:30 | Benchmarking as empirical standard in software engineering research | Wilhelm Hasselbring, Kiel University, Germany |
| 13:30-13:45 | Towards a more structured peer review process with empirical standards |
Arham Arshad, Dalhousie University, Canada Taher Ahemd Ghaleb, Queens University, Canada Paul Ralph, Dalhousie University, Canada |
| 13:45-14:00 | Organization of break-out groups (Session Chair: Antonia Bertolino) | |
| 14:00-14:10 | Coffee Break | |
| 14:10-15:45 | Break-out group discussion | |
| 15:45-16:15 | Presentation of break-out group results (Session Chair: Ralf Reussner) | |
| 16:15-17:00 | Discussion, further steps and closing (Session Chair: A. Bertolino, A. Koziolek, R. Reussner et al.) |
Concretely, we invite three types of submissions:
taxonomy papers (up to 8 pages): papers presenting or surveying classifications of software engineering subjects, empirical methods, areas of software applications, etc.; including hypotheses about relationships between such categories (e.g., "contributions of type X should be validated with method Y.")
method-not-obvious papers (up to 6 pages): papers describing ongoing research that has unsolved questions regarding how to demonstrate the validity and relevance of the work.
proposal papers (up to 6 pages): papers that directly address one or a few of the above-mentioned topics.
None of these submission types strictly requires a conventional sequence of sections; please find a suitable section format for your respective case, but make heavy use of headings to help readers with orientation.
Papers will be reviewed with respect of their strength of argumentation and their potential to spark interesting discussions during the workshop regarding the above-mentioned topics.
Submitted papers must be written in English, contain original, unpublished work, and conform to the ACM Proceedings Format (https://www.acm.org/publications/taps/word-template-workflow). Note that the new ACM submission template is one-column, whereas the camera-ready version will still be expected in two-column. Word users shall refer to the Table at the bottom of https://www.acm.org/publications/taps/word-template-workflow to estimate the paper's number of pages in the camera-ready version. Latex users can use \documentclass[sigconf,authordraft]{acmart} to write the paper and to control the number of pages in the camera-ready version but change it to \documentclass[manuscript]{acmart} for submitting the paper for review.
Submissions are done via the Easychair site of EASE.
The deadlines and important dates for the submissions are as follows:
All accepted papers will be published at ACM EASE Companion Proceedings.
At least one author of each accepted paper must register by the camera-ready deadline.
Antonia Bertolino, ISTI-CNR, Italy
Anne Koziolek, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany
Ralf Reussner, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) / FZI – IT Research Centre, Germany (main contact)
Robert Feldt, Chalmers University, Sweden
Paul Ralph, Dalhousie University, Canada
Carlo Ghezzi, Politecnico di Milano, Italia
Gustavo Pinto, Federal University of Pará, Brasil
Barbara Kitchenham, Keele University, UK
Lutz Prechelt, FU Berlin, Germany
Walter Tichy, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany
Sira Vegas, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain