Call for Papers - Research Track

 

ISSRE (International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering) is the leading conference on software reliability and it focuses on approaches, techniques, and tools for assessing, predicting, and improving the reliability, safety, and security of software systems.

ISSRE 2025 is introducing ***Early Decisions***. At the beginning of the author response period we will notify the authors with the following outcomes: "Accept" if reviewers do not require any clarification and are happy with the current state of the paper; "Reject" if the reviewers agree that the authors’ response is unlikely to alter their evaluation; "Response Recommended" if reviewers have explicit questions that clarify some aspects of the paper, and the decision Accept/Reject is postponed.

The research track at ISSRE 2025 invites high-quality submissions of technical research papers describing original and unpublished results exploring new scientific ideas, contributing new evidence to established research directions, or reflecting on practical experience. Specifically, ISSRE solicits submissions in three categories: (1) full research regular (REG) papers, (2) practical experience reports (PER), and (3) tools and artefacts (TAR) papers. Papers will be assessed with criteria appropriate to each category.

• REG papers should describe a novel contribution to the reliability of software systems. Novelty should be argued via concrete evidence and appropriate positioning within the state of the art. REG papers are also expected to clearly explain the validation process and its limitations.
• PER papers should provide an in-depth exposition of practical experiences ideally performed by a collaboration of researchers and industry practitioners. The key contribution of these papers should be lessons learned from the application of known research tools and methods related to ISSRE topics, or new knowledge acquired through empirical studies performed according to various research methodologies. Negative results are welcome, e.g., discussing where or why current research cannot be applied in an industrially relevant context.
• TAR papers should describe a new tool or artefact. Tool-focused TAR papers must present either a new tool or novel and substantial extensions to an existing tool. They should include a description of (i) the theoretical foundations, (ii) the design and implementation aspects, and (iii) experiments with realistic case studies. Making the tool publicly available is strongly encouraged. Artefact-focused TAR papers should cover (i) a working copy of the software and (ii) experimental data sets.

The ISSRE conference encourages authors of research papers to follow the principles of transparency, reproducibility, and replicability. Authors are encouraged to disclose data to increase reproducibility and replicability. Should the paper be accepted, the authors will have the opportunity (and are encouraged to) submit artifacts to the Artifact Evaluation (AE) track, to enhance the reproducibility and quality of your research. By submitting your artifacts, you not only contribute to the progress of our field but also stand a chance to earn badges that will be displayed on your papers in the conference proceedings, showcasing the credibility and rigor of your work.

At least one author of every accepted paper is required to make a full author registration and present at the conference physically in São Paulo.

Special issues

Special issue Authors of accepted papers will be invited to submit an extended version of their work to a special issue of the Empirical Software Engineering (EMSE) journal. The Call for Paper will be available soon.

Important dates (AoE)

• Abstract submission deadline: April 28th, 2025 (AoE)
• Paper submission deadline: May 5th, 2025 (AoE)
• Early decisions: June 30th, 2025 (AoE)
• Author rebuttal period: June 30th-July 5th, 2025 (AoE)
• Notification to authors: July 18th, 2025 (AoE)
• Camera ready papers: August 19th, 2025 (AoE)

Paper Categories

Submissions can be made in one of the following:

• REG papers: 12 pages (including references).
• PER papers: 12 pages (including references).
• TAR papers: 6 - 10 pages (including references).

Papers that exceed the number of pages for that submission category will be rejected without review.

Topics of Interest

Topics of interest include development, analysis methods and models throughout the software development lifecycle, and are not limited to:

• Dependability attributes (i.e., security, safety, maintainability, survivability, resilience, robustness) impacting software reliability
• Reliability threats, i.e. faults (defects, bugs, etc.), errors, failures
• Reliability means (fault prevention, fault removal, fault tolerance, fault forecasting)
• Software testing and formal methods
• Software fault localization, debugging, root-cause analysis
• Metrics, measurements and threat estimation for reliability prediction and the interplay with safety/security
• Reliability of autonomous systems and (self-)adaptive systems
• Reliability of AI-based systems, AI for Reliability Engineering
• Reliability of Large Language/Foundational Model (LLM) and LLM for software reliability
• Reliability of software services and Software as a Service (SaaS)
• Reliability of model-based and auto-generated software
• Reliability of open-source software
• Reliability of software dealing with Big Data
• Reliability of model-based and auto-generated software
• Reliability of green and sustainable systems
• Reliability of mobile systems
• Reliability of software within specific technological spaces (e.g., Internet of Things, Cloud, Semantic Web/Web 3.0, Virtualization, Blockchain, networks softwarization, 5G/6G, edge-to-cloud computing)
• Normative/regulatory/ethical spaces about software reliability
• Societal aspects of software reliability

Anonymizing Rules

Authors shall anonymize their papers. As an author, you should not identify yourself in the paper either explicitly or by implication (e.g., through references or acknowledgements). However, only non-destructive anonymization is required. For example, the names of case study subjects may be left un-anonymized, if the subject name is important for a reviewer to be able to evaluate the work. In that case, they should avoid mentioning that a specific tool has been conceived and developed by them, as well as a paper that has been co-authored by them. The authors can provide the name of a case study subject software and the name of the entity developing it (private company or foundations); in case some of the authors are employees of the developing entity, the authors should not explicitly mention their affiliation but clarify potential threats to validity (e.g., familiarity with the subject), as appropriate.

Additionally, please take the following steps when preparing your submission:

• Remove authors' names and affiliations from the title page
• Remove acknowledgement of identifying names and funding sources
• Use care in naming your files. Source file names, e.g., Joe.Smith.dvi, are often embedded in the final output as readily accessible comments.
• Use care in referring to related work, particularly your own. Do not omit references to provide anonymity, as this leaves the reviewer unable to grasp the context. Instead, a good solution is to reference your past work in the third person, just as you would any other piece of related work.
• If you have a concurrent submission, reference it as follows: "Closely related work describes a microkernel implementation [Anonymous 2025]." with the corresponding citation: "[Anonymous 2025] Under submission. Details omitted for double-blind reviewing."
• If you cite anonymous work, you must also send the deanonymized reference(s) to the PC chairs in a separate email.
• It is within the authors to use a non-anonymized version of the submitted work to, e.g., discuss it with colleagues, give talks, and publish it at ArXiV, but, in doing so, the authors cannot mention that the work is under submission to ISSRE 2025.

Submissions that do not conform to the above submission deadline, anonymization and formatting guidelines (e.g., are too long, use fonts or line spacing smaller than what is indicated) or are unoriginal, previously published, or under submission to multiple venues, will be disregarded.

Formatting Rules

Submissions must adhere to the IEEE Computer Society Format Guidelines as implemented by the following LaTeX/Word templates:

• LaTex Package (ZIP)
• Word Template (DOCX)

Each paper must be submitted as a single Portable Document Format (PDF) file. All fonts must be embedded. We also strongly recommend you print the file and review it for integrity (fonts, symbols, equations etc.) before submitting it. A defective printing of your paper can undermine its chance of success. Please take a note of the following:

• Submissions should be anonymous.
• The first page must include the title of the paper and a maximum 200-word abstract.
• Please take into account that the abstract will be used by the reviewers to bid on papers. Thus, describe the paper goals clearly, as well as the means used to achieve them.
• The first page is not a separate page, but is a part of the paper (i.e., it has technical material in it). Thus, this page counts toward the total page budget for the paper.
• The use of color for figures and graphs is allowed only if the paper turns out to be readable if printed in grayscale.
• Symbols and labels used in the graphs should be readable as printed, without requiring on-screen magnification.
• Try to limit the file size to less than 15 MB.

Authors of accepted papers are encouraged to supply source code and raw data to help others replicate and better understand their results.

Paper Submission

Papers are submitted via Easychair at the following URL: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=issre2025

Submissions will be reviewed by the program committee through a double-blind reviewing process, with a limited use of outside referees. Papers will be held in full confidence during the reviewing process, but papers accompanied by nondisclosure agreement forms are not acceptable and will be rejected without review.

Changes in the number and order of authors will not be allowed after the paper acceptance.

Authors must anonymize their submissions according to the guidelines given above. Submissions violating the formatting and anonymization rules will be desk rejected without review. There will be no extensions for reformatting.

Review Process and Author Response

After the papers have been reviewed, but before the Program Committee/Board meeting, the reviews will be made available to the authors to respond to any factual errors in the reviews. Rebuttals do not include additional information about the research or a submission of an updated or revised paper. Author responses will be made available to all PC/PB members before the paper is discussed for selection in the PC/PB meeting. The submissions website will include rebuttal guidelines.

***NEW IN 2025: Early Decisions***

To reduce the authors and reviewers burden of unnecessary writing/reading of authors responses, ISSRE 2025 is introducing early decisions:

• If reviewers decide that a paper can be accepted in its current state without requiring any further input from the authors, the authors will receive an “Accept” decision at the beginning of the author response period and will not be required to submit a response.
• If a paper is perceived to be in a highly deficient state by the reviewers, leading them to conclude that the authors’ response is unlikely to alter their evaluation, the authors will receive a “Reject” decision at the beginning of the author response period and will not be required to submit a response.
• All other papers will receive a “Response Recommended” notification at the beginning of the author response period. As customary, it is still up to the authors to decide if they want to submit an author response.

This approach ensures that author responses are primarily reserved for cases with some controversy or where the reviewers have specific and pertinent inquiries to be addressed.

Best Research Paper Award

ISSRE is pleased to announce the Best Research Paper Award, attributed every year to the best paper in the Research Track.

Conference Proceedings

The conference proceedings will be published by IEEE Computer Society Conference Publishing Services (CPS). Papers presented at the conference will be submitted for inclusion into IEEE Xplore and to all of the A&I (abstracting and indexing) partners (such as the EI Compendex).

IEEE Conference Publishing Policies

All submissions must adhere to IEEE Conference Publishing Policies <Submission Policies - IEEE Author Center Conferences>.

IEEE Cross Check

All submissions will be screened for plagiarized material through the IEEE Cross Check portal.