MSR 2018

The Mining Software Repositories (MSR) field analyzes the rich data available in software repositories to uncover interesting and actionable information about software systems and projects. The goal of this two-day conference is to advance the science and practice of MSR. The 15th International Conference on Mining Software Repositories is sponsored will be co-located with ICSE 2018 in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Software repositories such as source control systems, archived communications between project personnel, and defect tracking systems are used to help manage the progress of software projects. Software practitioners and researchers are recognizing the benefits of mining this information to support the maintenance of software systems, improve software design/reuse, and empirically validate novel ideas and techniques. Research is now proceeding to uncover the ways in which mining these repositories can help to understand software development and software evolution, to support predictions about software development, and to exploit this knowledge in planning future development. The goal of this two-day international conference is to advance the science and practice of software engineering via the analysis of data stored in software repositories.

This year, we solicit three types of papers: research, practice, and data. As in previous MSR editions, there will be a Mining Challenge and a special issue of the best MSR papers published in the Empirical Software Engineering journal. For the research and practice papers, we especially encourage submissions that facilitate reproducibility and follow up research by publicly providing data sets and tools. Publicly providing reusable research artifacts (data or tools) is not mandatory, but will strengthen the reproducibility of the research, which is an explicit evaluation criterion.

The official publication date is the date the proceedings are made available in the ACM Digital Library. This date may be up to two weeks prior to the first day of ICSE 2018. The official publication date affects the deadline for any patent filings related to published work. Purchases of additional pages in the proceedings is not allowed.

The Impact and Value of MSR publications:

The MSR conference is ranked as a CORE A conference, which is an “excellent conference, and highly respected in a discipline area”. For additional information concerning the impact and value of MSR publications, please consult this document.

EMSE Special Issue

A selection of the best research and data papers will be invited to be revised and extended for consideration in a special issue of the for consideration in a special issue of the Empirical Software Engineering (EMSE) journal edited by Springer.

Call for Nominations: Mining Software Repositories Awards 2018 (New this year)

The Mining Software Repositories community has started a series of two new awards, the MSR Early Career Achievement Award and the MSR Foundational Contribution Award. Please submit your nominations by February 15, 2018, 23:59 AOE.

MSR FOSS Impact Paper Award (New this year)

In an effort to encourage research on understanding and improving FOSS (Free, Open Source Software), MSR is establishing the “FOSS Impact paper” award. The award will be granted to papers that show outstanding contributions to the FOSS community. For many years, the MSR community has leveraged public data from FOSS projects, and in the process the community has contributed new insights, tools and techniques to assist FOSS projects in different ways. This award recognizes and encourages such line of research.

The award will be adjudicated by an independent committee composed of prominent FOSS figures. The award is open to all accepted research papers in 2018. Authors should self nominate their papers when submitting to EasyChair. Nominated papers should include a short blurb that highlights the FOSS relevance of the work. The awarded papers will be announced at MSR 2018.

Important Dates

Abstract Due	23:59 AOE, January 23, 2018
Papers Due	23:59 AOE, January 30, 2018,
Author Notification	23:59 AOE, March 2, 2018
Camera Ready	23:59 AOE, March 16, 2018