Journal-First TrackCAIN 2026

Call for Contributions

The CAIN 2026 Journal-First Track aims to showcase high-quality research papers from renowned software engineering journals that address topics related to the conference theme of AI Engineering - Software Engineering for AI. This track offers researchers the opportunity to present their published work to the CAIN community. By emphasising contributions that have been published first in peer-reviewed, top-level journals, the track aims to disseminate knowledge and to promote interdisciplinary collaboration across a broader community of researchers and practitioners in the field of AI engineering.

CAIN 2026 has established partnerships with:

• ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM)
• IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (TSE)
• Empirical Software Engineering (EMSE)
• IEEE Software
• Journal of Systems and Software (JSS)

to incorporate journal-first papers into its program. Authors of journal-first papers accepted by these journals are invited to submit their work to be presented at CAIN 2026. Other top-level (with A or A* ranking) software engineering journals may be considered if they are highly relevant and sufficient presentation slots are available.

Scope

We solicit submissions of accepted papers that meet the following criteria:

• The paper was accepted in the journal no earlier than April 1, 2024, and no later than November 18, 2025
• The paper is related to the Software Engineering for AI topics that are in the scope of the conference
• The paper has not been presented at, and is not under consideration for, journal-first programs of other conferences

Submissions

Authors of manuscripts that meet the above criteria are invited to submit a proposal directly via the HotCRP submission system. This includes:

• Paper metadata (title, authors, journal, date of acceptance, URL, abstract)
• PDF file of the paper
• Short justification about the fit to the venue (max. 200-300 words)

Evaluation

As only a limited number of presentation slots are available for this track, presentation proposals will be prioritized according to their fit to the conference theme and the structure of sessions. Authors of selected papers will be invited to present their work in person at CAIN 2026.

As the papers will have already been reviewed and accepted by a journal, they will not be reviewed again for technical content.

Presentation

As a journal-first presenter, you will experience all the benefits of conference presentations, such as reaching a wider audience, interactions and discussion with peers, and feedback by peers on your work.

At least one author of each presentation accepted for the journal-first program must register and attend the conference to present the paper. The journal-first manuscripts will be listed in the conference program; however, as they have previously been published in their respective journals, they will not be part of the CAIN 2026 proceedings, not even their metadata. CAIN 2026 participants will have access to the paper abstracts and a pointer to the journal publication through the online conference program.