CHASE 2025

The 18th International Conference on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering (CHASE 2025) is the premier venue for research on cooperative and human aspects of software engineering. Since 2008, the CHASE conference has served as a community and provided a forum to discuss research, including empirical findings, theoretical models, research methods and tools, and new ideas and visions for studying human and cooperative aspects of software engineering. CHASE seeks to bring together academic and practitioner communities interested in this area. Now in its 18th edition, CHASE 2025 will be co-located with the International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) in beautiful Ottawa, Canada.

People vary widely with respect to their personality traits, emotional and cognitive style, technical knowledge, and other demographic variables, including age, gender, and cultural background. Software projects require effective communication and collaboration by many people. At the same time, emerging trends in software engineering and artificial intelligence are fundamentally redefining the concepts of cooperation, coordination, communication, and what it means to be human. The CHASE conference seeks to grow a body of knowledge on the important role of people in software development, how people cooperate and collaborate to design and develop software systems, and how these processes can be improved. 

CHASE solicits high-quality research studies using any research method that is appropriate for the purpose, that seek to learn about cooperative and human aspects of software engineering. While CHASE acknowledges the important role of technology in the socio-technical discipline that software engineering is, the focus lies on the human aspects, not the technology.

Scope

Topics of interest are human, cooperative, and collaborative aspects of software engineering, including, but not limited to:

• Social, psychological, emotional, cognitive, and human-centric aspects of software development, whether at the levels of individual, pair, group, team, organization, or community.
• Social and human aspects of work from anywhere (WFX), remote, and hybrid settings in software development.
• Roles, practices, conventions, and patterns of behavior, whether in technical or non-technical activities and whether in generic or specialized domains.
• Issues of leadership, (self-)organization, cooperation, culture, management, socio-technical (in)congruence, stakeholder groups.
• Processes and tools (whether existing, prototypical, or simulated) to support teamwork and participation among software engineering stakeholders, whether co-located or distributed.
• Role of soft skills (e.g., communication, collaboration, teamwork, organization, negotiation, conflict management) for software engineers.
• Ethics, moral principles, and techniques intended to inform the development and responsible use of AI/ML-enabled systems.
• Research on designing and using technologies that affect software development groups, organizations, and communities (e.g., Open Source, knowledge-sharing communities, crowdsourcing, etc).
• Equity, diversity, and inclusion (e.g., gender, race, ethnicity, disability, socioeconomic background, sexual orientation, etc., fostering inclusion, allyship, covering, privilege, organizational culture) in software engineering.
• Educational and training related to human and cooperative aspects of software engineering.
• Software Engineering, AI, and humans, including the effects of AI on software activities, developers’ perceptions of AI tool integration, emergence of new tools and roles due to AI, prompt engineering in Large Language Models (LLM).
• Datasets that can lay a foundation for future research on human aspects of software engineering.
• Replication studies of studies that fit the CHASE scope.
• Meta-research studies that fit the CHASE scope. 

Important Dates

• Abstract submission: November 1st, 2024, AoE (recommended; used for bidding)
• Paper submission: November 8th, 2024, AoE (firm, no extensions)
• Notification: January 10th, 2024, AoE
• Camera-ready submission: January 31st, 2024, AoE
• CHASE conference: April 27-28th, 2025

Evaluation Criteria

Each paper submitted to CHASE will be evaluated based on the following criteria:

• Soundness: CHASE requires soundness. All research requires assumptions. An assumption can be reliable, reasonable, risky, or ridiculous. Soundness means to allow only reliable assumptions to remain implicit. State all reasonable assumptions. State and thoroughly discuss all risky assumptions. Be especially careful when interpreting or generalizing. CHASE will accept risky assumptions or conjectures as long as a) they are clearly marked as such, b) they are needed to enable higher relevance, and c) you convince the reviewers they are often true. Future research may show when and when not they are true.

• Relevance: CHASE expects and values relevance, both practical and theoretical. Papers should present a clear motivation, whether that is a practical problem, a need to develop more theoretical foundations or argue for replication of previously published studies. CHASE encourages the submission of replication papers. No matter what the contribution of a paper is, it must clearly discuss the implications of the results for software engineering research and/or practice, whether those results are empirical findings or products of theorizing

• Verifiability and Transparency: The extent to which the paper includes sufficient information to understand how it was conducted, e.g., how data was obtained, analyzed, and interpreted. We encourage authors to provide details and material that support independent verification or replication of the paper’s claimed contributions.

• Presentation: CHASE is human-oriented, so we expect an easy-to-digest write-up. We recommend using a structured abstract (Background, Objective, Method, Results, Conclusion); define key terms; write clearly and concisely; consider using appropriate color schemes, symbols, boxes; provide tables and figures to reduce prose; provide cross-references; do not repeat sentences between abstract, introduction, and conclusion.

 

CHASE 2024 will adopt the ACM Empirical Standards for the respective research methods used. We advise both authors and reviewers to review these. CHASE welcomes other research methods not included in the ACM Empirical Standards.

Tracks (Submission Types) 

• Full papers (up to 10 pages + 2 additional pages for references): Full papers must present mature research. They must clearly state a contribution, demonstrate novelty in relation to prior work, and provide strong argumentation as to why that contribution is relevant and valid.

• Short papers (up to 5 pages plus one for references): Short papers present emerging and/or interim findings. They aim to provide a forum for introducing fresh insights and preliminary findings in the field and to receive community feedback for progressing the work.
  
  
• Vision Ideas and Methods papers (up to 2 pages plus one for references): VIM papers capture the original spirit of CHASE’s workshop format, fostering dynamic engagement and exchange of ideas among all conference participants. They encompass research proposals, visionary concepts, multi- and interdisciplinary strategies, as well as innovative research methods, designs, and unexplored topics. These papers aim to stimulate thought-provoking discussions and collaborative exploration of new horizons in cooperative and human aspects of software engineering and can be controversial in nature. They capture the need for the community to explore new visions, ideas, and methods as CHASE research progresses and evolves over time.

The Program Committee may recommend papers submitted as Full papers to be accepted as Short or VIM papers and those accepted as Short papers to be accepted as VIM papers. The authors may accept these recommendations and participate in CHASE to foster healthy discussion of their ideas.

CHASE meets TOSEM

CHASE is proud to have a partnership with ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM), one of the leading journals in software engineering and ACM’s flagship journal in the field, through two innovative initiatives: 

• The first initiative is a JournalFast Track for selected CHASE full papers. This option provides authors with an accelerated review process for their work in TOSEM, ensuring consistent reviewer feedback from the conference to the journal. We will provide more details in early 2024.

• The second initiative introduces a Journal-First Track for invited TOSEM papers on CHASE-related themes. This feature encourages a productive exchange between journal articles and conference presentations, thereby stimulating a more comprehensive conversation on pivotal topics. The Journal-First chair will invite authors of relevant TOSEM papers. There is no mechanism to submit a paper to the track without invitation.

 These initiatives, collectively, aim to nurture collaboration, instigate wide-ranging discussions, and uphold the standards of high-quality research in both venues.

Reviewing Process

• Submissions will be reviewed by at least three reviewers; one of the reviewers will serve as a Discussion Lead.
• CHASE 2024 will not have a rebuttal phase.
• CHASE 2024 uses double-anonymous reviewing, but reviewers are allowed to sign their reviews if they prefer. Please see further details below (Submission Process and Submission Link).
• Reviewers must respect the “Invalid Criticisms” item lists of the ACM Empirical Standardfor the respective research methods used.
• We will adhere to the ACM Policy Against Harassmentat ACM Activities
• Submissions that are deemed out of scope will be desk rejected without further review.

Submission Process and Submission Link

All papers must be submitted via HotCRP before or on the submission date: https://chase2025.hotcrp.com/

Submissions through other channels are not accepted.

• All submissions must be in PDF.
  
  
• Submissions must conform to the IEEE conference proceedings template, specified in the 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).

• All submissions must not exceed the page limit of each track for the main text, including all figures, tables, appendices, etc.

• Submissions must strictly conform to the IEEE conference proceedings formatting instructions specified above. Alterations of spacing, font size, and other changes that deviate from the instructions may result in desk rejection without further review.

• By submitting to CHASE, authors acknowledge that they are aware of and agree to be bound by the ACM Policy and Procedures on Plagiarismand the IEEE Plagiarism FAQ. In particular, papers submitted to CHASE 2025 must not have been published elsewhere and must not be under review or submitted for review elsewhere whilst under consideration for CHASE 2025. 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.

• Please ensure that you and your co-authors obtain an ORCID ID, so you can complete the publishing process for your accepted paper. ACM and IEEE have been involved in ORCID and may collect ORCID IDs from all published authors. We are committed to improve author discoverability, ensure proper attribution and contribute to ongoing community efforts around name normalization; your ORCID ID will help in these efforts.

• CHASE will employ a double-anonymous review process. Thus, no submission may reveal its authors’ identities. The authors must make every effort to honor the double-anonymous review process. In particular:
  • Authors’ names must be omitted from the submission.
  • All references to the author’s prior work should be in the third person.
  • While authors have the right to upload preprints on ArXiV or similar sites, they must avoid specifying that the manuscript was submitted to CHASE 2025.
  • During review, authors should not publicly use the submission title. They should thus use a different paper title for any pre-print in ArXiV or similar websites.
  • All communication with the program committee must go through the program committee chairs. Do not contact individual program committee members regarding your submission.
  • Links to replication packages and other external resources, including appendices, must be shared through anonymized platforms, see our open science policies.
  • Further advice, guidance, and explanation about the double-anonymous review process can be found in the Q&A page from prior ICSEs.
• Further advice, guidance, and explanation about the double-anonymous review process can be found on the Q&A page from prior ICSEs.
  
  
• By submitting to CHASE, authors acknowledge that they conform to the authorship policy of the IEEE, submission policy of the IEEE, and the authorship policy of the ACM(and associated FAQ. This includes following these points related to the use of Generative AI:
  • “Generative AI tools and technologies, such as ChatGPT, may not be listed as authors of an ACM published Work. The use of generative AI tools and technologies to create content is permitted but must be fully disclosed in the Work. For example, the authors could include the following statement in the Acknowledgements section of the Work: ChatGPT was utilized to generate sections of this Work, including text, tables, graphs, code, data, citations, etc.). If you are uncertain about the need to disclose the use of a particular tool, err on the side of caution, and include a disclosure in the acknowledgements section of the Work.” - ACM
  • “The use of artificial intelligence (AI)–generated text in an article shall be disclosed in the acknowledgements section of any paper submitted to an IEEE Conference or Periodical. The sections of the paper that use AI-generated text shall have a citation to the AI system used to generate the text.” - IEEE
  • “If you are using generative AI software tools to edit and improve the quality of your existing text in much the same way you would use a typing assistant like Grammarly to improve spelling, grammar, punctuation, clarity, engagement or to use a basic word processing system to correct spelling or grammar, it is not necessary to disclose such usage of these tools in your Work.” - ACM

Open Science Policy

In line with ICSE 2025, CHASE 2025 supports the Open Science policies. The guiding principle is that all research results should be accessible to the public and, if possible, empirical studies should be reproducible. In particular, we actively support the adoption of open artifacts and open source principles. We encourage all contributing authors to disclose (anonymized and curated) data/artifacts to increase reproducibility and replicability. Note that sharing research artifacts is not mandatory for submission or acceptance. However, sharing is expected to be the default, and non-sharing needs to be justified. We recognize that reproducibility or replicability is not a goal in qualitative research and that, similar to industrial studies, qualitative studies often face challenges in sharing research data. For guidelines on how to report qualitative research to ensure the assessment of the reliability and credibility of research results, see this curated Q&A page.

Upon submission to the research track, authors are asked

• to make their artifact available to the program committee (via upload of supplemental material or a link to an anonymous repository) – and provide instructions on how to access this data in the paper; or
• to include it in the submission an explanation as to why this is not possible or desirable; and
• to indicate in the submission why they do not intend to make their data or study materials publicly available upon acceptance, if that is the case. The default understanding is that the data and/or other artifacts will be publicly available upon acceptance of a paper.

Publication and Presentation

• Authors of accepted papers are encouraged to share preprints of their work. 

• Upon acceptance, all authors of accepted papers will be asked to complete a Copyright form and will receive further instructions for preparing their camera-ready versions.

• At least one author of each paper must register and present the paper at the conference; otherwise, the paper will be excluded from the program and removed from the proceedings. Authors of accepted papers will receive further instructions about paper presentations in due course.

• Purchasing additional pages in the proceedings is not possible.

 

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