Doctoral and Early Career Symposium (DECS)CHASE 2026

Call for Submissions

The CHASE Doctoral and Early Career Symposium (DECS) provides doctoral students and early career researchers an opportunity to interact with their colleagues working on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering. DECS follows the long tradition of mentoring at CHASE to support our next generation of CHASE researchers.

To allow participants sufficient time to present, discuss each others' research, and receive valuable feedback, the symposium will be run in a virtual context ahead of the CHASE conference. The submissions (see next section) are meant to support the discussions and will not be published in the conference proceedings. Participants will also have the opportunity to present their work during CHASE in a poster session or as a lightning talk (optional).

The goals of the symposium are to:

• Provide the participants independent and constructive feedback on their current research and future research directions;
• Develop a supportive community of scholars and a spirit of collaborative research; and
• Provide an opportunity for participants to interact with established researchers and practitioners in the Software Engineering community.

Who should participate

PhD students at various stages of their PhD journey are encouraged to apply. Newer PhD students should have settled on a research area or thesis topic.

Early career researchers should be about to graduate or have graduated from their PhD studies not more than 3 years ago.

Submissions

There are three submission categories:

• Early PhD submissions. These are aimed at students in the early stages of their PhD, who have settled on a research area. Submissions should outline the topic of their PhD dissertation in up to two pages (plus one page for references). The submissions should clearly state:
  1. the problem to be solved in the student’s research (justify why this problem is important, for whom, and make visible that previous research and related work has not yet solved that problem),
  2. the research question(s),
  3. the expected contributions of the research,
  4. the research approach and methods,
  5. specific questions/request for advice they have for the DECS committee (note ‘not applicable’ if no questions/advice needed).

• Late PhD submissions. These are aimed at students who have already produced results in their PhD research. Submissions should outline the topic of the PhD dissertation and the obtained results in up to four pages (plus one page for references). The submissions should include the items (a) to (e) above, and:
  1. a description of the results achieved so far, and
  2. the planned timeline for completion.

• Early Career submissions. These are aimed at early career researchers (who are about to graduate or have graduated from their PhD studies not more than 3 years ago). Submissions should outline the author’s research program in up to four pages (plus one page for references) and any specific questions/requests for advice they have for the DECS committee.

The research program/outline in the submissions could be inspired by or include a Research Design Canvas (see Chapter 4 in R. Hoda, “Qualitative Research with Socio-Technical Grounded Theory”, Springer 2024, https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-60533-8 )

Submissions must be made at https://chase2026-decs.hotcrp.com

We encourage everyone to upload their submissions early and to properly enter potential conflicts for reviewing.

Formatting

Submissions must conform to the ACM Primary Article Template, which can be obtained from the ACM Proceedings Template page. LaTeX users should use the sigconf option, as well as the review (to produce line numbers for easy reference by the reviewers) option. To that end, the following LaTeX code can be placed at the start of the LaTeX document: \documentclass[sigconf, review]{acmart}.

Submission Policies

• By submitting to the CHASE 2026 DECS, authors acknowledge that they are aware of and agree to be bound by the ACM Policy and Procedures on Plagiarism and the IEEE Plagiarism FAQ.
• If the research involves human participants/subjects, the authors must adhere to the ACM Publications Policy on Research Involving Human Participants and Subjects.
• By submitting to the CHASE 2026 DECS, authors acknowledge that they conform to the authorship policy of the IEEE, submission policy of the IEEE, the authorship policy of the ACM and associated FAQ. In particular, these documents include guidance on the use of Generative AI.
• The CHASE 2026 DECS is aligned with the CHASE 2026 Open Science policies. The guiding principle is that, wherever relevant, all research results, artifacts, and data should be accessible to the public. For additional guidelines, see the Open Science Policy of the Research Track and the Q&A page.

Review process

Submissions will be reviewed by members of the DECS Committee. Participants will be selected on the basis of their anticipated contribution to the DECS goals as well as the potential benefit to the participants. Among the criteria to be considered in reviewing submissions are:

• the potential quality of the research and its relevance to Software Engineering,
• the stage of the research (see the Section “Who should participate” above), and
• the diversity of backgrounds, research topics, and approaches.

Attendance

The DECS has 2 parts:

• Authors of submissions selected for participation will have the opportunity to present and discuss their work with other participants and DECS committee members. The CHASE 2026 DECS meetings will take place virtually before the CHASE conference on March 25^th and 26^th. Participants will be assigned other submissions to review prior to the virtual event, and all participants are expected to read the submissions assigned and prepare feedback.
  
  
• The authors are invited to present a poster or lightning presentation (optional) during the CHASE conference, on April 13^th and 14^th, 2026.

Authors are not required to attend the CHASE 2026 conference in person, but are expected to attend the virtual event prior to CHASE 2026. To facilitate detailed feedback to the participants, attendance at the DECS is by invitation only, limited to the participants and the DECS Committee.

Publication

DECS submissions are meant to support the discussions and will not be published in the conference proceedings. However, we encourage authors to make their final submissions available in an archival platform and we provide a link to any available archived documents on the conference website.

Important Dates

• Deadline for submissions: January 29^th, 2026
• Notification of acceptance: February 19^th, 2026
• Final version of paper due: March 4^th, 2026 (Note: this will not be published in the conference proceedings, but the final version that incorporates adjustments based on feedback from the review process will be shared with the participants and panel members for discussion at the virtual event).
• Virtual DECS sessions: March 25^th and 26^th, 2026
• Participate in CHASE conference: April 13^th and 14^th, 2026

Contact

If there are queries regarding the CFP, please contact the CHASE 2026 DECS chairs.

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