Early Career TrackICSA 2025

Call for Papers

The Early Career Researchers Forum (ECRF-ICSA 2025) aims to motivate and bring together early career researchers, typically PhD students, PostDocs, and Assistant Professors, within the software architecture community. This forum serves as a dynamic venue for presenting and debating research at any stage—from initial ideas to completed results. It offers an inclusive setting where early career researchers can receive feedback, share experiences, pose questions, and investigate various research opportunities

Participation

Participation is open to PhD students, PostDocs, Assistant Professors, and anyone identifying as an early career researcher eager to share research ideas and preliminary results with peers. This forum is an excellent opportunity to inspire and be inspired, as well as to learn about various research paths. We also strongly encourage early career researchers who are presenting their work in the main track of ICSA 2025 to join and participate in this vibrant forum.

Topics

Areas of interest include all those associated with software architecture, as provided by the scope of the ICSA 2025 conference.

Type of Submissions

Ongoing Research Paper (max 6 pages, including references and any appendix) submissions should present previously unpublished research that includes motivation, objectives, preliminary results, future steps, and the potential industry impact. These papers should detail early research ideas, such as a potential dissertation topic (e.g., for PhD students) or a proposal for a research line (e.g., for Assistant Professor), aiming to garner feedback from forum attendees. Authors are encouraged to consider the potential impact of their research on industrial practice, whether immediate or long-term, and to include a dedicated section on the Industrial Impact of their work.

Recommendation Letter

A recommendation letter is required for PhD students and optional for PostDocs and Assistant Professors. This letter should include:

• Your name and current academic or professional position
• A brief description of your current research status
• An endorsement supporting the publication of your submission

The letter should be in PDF format and should be signed by your advisor. The recommendation letter should be uploaded in Easychair along with the submission. This recommendation letter will be held confidential.

Formatting and Submission Instructions

All submissions must be submitted electronically via the EasyChair submission system (Early Career Researchers Forum track) by the submission deadline and must not have been published before. All submissions must conform to the IEEE paper formatting and submission instructions of the main track. All submissions must conform to the IEEE paper formatting and submission instructions.

Important Dates

• Paper Submission due: Dec 20, 2024
• Notification of Acceptance: Jan 20, 2025
• Camera ready due: Jan 27, 2025

Notes: All deadlines are 23:59h AoE (anywhere on Earth)

Publication and Attendance

All accepted contributions will be published in ICSA 2024 Companion proceedings and will appear in IEEE Xplore Digital Library. Note that at least one author of an accepted contribution is required to register and present the work at the conference. An in-person presentation is required.

Presentation and Discussion

Based on the number of attendees, we are planning to host two types of sessions: paper presentations, and mentoring sessions.

Paper Presentations. To further facilitate the discussions around the presented research topics, we plan to assign discussants to each presentation. The discussants assigned to each paper will make brief comments, including some combination of:

• How the paper made the discussant think differently about he/his own work
• How the paper is related in some way to the discussant’s own work
• Advices for the authors in continuing their work
• Identification of collaboration opportunities or synergies
• Discussion questions based on the presented paper

Mentoring sessions. We intend to gather questions from early career participants that they want to explore and will organize sessions specifically aimed at discussing these queries. Additionally, if beneficial, we will tailor different sessions for PhD students and new faculty members.

Early Career Track Chairs

Alessio Bucaioni,Mälardalen University, Sweden
Patricia Lago,Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands