Registered ReportsICSME 2025
Call for Registrations
Empirical Software Engineering Journal (EMSE), in conjunction with the International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME), is continuing the Registered Reports (RR) track.
The RR track of ICSME 2025 has two goals: (1) to prevent HARKing (hypothesizing after the results are known) for empirical studies and (2) to provide early feedback to authors in their initial study design. For papers submitted to the RR track, methods and proposed analyses are reviewed prior to execution. Pre-registered studies follow a two-step process:
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Stage 1: A report is submitted that describes the planned study. The submitted report is evaluated by the reviewers of the RR track of ICSME 2025. Authors of accepted pre-registered studies will be given the opportunity to present their work at ICSME.
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Stage 2: Once a report has passed Stage 1, the study will be conducted, and actual data collection and analysis take place. The results may also be negative! The full paper is submitted for review to EMSE.
Paper Types, Evaluation Criteria, and Acceptance Types
The RR track of ICSME 2025 supports two types of papers:
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Confirmatory: The researchers have a fixed hypothesis (or several fixed hypotheses) and the objective of the study is to find out whether the hypothesis is supported by the facts/data. An example of a completed confirmatory study:
Inozemtseva, L., & Holmes, R. (2014, May). Coverage is not strongly correlated with test suite effectiveness. In Proceedings of the 36th International Conference on Software Engineering (pp. 435-445).` -
Exploratory: The researchers do not have a hypothesis (or has one that may change during the study). Often, the objective of such a study is to understand what is observed and answer questions such as WHY, HOW, WHAT, WHO, or WHEN. We include in this category registrations for which the researchers have an initial proposed solution for an automated approach (e.g., a new generative AI approach to vulnerability detection) that serves as a starting point for their exploration to reach an effective solution. Examples of completed exploratory studies:
Gousios, G., Pinzger, M., & Deursen, A. V. (2014, May). An exploratory study of the pull-based software development model. In Proceedings of the 36th International Conference on Software Engineering (pp. 345-355). Rodrigues, I. M., Aloise, D., Fernandes, E. R., & Dagenais, M. (2020, June). A soft alignment model for bug deduplication. In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Mining Software Repositories (pp. 43-53).
Evaluation Criteria
The reviewers will evaluate RR track submissions based on the following criteria:
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The importance of the research question(s).
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The logic, rationale, and plausibility of the proposed hypotheses.
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The soundness and feasibility of the methodology and analysis pipeline (including statistical power analysis where appropriate).
Evaluation Criteria Specific to Confirmatory Studies
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Whether the clarity and degree of methodological detail are sufficient to exactly replicate the proposed experimental procedures and analysis pipeline.
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Whether the authors have pre-specified sufficient outcome-neutral tests for ensuring that the results obtained can test the stated hypotheses, including positive controls and quality checks.
Evaluation Criteria Specific to Exploratory Studies
- (If applicable) The description of the data set that is the base for exploration.
Peer Review Outcomes
The outcome of the ICSME 2025 RR track review process is one of the following:
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In-Principal Acceptance (IPA): The reviewers agree that the study is relevant, the outcome of the study (whether confirmation/rejection of hypothesis) is of interest to the community, the protocol for data collection is sound, and that the analysis methods are adequate. The authors can engage in the actual study for Stage 2. If the protocol is adhered to (or deviations are thoroughly justified), the study is published. Of course, this being a journal submission, a revision of the submitted manuscript may be necessary. Reviewers will especially evaluate how precisely the protocol of the accepted pre-registered report is followed or whether deviations are justified.
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Continuity Acceptance (CA): The reviewers agree that the study is relevant, that the (initial) methods appear to be appropriate. However, for exploratory studies, implementation details and post-experiment analyses or discussion (e.g., why the proposed automated approach does not work) may require follow-up checks. We will do our best to assign the same reviewers in Stages 1 and 2.
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Rejection: The reviewers do not agree on the relevance of the study or are not convinced that the study design is sufficiently mature. Comments are provided to the authors to improve the study design before starting it.
For ICSME 2025, only confirmatory studies will be considered for IPA. Exploratory studies in software engineering often cannot be adequately assessed until after the study has been completed and the findings are elaborated and discussed in the full paper. For example, consider a study in an RR proposing vulnerability prediction using a new generative AI approach. This work falls under the exploratory category. It is difficult to offer IPA, as we do not know whether it is any better than a traditional approach based on, e.g., static code analysis. Negative results are welcome; however, it is important that the negative results paper goes beyond presenting “we tried and failed”, but rather provide deeper insights to readers, e.g., why the results are negative or what that means for further studies on this topic following criteria of REplication and Negative Results (RENE) tracks. Furthermore, it is important to note that authors are required to document all deviations (if any) in a section of the paper.
Submission Format and Instructions
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Submissions to the ICSME 2025 RR track must not exceed 6 pages (plus 1 additional page of references). The page limit is strict. All submissions must be in PDF and must be submitted online by the deadline via the ICSME 2025 EasyChair link.
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Submissions must strictly adhere to the two-column IEEE conference proceedings format. Please use the templates available here. LaTeX users should use the following configuration:
\documentclass[conference]{IEEEtran}. Microsoft Word users should use the US Letter format template. -
All authors, reviewers, and organizers are expected to uphold the IEEE Code of Conduct.
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Any submission that does not comply with the instructions in this document or its referenced materials will be desk-rejected. In addition, by submitting, the authors acknowledge that they are aware of and agree to be bound by the IEEE plagiarism policy. In particular, papers submitted to ICSME 2025 must not have been published elsewhere and must not be under review or submitted for review elsewhere whilst under consideration for ICSME 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 (including immediate rejection and reporting of the incident to IEEE). 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 IEEE, to detect violations of these policies.
Submission Process
The timeline for the ICSME 2025 RR track will be as follows:
May 20: -> May 27 (extended) Authors submit their initial report.
June 25: -> June 27: Authors receive PC members’ reviews.
July 5: -> July 10: Authors submit a response letter + revised report in a single PDF.
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The response letter should address reviewer comments and questions.
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The response letter must not exceed 6 pages.
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The revised report must not exceed 6 pages (plus 1 additional page of references).
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The response letter does not need to follow IEEE formatting instructions.
July 20 Notification of Stage 1.
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July 23: Authors submit their accepted RR report to arXiv or SSRN.[1]
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To be checked by PC members for Stage 2.
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Note: Accepted RR track reports will not be published in the ICSME 2025 proceedings. However, the authors must register, attend and present their RR at the conference.
Before May 30, 2026: Authors submit a full paper to EMSE. Instructions will be provided later. However, the following constraints will be enforced:
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Justifications need to be provided for any deviation from the pre-registered report. If the authors are added/removed or the author order is changed between the original Stage 1 and the EMSE submission, all authors will need to complete and sign a “Change of authorship request form”. The Editors in Chief of EMSE and chairs of the RR track reserve the right to deny author changes. If you anticipate any authorship changes, please reach out to the chairs of the RR track as early as possible.
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PC members who reviewed an RR report in Stage 1 and their directly supervised students cannot be added as authors of the corresponding submission in Stage 2.
Wed 10 SepDisplayed time zone: Auckland, Wellington change
10:30 - 12:00 | Session 2 - Quality Assurance 1Tool Demonstration Track / Research Papers Track / Industry Track / NIER Track / Journal First Track at Case Room 2 260-057 Chair(s): Coen De Roover Vrije Universiteit Brussel | ||
10:30 15m | A Jump-Table-Agnostic Switch Recovery on ASTs Research Papers Track | ||
10:45 15m | Quantization Is Not a Dealbreaker: Empirical Insights from Large Code Models Research Papers Track Saima Afrin William & Mary, Antonio Mastropaolo William and Mary, USA, Bowen Xu North Carolina State University Pre-print | ||
11:00 10m | AI-Powered Commit Explorer (APCE) Tool Demonstration Track Yousab Grees Belmont University, Polina Iaremchuk Belmont University, Ramtin Ehsani Drexel University, Esteban Parra Rodriguez Belmont University, Preetha Chatterjee Drexel University, USA, Sonia Haiduc Florida State University Pre-print | ||
11:10 10m | JDala - A Simple Capability System for Java Tool Demonstration Track Quinten Smit Victoria University of Wellington, Jens Dietrich Victoria University of Wellington, Michael Homer Victoria University of Wellington, Andrew Fawcet Victoria University of Wellington, James Noble Independent. Wellington, NZ | ||
11:20 10m | ExpertCache: GPU-Efficient MoE Inference through Reinforcement Learning-Guided Expert Selection NIER Track Xunzhu Tang University of Luxembourg, Tiezhu Sun University of Luxembourg, Yewei Song University of Luxembourg, SiYuanMa , Jacques Klein University of Luxembourg, Tegawendé F. Bissyandé University of Luxembourg | ||
11:30 15m | Efficient Detection of Intermittent Job Failures Using Few-Shot Learning Industry Track Henri Aïdasso École de technologie supérieure (ÉTS), Francis Bordeleau École de Technologie Supérieure (ETS), Ali Tizghadam TELUS Pre-print | ||
11:45 15m | LogOW: A Semi-Supervised Log Anomaly Detection Model in Open-World Setting Journal First Track Jingwei Ye Nankai University, Chunbo Liu Civil Aviation University of China, Zhaojun Gu Civil Aviation University of China, Zhikai Zhang Civil Aviation University of China, Xuying Meng The Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Weiyao Zhang The Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Yujun Zhang The Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences | ||
10:30 - 12:00 | Session 1 - DocumentationResearch Papers Track / Industry Track / Registered Reports at Case Room 3 260-055 Chair(s): Ashkan Sami Edinburgh Napier University | ||
10:30 15m | APIDocBooster: An Extract-Then-Abstract Framework Leveraging Large Language Models for Augmenting API Documentation Research Papers Track Chengran Yang Singapore Management University, Singapore, Jiakun Liu Harbin Institute of Technology, Bowen Xu North Carolina State University, Christoph Treude Singapore Management University, Yunbo Lyu Singapore Management University, Junda He Singapore Management University, Ming Li Nanjing University, David Lo Singapore Management University | ||
10:45 15m | Automatically Augmenting GitHub Issues with Informative User Reviews Research Papers Track Arthur Pilone University of São Paulo, Marco Raglianti Software Institute - USI, Lugano, Michele Lanza Software Institute - USI, Lugano, Fabio Kon University of São Paulo, Paulo Meirelles University of São Paulo Pre-print | ||
11:00 15m | Can LLMs Update API Documentation? Research Papers Track Seonah Lee Gyeongsang National University, Jueun Heo , Katherine R. Dearstyne University of Notre Dame | ||
11:15 15m | RMGenie: An LLM-Based Agent Framework for Open Source Software README Generation Research Papers Track Xing Cui Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Jingzheng Wu Institute of Software, The Chinese Academy of Sciences, Zhiyuan Li , Tianyue Luo (Institute of Software Chinese Academy of Sciences), Xiang Ling Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences | ||
11:30 15m | Requirements Ambiguity Detection and Explanation with LLMs: An Industrial Study Industry Track Sarmad Bashir RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, Alessio Ferrari Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR) and University College Dublin (UCD), Muhammad Abbas Khan RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, Per Erik Strandberg Westermo Network Technologies AB, Zulqarnain Haider Alstom Rail AB, Sweden, Mehrdad Saadatmand RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, Markus Bohlin Mälardalen University Pre-print | ||
11:45 10m | Learning From the Best: What Makes Popular Hugging Face Models? A Registered Report Registered Reports | ||
13:30 - 15:00 | Session 4 - Testing 1Research Papers Track / Registered Reports / Journal First Track / NIER Track / Industry Track / Tool Demonstration Track at Case Room 2 260-057 Chair(s): Sigrid Eldh Ericsson AB, Mälardalen University, Carleton University | ||
13:30 15m | Performance Testing in Open-Source Web Projects: Adoption, Maintenance, and a Change Taxonomy Research Papers Track Sergio Di Meglio Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Luigi Libero Lucio Starace Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Valeria Pontillo Gran Sasso Science Institute, Ruben Opdebeeck Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Coen De Roover Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Sergio Di Martino Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II Pre-print | ||
13:45 15m | Harnessing LLMs for Document-Guided Fuzzing of OpenCV Library Research Papers Track Bin Duan The University of Queensland, Tarek Mahmud Texas State University, Meiru Che Central Queensland University, Yan Yan University of Illinois Chicago, Naipeng Dong The University of Queensland, Australia, Dan Dongseong Kim The University of Queensland, Guowei Yang University of Queensland | ||
14:00 10m | XTestGen: Natural Language to Maintainable E2E Test Scripts with LLMs Tool Demonstration Track File Attached | ||
14:10 10m | Towards Effective Lightweight Test Oracles for Automated Multi-Fault Program Repair NIER Track Omar I. Al-Bataineh Gran Sasso Science Institute (GSSI) | ||
14:20 15m | Testing Is Not Boring: Characterizing Challenge in Software Testing Tasks Industry Track Davi Gama Hardman CESAR - Recife Center for Advanced Studies and Systems, César França Federal Rural University of Pernambuco (UFRPE), Brody Stuart-Verner University of Calgary, Ronnie de Souza Santos University of Calgary | ||
14:35 15m | Enriching automatic test case generation by extracting relevant test inputs from bug reports Journal First Track Wendkuuni Arzouma Marc Christian OUEDRAOGO University of Luxembourg, Laura Plein CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security, Abdoul Kader Kaboré University of Luxembourg, Andrew Habib ABB Corporate Research, Germany, Jacques Klein University of Luxembourg, David Lo Singapore Management University, Tegawendé F. Bissyandé University of Luxembourg | ||
14:50 10m | An Empirical Study of Complexity, Heterogeneity, and Compliance of GitHub Actions Workflows Registered Reports Edward Abrokwah Department of Computer Science, Trent University, Peterborough, Canada, Taher A. Ghaleb Trent University Pre-print | ||
13:30 - 15:00 | Session 3 - Debugging and RefactoringResearch Papers Track / Industry Track / Tool Demonstration Track / NIER Track at Case Room 3 260-055 Chair(s): Ashkan Sami Edinburgh Napier University | ||
13:30 15m | Boosting Redundancy-based Automated Program Repair by Fine-grained Pattern Mining Research Papers Track Jiajun Jiang Tianjin University, Fengjie Li Tianjin University, Zijie Zhao Tianjin University, Zhirui Ye Tianjin University, Mengjiao Liu Tianjin University, Bo Wang Beijing Jiaotong University, Hongyu Zhang Chongqing University, Junjie Chen Tianjin University | ||
13:45 10m | LadyBug: A GitHub Bot for UI-Enhanced Bug Localization in Mobile Apps Tool Demonstration Track Junayed Mahmud University of Central Florida, James Chen University of Toronto, Terry Achille University of Central Florida, Camilo Alvarez-Velez University of Central Florida, Darren Dean Bansil University of Central Florida, Patrick Ijieh University of Central Florida, Samar Karanch University of Central Florida, Nadeeshan De Silva William & Mary, Oscar Chaparro William & Mary, Andrian Marcus George Mason University, Kevin Moran University of Central Florida | ||
13:55 15m | Together We Are Better: LLM, IDE and Semantic Embedding to Assist Move Method Refactoring Research Papers Track Abhiram Bellur University of Colorado Boulder, Fraol Batole Tulane University, Malinda Dilhara Amazon Web Services, USA, Mohammed Raihan Ullah University of Colorado Boulder, Yaroslav Zharov JetBrains Research, Timofey Bryksin JetBrains Research, Kai Ishikawa NEC Corporation, Haifeng Chen NEC Laboratories America, Masaharu Morimoto NEC Corporation, Shota Motoura NEC Corporation, Takeo Hosomi NEC Corporation, Tien N. Nguyen University of Texas at Dallas, Hridesh Rajan Tulane University, Nikolaos Tsantalis Concordia University, Danny Dig University of Colorado Boulder, JetBrains Research | ||
14:10 10m | COB2PY - A Non-AI, Rule-Based COBOL to Python Translator Tool Demonstration Track Kowshik Reddy Challa Indian Institute of Technology, Tirupati, Sonith M V Indian Institute of Technology, Tirupati, Chiranjeevi B S Indian Institute of Technology Tirupati, Sridhar Chimalakonda Indian Institute of Technology Tirupati | ||
14:20 10m | How Does Test Code Differ From Production Code in Terms of Refactoring? An Empirical Study NIER Track Kosei Horikawa Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Yutaro Kashiwa Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Bin Lin Hangzhou Dianzi University, Kenji Fujiwara Nara Women’s University, Hajimu Iida Nara Institute of Science and Technology Pre-print | ||
14:30 10m | How Much Can a Behavior-Preserving Changeset Be Decomposed into Refactoring Operations? NIER Track Kota Someya Institute of Science Tokyo, Lei Chen Institute of Science Tokyo, Michael J. Decker Bowling Green State University, Shinpei Hayashi Institute of Science Tokyo DOI Pre-print | ||
14:40 15m | Governance Matters: Lessons from Restructuring the data.table OSS Project Industry Track Pedro Arantes RESHAPE LAB, Northern Arizona University, USA, Doris Amoakohene Northern Arizona University, Toby Hocking Université de Sherbrooke, Marco Gerosa Northern Arizona University, Igor Steinmacher RESHAPE LAB, Northern Arizona University, USA | ||
15:30 - 17:00 | Session 5 - DebuggingResearch Papers Track / Industry Track at Case Room 3 260-055 Chair(s): Chanchal K. Roy University of Saskatchewan | ||
15:30 15m | The Impact of Fine-tuning Large Language Models on Automated Program Repair Research Papers Track Roman Machacek University of Bern, Anastasiia Grishina Simula Research Laboratory, Max Hort Simula Research Laboratory, Leon Moonen Simula Research Laboratory Pre-print Media Attached | ||
15:45 15m | Bridging Solidity Evolution Gaps: An LLM-Enhanced Approach for Smart Contract Compilation Error Resolution Research Papers Track Likai Ye Zhejiang University, Mengliang Li Zhejiang University, Dehai Zhao CSIRO's Data61, Jiamou Sun CSIRO's Data61, Xiaoxue Ren Zhejiang University Pre-print | ||
16:00 15m | Code Property Graph Meets Typestate: A Scalable Framework to Behavioral Bug Detection Research Papers Track Xingjing Deng Beihang University, Zhengyao Liu Beihang University, Zhong Xitong Beihang University, shuo hong Beihang University, Yixin Yang , Xiang Gao Beihang University, Yan Xuhui Huawei, Hailong Sun Beihang University | ||
16:15 15m | Syntest-ACR: Automated Crash Reproduction for JavaScript Research Papers Track Philip Oliver Victoria University of Wellington, Jens Dietrich Victoria University of Wellington, Craig Anslow Victoria University of Wellington, Michael Homer Victoria University of Wellington File Attached | ||
16:30 15m | TSGuard: Detecting Logic Bugs in Time Series Management Systems via Time Series Algebra Research Papers Track Lingwei Kuang Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Liang Liu Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Wenjing Wang Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Ning Cao Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Shijie Li Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Fan Liu Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Haolong Chen Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics | ||
16:45 15m | HybridRCA: Lightweight Critical-Path-Aware Hybrid Tracing for Root-Cause Analysis in Production Microservices Industry Track Maryam Ekhlasi Ciena, Arnaud Fiorini Polytechnique Montreal, Naser Ezzati Jivan , Michel Dagenais Polytechnique Montreal, Maxime Lamothe Polytechnique Montreal | ||
Thu 11 SepDisplayed time zone: Auckland, Wellington change
10:30 - 12:00 | Session 7 - Testing 2Registered Reports / Research Papers Track / Journal First Track / Tool Demonstration Track / Industry Track / NIER Track at Case Room 3 260-055 Chair(s): Jiajun Jiang Tianjin University | ||
10:30 15m | OptionFuzz: Fuzzing SMT Solvers with Optimized Option Exploration via Large Language Models Research Papers Track Yuhao Peng (Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences), Jingzheng Wu Institute of Software, The Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiang Ling Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Zhiyuan Li , Tianyue Luo (Institute of Software Chinese Academy of Sciences), Yanjun Wu Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences | ||
10:45 15m | Nüwa: Enhancing MLIR Fuzzing with LLM-Driven Generation and Adaptive Mutation Research Papers Track Bocan Cao Northwest University, Weiyuan Tong Northwest University, Zhanyong Tang Northwest University, Zixu Wang Northwest University, Hao Huang Northwest University, Yuheng Yan Northwest University | ||
11:00 10m | MediumDarwin: LittleDarwin Grows with Performance and Research-oriented Extensions Tool Demonstration Track Sajjad Hesamipour Khelejan School of Computer Science and Statistics, Trinity College Dublin & Research Ireland Lero, Thomas Laurent School of Computer Science and Statistics, Trinity College Dublin & Research Ireland Lero, Anthony Ventresque School of Computer Science and Statistics, Trinity College Dublin & Research Ireland Lero | ||
11:10 10m | Rethinking Cognitive Complexity for Unit Tests: Toward a Readability-Aware Metric Grounded in Developer Perception NIER Track Wendkuuni Arzouma Marc Christian OUEDRAOGO University of Luxembourg, Yinghua Li University of Luxembourg, Xueqi Dang University of Luxembourg, SnT, Xin Zhou Singapore Management University, Singapore, Anil Koyuncu Bilkent University, Jacques Klein University of Luxembourg, David Lo Singapore Management University, Tegawendé F. Bissyandé University of Luxembourg | ||
11:20 15m | Targeted Test Selection Approach in Continuous Integration Industry Track Pavel Plyusnin T-Technologies, Aleksey Antonov T-Technologies, Vasilii Ermakov T-Technologies, Aleksandr Khaybriev T-Technologies, Margarita Kikot T-Technologies, Nikolay Bushkov T-Technologies, Stanislav Moiseev T-Technologies DOI Pre-print | ||
11:35 15m | An Empirical Investigation into the Capabilities of Anomaly Detection Approaches for Test Smell Detection Journal First Track Valeria Pontillo Gran Sasso Science Institute, Luana Martins University of Salerno, Ivan Machado Federal University of Bahia - UFBA, Fabio Palomba University of Salerno, Filomena Ferrucci Università di Salerno DOI Pre-print | ||
11:50 10mResearch paper | Assessing Reliability of Statistical Maximum Coverage Estimators in Fuzzing Registered Reports Danushka Liyanage University of Sydney, Australia, Nelum Attanayake University of Sydney, Australia, Zijian Luo University of Sydney, Australia, Rahul Gopinath University of Sydney DOI Pre-print Media Attached | ||
13:30 - 15:00 | Session 10 - Code Quality 2Research Papers Track / Industry Track / Registered Reports at Case Room 2 260-057 Chair(s): Judith Perera Fuchs University of Canterbury, New Zealand | ||
13:30 15m | ADPP: Automated Data-centric Program Partitioning Research Papers Track Xuming Jin College of Computer Science and Technology, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Hao Han College of Computer Science and Technology, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics | ||
13:45 15m | Roseau: Fast, Accurate, Source-based Breaking Change Analysis in Java Research Papers Track Corentin Latappy Univ. Bordeaux, CNRS, Bordeaux INP, LaBRI, UMR 5800, Promyze, Thomas Degueule CNRS, Jean-Rémy Falleri Univ. Bordeaux, Bordeaux INP, CNRS, LaBRI, UMR5800, F-33400 Talence, France, Romain Robbes CNRS, LaBRI, University of Bordeaux, Lina Ochoa Eindhoven University of Technology Pre-print | ||
14:00 15m | An Efficient Android App Debloating Approach Based on Multi-layer Dependence Graph Research Papers Track Hengqin Yang Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Jiwei Yan Institute of Software at Chinese Academy of Sciences, Jun Yan Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Jian Zhang Institute of Software at Chinese Academy of Sciences; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Bin Liang Renmin University of China, China | ||
14:15 15m | Combining Insights from Multiple Tools to Manage Technical Debt in Industrial C# Projects Industry Track Simeon Tverdal SINTEF Digital, Phu Nguyen SINTEF, Arda Goknil SINTEF Digital, Antonio Martini University of Oslo, Norway, Merve Astekin SINTEF, Mili Orucevic Visma, Maren Maritsdatter Kruke Visma software international AS, Håvard Stranden AKVA group | ||
14:30 15m | Code Readability in the Age of Large Language Models: An Industrial Case Study from Atlassian Industry Track Wannita Takerngsaksiri Monash University, Kla Tantithamthavorn Monash University and Atlassian, Michael Fu The University of Melbourne, Jirat Pasuksmit Atlassian, Kun Chen Atlassian, Ming Wu Atlassian | ||
14:45 10m | How Do Code Smells Affect Skill Growth in Scratch Novice Programmers? Registered Reports Ricardo Hidalgo Aragón Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Jesus M. Gonzalez-Barahona Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Gregorio Robles Universidad Rey Juan Carlos Pre-print | ||
15:30 - 17:00 | Session 12 - Security 1NIER Track / Research Papers Track / Tool Demonstration Track / Journal First Track at Case Room 2 260-057 Chair(s): Dhanushka Jayasuriya University of Auckland | ||
15:30 15m | Retrieve, Refine, or Both? Using Task-Specific Guidelines for Secure Python Code Generation Research Papers Track Catherine Tony Hamburg University of Technology, Emanuele Iannone Hamburg University of Technology, Riccardo Scandariato Hamburg University of Technology Pre-print | ||
15:45 15m | SAEL: Leveraging Large Language Models with Adaptive Mixture-of-Experts for Smart Contract Vulnerability Detection Research Papers Track Lei Yu Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, China, Shiqi Cheng Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China, Zhirong Huang Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, China, Jingyuan Zhang Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, China, Chenjie Shen Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, China, Junyi Lu Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, China, Li Yang Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Fengjun Zhang Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China, Jiajia Ma Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China Pre-print | ||
16:00 15m | Evaluating the maintainability of Forward-Porting vulnerabilities in fuzzer benchmarks Research Papers Track Timothée Riom Umeå Universitet, Sabine Houy Umeå Universitet, Bruno Kreyssig Umeå University, Alexandre Bartel Umeå University Pre-print | ||
16:15 10m | VulGuard: An Unified Tool for Evaluating Just-In-Time Vulnerability Prediction Models Tool Demonstration Track Duong Nguyen Hanoi University of Science and Technology, Manh Tran-Duc Hanoi University of Science and Technology, Le-Cong Thanh The University of Melbourne, Triet Le The University of Adelaide, Muhammad Ali Babar School of Computer Science, The University of Adelaide, Quyet Thang Huynh Hanoi University of Science and Technology | ||
16:25 10m | Explicit Vulnerability Generation with LLMs: An Investigation Beyond Adversarial Attacks NIER Track Emir Bosnak Bilkent University, Sahand Moslemi Yengejeh Bilkent University, Mayasah Lami Bilkent University, Anil Koyuncu Bilkent University Pre-print | ||
16:35 15m | Vulnerabilities in Infrastructure as Code: What, How Many, and Who? Journal First Track Aïcha War University of Luxembourg, Alioune Diallo University of Luxembourg, Andrew Habib ABB Corporate Research, Germany, Jacques Klein University of Luxembourg, Tegawendé F. Bissyandé University of Luxembourg | ||
Fri 12 SepDisplayed time zone: Auckland, Wellington change
10:30 - 12:00 | Session 13 - Reuse 1NIER Track / Research Papers Track / Industry Track / Registered Reports at Case Room 3 260-055 Chair(s): Banani Roy University of Saskatchewan | ||
10:30 15m | From Release to Adoption: Challenges in Reusing Pre-trained AI Models for Downstream Developers Research Papers Track Peerachai Banyongrakkul The University of Melbourne, Mansooreh Zahedi The Univeristy of Melbourne, Patanamon Thongtanunam University of Melbourne, Christoph Treude Singapore Management University, Haoyu Gao The University of Melbourne Pre-print | ||
10:45 15m | Are Classical Clone Detectors Good Enough For the AI Era? Research Papers Track Ajmain Inqiad Alam University of Saskatchewan, Palash Ranjan Roy University of Saskatchewan, Farouq Al-Omari Thompson Rivers University, Chanchal K. Roy University of Saskatchewan, Banani Roy University of Saskatchewan, Kevin Schneider University of Saskatchewan | ||
11:00 10m | Can LLMs Write CI? A Study on Automatic Generation of GitHub Actions Configurations NIER Track Taher A. Ghaleb Trent University, Dulina Rathnayake Department of Computer Science, Trent University, Peterborough, Canada Pre-print | ||
11:10 10m | A Preliminary Study on Large Language Models Self-Negotiation in Software Engineering NIER Track Chunrun Tao Kyushu University, Honglin Shu Kyushu University, Masanari Kondo Kyushu University, Yasutaka Kamei Kyushu University | ||
11:20 10m | CIgrate: Automating CI Service Migration with Large Language Models Registered Reports Md Nazmul Hossain Department of Computer Science, Trent University, Peterborough, Canada, Taher A. Ghaleb Trent University Pre-print | ||
11:30 15m | A Deep Dive into Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Code Completion: Experience on WeChat Industry Track Zezhou Yang Tencent Inc., Ting Peng Tencent Inc., Cuiyun Gao Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen, Chaozheng Wang The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hailiang Huang Tencent Inc., Yuetang Deng Tencent | ||
11:45 10m | Inferring Attributed Grammars from Parser Implementations NIER Track Andreas Pointner University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria, Hagenberg, Austria, Josef Pichler University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria, Herbert Prähofer Johannes Kepler University Linz Pre-print | ||
13:30 - 15:00 | Session 16 - Security 2Research Papers Track / Industry Track / Registered Reports / NIER Track at Case Room 2 260-057 Chair(s): Gregorio Robles Universidad Rey Juan Carlos | ||
13:30 15m | Understanding the Faults in Serverless Computing Based Applications: An Empirical Study Research Papers Track Changrong Xie National University of Defense Technology, Yang Zhang National University of Defense Technology, China, Xinjun Mao National University of Defense Technology, Kang Yang National University of Defense Technology, Tanghaoran Zhang National University of Defense Technology | ||
13:45 15m | Security Vulnerabilities in Docker Images: A Cross-Tag Study of Application Dependencies Research Papers Track Hamid Mohayeji Nasrabadi Eindhoven University of Technology, Eleni Constantinou University of Cyprus, Alexander Serebrenik Eindhoven University of Technology | ||
14:00 15m | Trust and Verify: Formally Verified and Upgradable Trusted Functions Research Papers Track Marcus Birgersson KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Cyrille Artho KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden, Musard Balliu KTH Royal Institute of Technology | ||
14:25 10m | MalLoc: Towards Fine-grained Android Malicious Payload Localization via LLMs NIER Track Tiezhu Sun University of Luxembourg, Marco Alecci University of Luxembourg, Aleksandr Pilgun University of Luxembourg, Yewei Song University of Luxembourg, Xunzhu Tang University of Luxembourg, Jordan Samhi University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg, Tegawendé F. Bissyandé University of Luxembourg, Jacques Klein University of Luxembourg Pre-print | ||
14:35 15m | Levels of Binary Equivalence for the Comparison of Binaries from Alternative Builds Industry Track Jens Dietrich Victoria University of Wellington, Tim White Victoria University of Wellington, Behnaz Hassanshahi Oracle Labs, Australia, Paddy Krishnan Oracle Labs, Australia | ||
14:50 10m | Repairing vulnerabilities without invisible hands. A differentiated replication study on LLMs Registered Reports Maria Camporese University of Trento, Fabio Massacci University of Trento; Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam | ||
13:30 - 15:00 | Session 15 - Reuse 2NIER Track / Industry Track / Research Papers Track at Case Room 3 260-055 Chair(s): Elliott Wen The University of Auckland | ||
13:30 15m | AST-Enhanced or AST-Overloaded? The Surprising Impact of Hybrid Graph Representations on Code Clone Detection Research Papers Track Zixian Zhang School of Computer Science, University of Galway, Takfarinas Saber School of Computer Science, University of Galway | ||
13:45 10m | Client–Library Compatibility Testing with API Interaction Snapshots NIER Track Gustave Monce Univ. Bordeaux, Bordeaux INP, CNRS, LaBRI, Thomas Degueule CNRS, Jean-Rémy Falleri Univ. Bordeaux, Bordeaux INP, CNRS, LaBRI. Institut Universitaire de France., Romain Robbes CNRS, LaBRI, University of Bordeaux Pre-print | ||
13:55 10m | Prompting Matters: Assessing the Effect of Prompting Techniques on LLM-Generated Class Code NIER Track Adam Yuen University of Calgary, John Pangas University of Calgary, Md Mainul Hasan Polash University of Calgary, Ahmad Abdellatif University of Calgary | ||
14:05 10m | From First Use to Final Commit: Studying the Evolution of Multi-CI Service Adoption NIER Track Pre-print | ||
14:15 15m | Automated Recovery of Software Product Lines from Legacy Configurable Codebases Industry Track Tewfik Ziadi University of Doha for Science and Technology (UDST), Karim Ghallab Sorbonne Université - RedFabriQ/Mobioos, Zaak Chalal RedFabriQ/Mobioos | ||
14:30 15m | Integrating Rules and Semantics for LLM-Based C-to-Rust Translation Industry Track Feng Luo Harbin Institute of Technology (Shenzhen), Kexing Ji Harbin Institute of Technology (Shenzhen), Cuiyun Gao Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen, Shuzheng Gao Chinese University of Hong Kong, jiafeng Harbin Institute of Technology (Shenzhen), Kui Liu Huawei, Xin Xia Zhejiang University, Michael Lyu The Chinese University of Hong Kong | ||
15:30 - 16:30 | Session 18 - Quality Assurance 3Industry Track / Research Papers Track at Case Room 2 260-057 Chair(s): Raula Gaikovina Kula The University of Osaka | ||
15:30 15mFull-paper | Evaluation of the Language Server Protocol for Static Dependency Analysis Research Papers Track Pre-print | ||
15:55 15m | Monitoring Continuous Integration Practices in Industry: A Case Study Industry Track Jadson Santos Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Daniel Alencar Da Costa University of Otago, Uirá Kulesza Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte | ||
16:10 15m | Constraint Discovery for Structured Generation via LLM-Guided SMT Inference Industry Track Hrishikesh Karmarkar TCS Research, Siddhesh Pagar TCS Research, Supriya Agrawal Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. (TCS), Vaibhavi Joshi TCS Research, Naman Paul TCS Research, Sagar Verma Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. (TCS) | ||
15:30 - 16:30 | Session 17 - Security 3Research Papers Track at Case Room 3 260-055 Chair(s): Valerio Terragni University of Auckland | ||
15:30 15m | LLM-SZZ: Novel Vulnerability Affected Range Identification Driven by Large Language Model and CVE Description Research Papers Track Siqi Fan Lanzhou University, Xin Liu Lanzhou University, Yingli Zhang Lanzhou University, Yuan Tan Lanzhou University, Luxing Yin Lanzhou University, Zhaorun Chen University of Chicago, Song Li The State Key Laboratory of Blockchain and Data Security, Zhejiang University, Lei Qiao Lanzhou University, Rui Zhou Lanzhou University | ||
15:45 15m | Enhanced Vulnerability Localization: Harmonizing Task-Enhanced Tuning and General LLM Prompting Research Papers Track Wentong Tian Beihang University, Yuanzhang Lin Beihang University, Xiang Gao Beihang University, Hailong Sun Beihang University | ||
16:00 15m | Toward Realistic Evaluations of Just-In-Time Vulnerability Prediction Research Papers Track Duong Nguyen Hanoi University of Science and Technology, Le-Cong Thanh The University of Melbourne, Triet Le The University of Adelaide, Muhammad Ali Babar School of Computer Science, The University of Adelaide, Quyet Thang Huynh Hanoi University of Science and Technology | ||
Unscheduled Events
| Not scheduled | Are We Over-Testing? Studying Redundant Test Executions in Multi-Job CI Workflows Registered Reports Chuka Obi Department of Computer Science, Trent University, Peterborough, Canada, Taher A. Ghaleb Trent University |
Accepted Papers
Author’s Guide
NB: Please contact the ICSME RR track chairs with any questions, feedback, or requests for clarification. Specific analysis approaches mentioned below are intended as examples, not mandatory components.
I. Title (required)
Provide the working title of your study. It may be the same title that you submit for publication of your final manuscript, but it is not mandatory.
Example: Should your family travel with you on the enterprise? Subtitle (optional): Effect of accompanying families on the work habits of crew members
II. Authors (required)
At this stage, we believe that a single anonymous review is most productive
III. Structured Abstract (required)
The abstract should describe the following in 200 words or so:
Background/Context What is your research about? Why are you doing this research, why is it interesting?
Example: “The enterprise is the flag ship of the federation, and it allows families to travel onboard. However, there are no studies that evaluate how this affects the crew members.”
Objective/Aim What exactly are you studying/investigating/evaluating? What are the objects of the study? We welcome both confirmatory and exploratory types of studies. Example (Confirmatory): We evaluate whether the frequency of sick days, work effectiveness and efficiency differ between science officers who bring their family with them, compared to science officers who are serving without their family.
Example (Exploratory): We investigate the problem of frequent Holodeck use in interpersonal relationships with an ethnographic study using participant observation, in order to derive specific hypotheses about Holodeck usage.
Method How are you addressing your objective? What data sources are you using?
Example: We conduct an observational study and use a between-subject design. To analyze the data, we use a t-test or Wilcoxon test, depending on the underlying distribution. Our data comes from computer monitoring of Enterprise crew members.
IV. Introduction
Give more details on the bigger picture of your study and how it contributes to this bigger picture. An important component of Stage 1 review is assessing the importance and relevance of the study questions, so be sure to explain this.
V. Hypotheses (required for confirmatory study) or research questions
Clearly state the research hypotheses that you want to test with your study, and a rationalization for the hypotheses.
Hypothesis example: Science officers with their family on board have more sick days than science officers without their family
Hypothesis rationale: Since toddlers are often sick, we can expect that crew members with their family on board need to take sick days more often.
VI. Variables (required for confirmatory study)
Independent Variable(s) and their operationalization
Dependent Variable(s) and their operationalization (e.g., time to solve a specified task)
Confounding Variable(s) and how their effect will be controlled (e.g., species type (Vulcan, Human, Tribble) might be a confounding factor; we control for it by separating our sample additionally into Human/Non-Human and using an ANOVA (normal distribution) or Friedman (non-normal distribution) to distill its effect).
For each variable, you should give: – name (e.g., presence of family) – abbreviation (if you intend to use one) – description (whether the family of the crew members travels on board) – scale type (nominal: either the family is present or not) – operationalization (crew members without family on board vs. crew members with family onboard)
VII. Participants/Subjects/Datasets (required)
Describe how and why you select the sample. When you conduct a meta-analysis, describe the primary studies / work on which you base your meta-analysis.
Example: We recruit crew members from the science department on a voluntary basis. They are our targeted population.
VIII. Execution Plan (required)
Describe the experimental setting and procedure. This includes the methods/tools that you plan to use (be specific on whether you developed it (and how) or whether it is already defined), and the concrete steps that you plan to take to support/reject the hypotheses or answer the research questions.
Example: Each crew member needs to sign the informed consent and agreement to process their data according to GDPR. Then, we conduct the interviews. Afterward, participants need to complete the simulated task …
Examples:
Confirmatory: https://osf.io/5fptj/ – Do Explicit Review Strategies Improve Code Review Performance?
Exploratory: https://osf.io/kfu9t – The Impact of Dynamics of Collaborative Software Engineering on Introverts: A Study Protocol
Study Protocol: https://osf.io/acnwk – Large-Scale Manual Validation of Bugfixing Changes
| Wed 23 Jul 2025 Authors submit their accepted RR report to arXiv or SSRN |
| Sun 20 Jul 2025 Notification of Stage 1 |
| Thu 10 Jul 2025 Authors submit a response letter and revised report |
| Fri 27 Jun 2025 Authors receive reviews |
| Tue 27 May 2025 Authors submit their initial report |
Takashi KobayashiRegistered Reports Co-chair
Institute of Science Tokyo
Japan
Ashkan SamiRegistered Reports Co-chair
Edinburgh Napier University
United Kingdom
Daniel Alencar Da Costa
University of Otago
New Zealand
Amin Alipour
University of Houston
United States
Jeff Carver
University of Alabama
United States
Dario Di Nucci
University of Salerno
Italy
Fatemeh Hendijani Fard
University of British Columbia, Okanagan
Canada
Steffen Herbold
University of Passau
Germany
Jacob Krüger
Eindhoven University of Technology
Netherlands
Valentina Lenarduzzi
University of Oulu
Finland
Sara Moshtari
The City university of New York
Henry Muccini
University of L'Aquila, Italy
Italy
Amin Nikanjam
Huawei Canada
Canada
Olivier Nourry
The University of Osaka
Anthony Peruma
University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa
United States
Dietmar Pfahl
University of Tartu
Estonia
Marc Roper
University of Strathclyde
United Kingdom
Kazumasa Shimari
Nara Institute of Science and Technology
Japan
Tim Storer
University of Glasgow
United Kingdom
Ladan Tahvildari
University of Waterloo
Canada
Hyrum Wright
Adobe
Didar Zowghi
CSIRO's Data61 - University of Technology Sydney
Australia