Journal-First PapersICST 2026

Call for Journal-First Presentations

ICST 2026 invites submissions for presentations of journal-first papers published recently in prestigious software engineering journals in all areas of software testing, verification, and validation. This will both enrich the ICST program and offer the authors an opportunity to present their work to the community.

Eligibility

Applications are invited for journal papers published in:

• IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (TSE)
• ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM)
• Empirical Software Engineering (EMSE)
• Journal of Systems and Software (JSS)
• Software Quality Journal (SQJ)
• Information and Software Technology (IST)
• Software Testing, Verification and Reliability (STVR)

Other journals may be considered on a case-by-case basis. A journal-first presentation submitted to ICST 2026 must adhere to the following criteria:

• The paper was accepted for publication (i.e., the date of the acceptance notification) no earlier than 1 January 2024.
• The paper is in the scope of the conference, as defined in the call for ICST 2026 research papers.
• The paper reports completely new research results or presents novel contributions that were not previously reported in prior published work.
• The paper has not been presented and is not under consideration for journal-first programs of other conferences.

Topics of Interest

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• AI-assisted software testing
• Automated test generation
• Formal verification
• Manual and social aspects of the software testing process
• Replications, empirical studies, case studies, experience reports
• Software reliability
• Static and dynamic analysis
• Test automation
• Test-driven development and
• Agile testing
• Testability, test design, and adequacy criteria
• Testing AI-based systems
• Testing and development processes
• Testing, debugging, and repair tools
• Testing education
• Testing in specific domains, such as mobile, web, embedded/cyber-physical systems, concurrent, distributed, cloud, GUI, context-aware, IoT, real-time systems, video games, augmented/virtual reality applicationsTesting of non-functional properties such as security, accessibility, and performance
• Theory of software testing
• Validation and user acceptance techniques

Submission of Proposals

If you have a journal publication that meets the aforementioned criteria, you can submit a one-page proposal via EasyChair.

The submission should consist of:

• The paper title;
• Names of all authors;
• An extended abstract using the two-column IEEE conference publication format (same as the research track submission);
• A short statement on how the work satisfies the journal-first criteria;
• A pointer to the original journal paper.

Please list all authors of the original journal paper as authors of your submission in EasyChair (https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=icst2026).

Important Dates

• Journal First Submissions Deadline: 20 February 2026
• Journal First Acceptance Notification: 22 March 2026
• Submissions close at 23:59 AoE (Anywhere on Earth, UTC-12)

Publication

The journal-first manuscripts have already been, or will be, published through the journals and therefore will not be part of the ICST proceedings. The journal-first papers will be listed in the conference program, and the proceedings will contain only the abstract and a pointer to the journal publication.

Presentation

If a submission is accepted for the journal-first program, at least one author of the associated journal paper must register and attend the conference to present the paper in person.