Research PapersISEC 2025

Call for Papers

Innovations in Software Engineering Conference (ISEC) 2025 invites the submission of both research and experience papers that describe novel and unpublished results in all aspects of Software Engineering (SE). Papers describing theoretical or empirical research, new techniques, case studies or experience papers that identify lessons learned, or tools are welcome. Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

• AI and Software Engineering
• Architecture and Design
• Cloud Computing
• Ethics in software engineering
• Formal methods for software engineering
• Human Computer Interface (HCI)
• Industrial aspects of software engineering
• Requirements engineering
• Security and trustworthy computing
• Social aspects, including diversity and inclusion of software engineering
• Software development tools
• Software engineering education
• Software engineering processes including DevOps and DevSecOps
• Testing, program analysis, program synthesis

The papers will be evaluated based on the relevance to software engineering, novelty of the contributions (how the paper advances the state of the art or what useful insights it provides), thoroughness of the evaluation (or soundness of a theoretical contribution), and clarity of writing.

New in ISEC 2025

• Dual submission cycles with firm deadlines.
• Double-blind peer review process.
• Generative AI Tools for writing the manuscript are prohibited.

Call for Proposal

ISEC 2025 will have two submission deadlines. Papers submitted to the first round will have three outcomes (i) Accept (ii) Reject (iii) Conditional Accept. The papers that are conditionally accepted will have a chance to get their paper accepted after a rigorous shepherding process. Papers submitted to the second round will not have the shepherding option, i.e., will be either Accepted or Rejected.

First Round Submission

Due date: 19th July 2024
Notification: 19th September 2024
Camera Ready Version: 3rd October 2024.

Second Round Submission

Due date: 27th September 2024 (Extended)
Notification: 14th November 2024
Camera Ready Version: 3rd December 2024

Note: Submissions that are rejected in round 1 will not be eligible for round 2 submission.

Submission Details:

Submission template: https://www.acm.org/publications/proceedings-template

Submission link: https://isec25.hotcrp.com/

Submitted papers can be in one of the two categories: (1) Regular papers and (2) Short papers

Regular papers should not exceed 11 pages, 10 pages for the main text (including figures, appendix, etc.) and 1 page for references in the standard ACM format. LaTeX users should use the sigconf option, as well as the review (to produce line numbers for easy reference by the reviewers) and anonymous (omitting author names) options. Submissions that make a research contribution are expected to describe novel, high-quality research, with thorough evaluation (if applicable), in one or more aspects of software engineering. Experience papers must emphasize potential impact including how to overcome practical challenges, and lessons learned.

Short papers should not exceed 5 pages, including references in the standard ACM format. Submissions in this category may contain, for example, new interesting ideas that may not have been evaluated extensively. However, the ideas must be robust and of technical merit, with convincing evidence that they can be taken towards completion.

ISEC 2025 will use a double-blind peer review process. The authors must anonymise the submissions, i.e., (i) authors’ names must be omitted from the submission and (ii) authors' prior work should be referred to in the third person.

Important guidelines

ISEC 2025 strongly prohibits the use of Generative AI Tools for writing any part of the submitted paper. The authors need to provide consent that they have not used any Generative AI tools for writing the submitted paper.

Submissions must also comply with the ACM plagiarism policy and procedures. Specifically, a submission must not have been published elsewhere and must not be under review elsewhere while under review for ISEC.

If a submission is accepted, at least one author of the paper is required to register for the conference and present the paper in person. In exceptional circumstances (e.g., when none of the authors are based in India), provisions for remote presentation may be made.

Best Paper Award:

One of the accepted papers in the regular papers category may be awarded as the best paper. The criteria for the best paper include significance, novelty, clarity, broad applicability, and clarity of in- person presentation. The award will be decided by the program committee and the steering committee and will be announced at the conference.

Accepted papers will be published in the ACM Digital Library, and indexed by DBLP. A special issue with the Journal of Systems and Software is being planned. If this goes ahead, all high quality submissions will be invited to submit an extended version of their paper.

Publication Policy

The implication of this new policy for authors can be found here. We encourage all authors planning to submit papers to any track of ISEC Feb' 25 to go over this carefully, particularly those from the industry. In summary, all ICPS papers will be published Open Access. Unless the corresponding author of the paper is affiliated with an institution that is a member of the ACM Open Program, the paper will have to pay an Article Processing Charge (APC). The list of participating institutions can be found here. If the corresponding author is affiliated with an Indian institution that is not in the above list, then the APC is 350 USD if at least one of the authors of the paper is an ACM Member, and 500 USD otherwise. Information on ACM India Membership can be found here. If the corresponding author’s institution is not based in India, then they should read the instructions carefully to understand the applicable APC for their paper.

For the Feb 2025 edition of ISEC, ACM has agreed to the following APC policy:

• For all corresponding authors affiliated with ACM Open institutions at the time of paper acceptance in October 2024, they will proceed without the need to pay an APC.

• ACM will grant an automatic waiver for all papers with corresponding authors affiliated with government or academic institutions inside India.

• For all corresponding authors affiliated with for-profit companies (in or outside India) that do not participate in ACM Open as of October 2024, no automatic waiver will be provided and the authors will need to have their institutions cover the cost of the APC.

• For all corresponding authors based in India without any institutional affiliation, authors may apply for a financial waiver at apcwaivers@acm.org, which will be granted upon verification that the authors are unaffiliated.

• For corresponding authors from nonprofit institutions and small start-ups based in India, the ISEC Organizing Committee will provide support towards covering the APC for a limited number of papers. Once a paper gets accepted, if the authors need assistance for paying the APC, and are unable to get a waiver from ACM, they may write to ISEConf2025@gmail.com.

• Corresponding authors affiliated with non-India based institutions (academic, government, or nonprofit industry) will not get automatic waivers. They may apply for a waiver, which will be considered on a case-by-case basis, at apcwaivers@acm.org. Note that ISEC Feb'25 Organizing Committee will not be able to guarantee that these waiver requests will be cleared to meet the publication schedule of the conference.

To facilitate this process, all ISEC authors must include their institutional affiliation on their submissions and use their institutional affiliation’s email domain in their contact email on the submission.