MSR 2023
Dates to be announced Melbourne, Australia
co-located with ICSE 2023
Dates
Mon 15 May 2023
Tue 16 May 2023
Tracks
MSR Awards
MSR Data and Tool Showcase Track
MSR Industry Track
MSR Keynotes
MSR MIP Award
MSR Mining Challenge
MSR Registered Reports
MSR Technical Papers
MSR Tutorials
MSR Vision and Reflection
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Mon 15 May

Displayed time zone: Hobart change

11:00 - 11:45
Development Tools & Practices IRegistered Reports / Industry Track / Technical Papers at Meeting Room 109
Chair(s): Olga Baysal Carleton University
11:00
12m
Talk
Understanding the Time to First Response In GitHub Pull Requests
Technical Papers
Kazi Amit Hasan Queen's University, Canada, Marcos Macedo Queen's University at Kingston / Universidad de Montevideo, Yuan Tian Queens University, Kingston, Canada, Bram Adams Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Ding Steven, H., H. Queen’s University at Kingston
Pre-print
11:12
12m
Talk
Dealing with Popularity Bias in Recommender Systems for Third-party Libraries: How far Are We?
Technical Papers
Phuong T. Nguyen University of L’Aquila, Riccardo Rubei University of L'Aquila, Juri Di Rocco University of L'Aquila, Claudio Di Sipio University of L'Aquila, Davide Di Ruscio University of L'Aquila, Massimiliano Di Penta University of Sannio, Italy
Pre-print
11:00 - 11:45
SE for MLData and Tool Showcase Track / Technical Papers at Meeting Room 110
Chair(s): Sarah Nadi University of Alberta
11:00
12m
Talk
AutoML from Software Engineering Perspective: Landscapes and ChallengesDistinguished Paper Award
Technical Papers
Chao Wang Peking University, Zhenpeng Chen University College London, UK, Minghui Zhou Peking University
Pre-print
11:12
12m
Talk
Characterizing and Understanding Software Security Vulnerabilities in Machine Learning Libraries
Technical Papers
Nima Shiri Harzevili York University, Jiho Shin York University, Junjie Wang Institute of Software at Chinese Academy of Sciences; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Song Wang York University, Nachiappan Nagappan Facebook
11:50 - 12:35
Documentation + Q&A IData and Tool Showcase Track / Technical Papers at Meeting Room 109
Chair(s): Ahmad Abdellatif Concordia University
11:50
12m
Talk
Evaluating Software Documentation Quality
Technical Papers
Henry Tang University of Alberta, Sarah Nadi University of Alberta
12:02
12m
Talk
What Do Users Ask in Open-Source AI Repositories? An Empirical Study of GitHub Issues
Technical Papers
Zhou Yang Singapore Management University, Chenyu Wang Singapore Management University, Jieke Shi Singapore Management University, Thong Hoang CSIRO's Data61, Pavneet Singh Kochhar Microsoft, Qinghua Lu CSIRO’s Data61, Zhenchang Xing , David Lo Singapore Management University
12:14
12m
Talk
PICASO: Enhancing API Recommendations with Relevant Stack Overflow Posts
Technical Papers
Ivana Clairine Irsan Singapore Management University, Ting Zhang Singapore Management University, Ferdian Thung Singapore Management University, Kisub Kim Singapore Management University, David Lo Singapore Management University
11:50 - 12:35
11:50
6m
Talk
TypeScript's Evolution: An Analysis of Feature Adoption Over Time
Technical Papers
Joshua D. Scarsbrook The University of Queensland, Mark Utting The University of Queensland, Ryan K. L. Ko The University of Queensland
Pre-print
12:14
12m
Talk
Wasmizer: Curating WebAssembly-driven Projects on GitHub
Technical Papers
Alexander Nicholson University of Auckland, Quentin Stiévenart Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Arash Mazidi TU Clausthal, Mohammad Ghafari TU Clausthal
12:26
6m
Talk
Feature Toggle Usage Patterns : A Case Study on Google Chromium
Technical Papers
Md Tajmilur Rahman Gannon University
14:20 - 15:15
Language ModelsTechnical Papers at Meeting Room 109
Chair(s): Patanamon Thongtanunam University of Melbourne
14:20
12m
Talk
On Codex Prompt Engineering for OCL Generation: An Empirical Study
Technical Papers
Seif Abukhalaf Polytechnique Montreal, Mohammad Hamdaqa Polytechnique Montréal, Foutse Khomh Polytechnique Montréal
14:32
12m
Talk
Cross-Domain Evaluation of a Deep Learning-Based Type Inference System
Technical Papers
Bernd Gruner DLR Institute of Data Science, Tim Sonnekalb German Aerospace Center (DLR), Thomas S. Heinze Cooperative University Gera-Eisenach, Clemens-Alexander Brust German Aerospace Center (DLR)
14:44
12m
Talk
Enriching Source Code with Contextual Data for Code Completion Models: An Empirical Study
Technical Papers
Tim van Dam Delft University of Technology, Maliheh Izadi Delft University of Technology, Arie van Deursen Delft University of Technology
Pre-print
14:56
12m
Talk
Model-Agnostic Syntactical Information for Pre-Trained Programming Language Models
Technical Papers
Iman Saberi University of British Columbia Okanagan, Fatemeh Hendijani Fard University of British Columbia
14:20 - 15:15
Understanding DefectsRegistered Reports / Data and Tool Showcase Track / Technical Papers at Meeting Room 110
Chair(s): Matteo Paltenghi University of Stuttgart, Germany
14:20
12m
Talk
What Happens When We Fuzz? Investigating OSS-Fuzz Bug History
Technical Papers
Brandon Keller Rochester Institute of Technology, Benjamin S. Meyers Rochester Institute of Technology, Andrew Meneely Rochester Institute of Technology
14:32
12m
Talk
An Empirical Study of High Performance Computing (HPC) Performance Bugs
Technical Papers
Md Abul Kalam Azad University of Michigan - Dearborn, Nafees Iqbal University of Michigan - Dearborn, Foyzul Hassan University of Michigan - Dearborn, Probir Roy University of Michigan at Dearborn
Pre-print
15:02
6m
Talk
An Empirical Study on the Performance of Individual Issue Label Prediction
Technical Papers
Jueun Heo , Seonah Lee Gyeongsang National University
15:45 - 16:30
Process Automation & DevOpsData and Tool Showcase Track / Technical Papers / Industry Track at Meeting Room 110
Chair(s): Andy Meneely Rochester Institute of Technology
15:45
12m
Talk
Investigating the Resolution of Vulnerable Dependencies with Dependabot Security UpdatesDistinguished Paper Award
Technical Papers
Hamid Mohayeji Nasrabadi Eindhoven University of Technology, Andrei Agaronian Eindhoven University of Technology, Eleni Constantinou University of Cyprus, Nicola Zanone Eindhoven University of Technology, Alexander Serebrenik Eindhoven University of Technology
15:57
12m
Talk
Unveiling the Relationship Between Continuous Integration and Code Coverage
Technical Papers
José Diego Saraiva da Silva UFRN, Daniel Alencar Da Costa University of Otago, Uirá Kulesza Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Gustavo Sizílio Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, José Gameleira Neto Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Roberta Coelho , Mei Nagappan University of Waterloo
16:21
6m
Talk
Are We Speeding Up or Slowing Down? On Temporal Aspects of Code Velocity
Technical Papers
Gunnar Kudrjavets University of Groningen, Nachiappan Nagappan Facebook, Ayushi Rastogi University of Groningen, The Netherlands
Pre-print
16:35 - 17:20
Ethics & EnergyTechnical Papers / Registered Reports at Meeting Room 109
Chair(s): Arumoy Shome Delft University of Technology
16:35
12m
Talk
Energy Consumption Estimation of API-usage in Mobile Apps via Static Analysis
Technical Papers
Abdul Ali Bangash University of Alberta, Canada, Qasim Jamal FAST National University, Kalvin Eng University of Alberta, Karim Ali University of Alberta, Abram Hindle University of Alberta
Pre-print
16:47
12m
Talk
An Exploratory Study on Energy Consumption of Dataframe Processing Libraries
Technical Papers
Shriram Shanbhag IIT Tirupati, Sridhar Chimalakonda IIT Tirupati
Pre-print
17:05
12m
Talk
Whistleblowing and Tech on Twitter
Technical Papers
Laura Duits Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Isha Kashyap Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Joey Bekkink Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Kousar Aslam Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Emitzá Guzmán Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
16:35 - 17:20
SecurityTechnical Papers / Data and Tool Showcase Track at Meeting Room 110
Chair(s): Chanchal K. Roy University of Saskatchewan
16:35
12m
Talk
UNGOML: Automated Classification of unsafe Usages in Go
Technical Papers
Anna-Katharina Wickert TU Darmstadt, Germany, Clemens Damke University of Munich (LMU), Lars Baumgärtner Technische Universität Darmstadt, Eyke Hüllermeier University of Munich (LMU), Mira Mezini TU Darmstadt
Pre-print File Attached
16:47
12m
Talk
Connecting the .dotfiles: Checked-In Secret Exposure with Extra (Lateral Movement) Steps
Technical Papers
Gerhard Jungwirth TU Wien, Aakanksha Saha TU Wien, Michael Schröder TU Wien, Tobias Fiebig Max-Planck-Institut für Informatik, Martina Lindorfer TU Wien, Jürgen Cito TU Wien
Pre-print
16:59
12m
Talk
MANDO-HGT: Heterogeneous Graph Transformers for Smart Contract Vulnerability Detection
Technical Papers
Hoang H. Nguyen L3S Research Center, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Hannover, Germany, Nhat-Minh Nguyen Singapore Management University, Singapore, Chunyao Xie L3S Research Center, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Germany, Zahra Ahmadi L3S Research Center, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Hannover, Germany, Daniel Kudenko L3S Research Center, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Germany, Thanh-Nam Doan Independent Researcher, Atlanta, Georgia, USA, Lingxiao Jiang Singapore Management University
Pre-print Media Attached
18:00 - 21:00
MSR Dinner at Cargo Hall, South WharfTechnical Papers at Offsite
18:00
3h
Meeting
MSR Dinner at Cargo Hall, South Wharf
Technical Papers

Tue 16 May

Displayed time zone: Hobart change

11:00 - 11:45
Documentation + Q&A IITechnical Papers / Data and Tool Showcase Track at Meeting Room 109
Chair(s): Maram Assi Queen's University
11:00
12m
Talk
Understanding the Role of Images on Stack Overflow
Technical Papers
Dong Wang Kyushu University, Japan, Tao Xiao Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Christoph Treude University of Melbourne, Raula Gaikovina Kula Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Hideaki Hata Shinshu University, Yasutaka Kamei Kyushu University
Pre-print
11:12
12m
Talk
Do Subjectivity and Objectivity Always Agree? A Case Study with Stack Overflow Questions
Technical Papers
Saikat Mondal University of Saskatchewan, Masud Rahman Dalhousie University, Chanchal K. Roy University of Saskatchewan
Pre-print
11:00 - 11:45
11:00
12m
Talk
Don't Forget the Exception! Considering Robustness Changes to Identify Design Problems
Technical Papers
Anderson Oliveira PUC-Rio, João Lucas Correia Federal University of Alagoas, Leonardo Da Silva Sousa Carnegie Mellon University, USA, Wesley Assunção Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria & Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Daniel Coutinho PUC-Rio, Alessandro Garcia PUC-Rio, Willian Oizumi GoTo, Caio Barbosa UFAL, Anderson Uchôa Federal University of Ceará, Juliana Alves Pereira PUC-Rio
Pre-print
11:12
12m
Talk
Pre-trained Model Based Feature Envy Detection
Technical Papers
mawenhao Wuhan University, Yaoxiang Yu Wuhan University, Xiaoming Ruan Wuhan University, Bo Cai Wuhan University
11:50 - 12:35
Development Tools & Practices IIData and Tool Showcase Track / Industry Track / Technical Papers / Registered Reports at Meeting Room 109
Chair(s): Banani Roy University of Saskatchewan
11:50
12m
Talk
Automating Arduino Programming: From Hardware Setups to Sample Source Code Generation
Technical Papers
Imam Nur Bani Yusuf Singapore Management University, Singapore, Diyanah Binte Abdul Jamal Singapore Management University, Lingxiao Jiang Singapore Management University
Pre-print
12:20
12m
Talk
Boosting Just-in-Time Defect Prediction with Specific Features of C Programming Languages in Code Changes
Technical Papers
Chao Ni Zhejiang University, xiaodanxu College of Computer Science and Technology, Zhejiang university, Kaiwen Yang Zhejiang University, David Lo Singapore Management University
11:50 - 12:35
Software Libraries & EcosystemsTechnical Papers / Industry Track / Data and Tool Showcase Track at Meeting Room 110
Chair(s): Mehdi Keshani Delft University of Technology
11:50
12m
Talk
A Large Scale Analysis of Semantic Versioning in NPM
Technical Papers
Donald Pinckney Northeastern University, Federico Cassano Northeastern University, Arjun Guha Northeastern University and Roblox Research, Jonathan Bell Northeastern University
Pre-print
12:02
12m
Talk
Phylogenetic Analysis of Reticulate Software Evolution
Technical Papers
Akira Mori National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Japan, Masatomo Hashimoto Chiba Institute of Technology, Japan
12:26
6m
Talk
Intertwining Communities: Exploring Libraries that Cross Software Ecosystems
Technical Papers
Kanchanok Kannee Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Raula Gaikovina Kula Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Supatsara Wattanakriengkrai Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Kenichi Matsumoto Nara Institute of Science and Technology
Pre-print
13:45 - 14:30
Software QualityData and Tool Showcase Track / Technical Papers at Meeting Room 110
Chair(s): Tushar Sharma Dalhousie University
13:45
12m
Talk
Helm Charts for Kubernetes Applications: Evolution, Outdatedness and Security Risks
Technical Papers
Ahmed Zerouali Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Ruben Opdebeeck Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Coen De Roover Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Pre-print
13:57
12m
Talk
Control and Data Flow in Security Smell Detection for Infrastructure as Code: Is It Worth the Effort?
Technical Papers
Ruben Opdebeeck Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Ahmed Zerouali Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Coen De Roover Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Pre-print
14:09
12m
Talk
Method Chaining Redux: An Empirical Study of Method Chaining in Java, Kotlin, and Python
Technical Papers
Ali Keshk University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Robert Dyer University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Pre-print Media Attached
14:35 - 15:15
14:35
12m
Talk
Large Language Models and Simple, Stupid Bugs
Technical Papers
Kevin Jesse University of California at Davis, USA, Toufique Ahmed University of California at Davis, Prem Devanbu University of California at Davis, Emily Morgan University of California, Davis
Pre-print
14:47
12m
Talk
The ABLoTS Approach for Bug Localization: is it replicable and generalizable?Distinguished Paper Award
Technical Papers
Feifei Niu University of Ottawa, Christoph Mayr-Dorn JOHANNES KEPLER UNIVERSITY LINZ, Wesley Assunção Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria & Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Liguo Huang Southern Methodist University, Jidong Ge Nanjing University, Bin Luo Nanjing University, Alexander Egyed Johannes Kepler University Linz
Pre-print File Attached
14:35 - 15:15
Human AspectsTechnical Papers / Data and Tool Showcase Track at Meeting Room 110
Chair(s): Alexander Serebrenik Eindhoven University of Technology
14:35
12m
Talk
A Study of Gender Discussions in Mobile Apps
Technical Papers
Mojtaba Shahin RMIT University, Australia, Mansooreh Zahedi The Univeristy of Melbourne, Hourieh Khalajzadeh Deakin University, Australia, Ali Rezaei Nasab Shiraz University
Pre-print
14:47
12m
Talk
Tell Me Who Are You Talking to and I Will Tell You What Issues Need Your Skills
Technical Papers
Fabio Marcos De Abreu Santos Northern Arizona University, USA, Jacob Penney Northern Arizona University, João Felipe Pimentel Northern Arizona University, Igor Wiese Federal University of Technology, Igor Steinmacher Northern Arizona University, Marco Gerosa Northern Arizona University
Pre-print
14:59
6m
Talk
She Elicits Requirements and He Tests: Software Engineering Gender Bias in Large Language Models
Technical Papers
Christoph Treude University of Melbourne, Hideaki Hata Shinshu University
Pre-print Media Attached

Accepted Papers

Title
A Large Scale Analysis of Semantic Versioning in NPM
Technical Papers
Pre-print
An Empirical Study of High Performance Computing (HPC) Performance Bugs
Technical Papers
Pre-print
An Empirical Study on the Performance of Individual Issue Label Prediction
Technical Papers
An Exploratory Study on Energy Consumption of Dataframe Processing Libraries
Technical Papers
Pre-print
Are We Speeding Up or Slowing Down? On Temporal Aspects of Code Velocity
Technical Papers
Pre-print
A Study of Gender Discussions in Mobile Apps
Technical Papers
Pre-print
Automating Arduino Programming: From Hardware Setups to Sample Source Code Generation
Technical Papers
Pre-print
AutoML from Software Engineering Perspective: Landscapes and ChallengesDistinguished Paper Award
Technical Papers
Pre-print
Boosting Just-in-Time Defect Prediction with Specific Features of C Programming Languages in Code Changes
Technical Papers
Characterizing and Understanding Software Security Vulnerabilities in Machine Learning Libraries
Technical Papers
Connecting the .dotfiles: Checked-In Secret Exposure with Extra (Lateral Movement) Steps
Technical Papers
Pre-print
Control and Data Flow in Security Smell Detection for Infrastructure as Code: Is It Worth the Effort?
Technical Papers
Pre-print
Cross-Domain Evaluation of a Deep Learning-Based Type Inference System
Technical Papers
Dealing with Popularity Bias in Recommender Systems for Third-party Libraries: How far Are We?
Technical Papers
Pre-print
Don't Forget the Exception! Considering Robustness Changes to Identify Design Problems
Technical Papers
Pre-print
Do Subjectivity and Objectivity Always Agree? A Case Study with Stack Overflow Questions
Technical Papers
Pre-print
Energy Consumption Estimation of API-usage in Mobile Apps via Static Analysis
Technical Papers
Pre-print
Enriching Source Code with Contextual Data for Code Completion Models: An Empirical Study
Technical Papers
Pre-print
Evaluating Software Documentation Quality
Technical Papers
Feature Toggle Usage Patterns : A Case Study on Google Chromium
Technical Papers
Helm Charts for Kubernetes Applications: Evolution, Outdatedness and Security Risks
Technical Papers
Pre-print
Intertwining Communities: Exploring Libraries that Cross Software Ecosystems
Technical Papers
Pre-print
Investigating the Resolution of Vulnerable Dependencies with Dependabot Security UpdatesDistinguished Paper Award
Technical Papers
Large Language Models and Simple, Stupid Bugs
Technical Papers
Pre-print
MANDO-HGT: Heterogeneous Graph Transformers for Smart Contract Vulnerability Detection
Technical Papers
Pre-print Media Attached
Method Chaining Redux: An Empirical Study of Method Chaining in Java, Kotlin, and Python
Technical Papers
Pre-print Media Attached
Model-Agnostic Syntactical Information for Pre-Trained Programming Language Models
Technical Papers
MSR Dinner at Cargo Hall, South Wharf
Technical Papers

On Codex Prompt Engineering for OCL Generation: An Empirical Study
Technical Papers
Phylogenetic Analysis of Reticulate Software Evolution
Technical Papers
PICASO: Enhancing API Recommendations with Relevant Stack Overflow Posts
Technical Papers
Pre-trained Model Based Feature Envy Detection
Technical Papers
She Elicits Requirements and He Tests: Software Engineering Gender Bias in Large Language Models
Technical Papers
Pre-print Media Attached
Tell Me Who Are You Talking to and I Will Tell You What Issues Need Your Skills
Technical Papers
Pre-print
The ABLoTS Approach for Bug Localization: is it replicable and generalizable?Distinguished Paper Award
Technical Papers
Pre-print File Attached
TypeScript's Evolution: An Analysis of Feature Adoption Over Time
Technical Papers
Pre-print
Understanding the Role of Images on Stack Overflow
Technical Papers
Pre-print
Understanding the Time to First Response In GitHub Pull Requests
Technical Papers
Pre-print
UNGOML: Automated Classification of unsafe Usages in Go
Technical Papers
Pre-print File Attached
Unveiling the Relationship Between Continuous Integration and Code Coverage
Technical Papers
Wasmizer: Curating WebAssembly-driven Projects on GitHub
Technical Papers
What Do Users Ask in Open-Source AI Repositories? An Empirical Study of GitHub Issues
Technical Papers
What Happens When We Fuzz? Investigating OSS-Fuzz Bug History
Technical Papers
Whistleblowing and Tech on Twitter
Technical Papers

Call for Papers

The International Conference on Mining Software Repositories (MSR) is the premier conference for data science (DS), machine learning (ML), and artificial intelligence (AI) in software engineering. There are vast amounts of data available in software-related repositories, such as source control systems, defect trackers, code review repositories, app stores, archived communications between project personnel, question-and-answer sites, CI build servers, package registries, and run-time telemetry. The MSR conference invites significant research contributions in which such data play a central role. MSR research track submissions using data from software repositories, either solely or combined with data from other sources, can take many forms, including: studies applying existing DS/ML/AI techniques to better understand the practice of software engineering, software users, and software behavior; empirically-validated applications of existing or novel DS/ML/AI-based techniques to improve software development and support the maintenance of software systems; and cross-cutting concerns around the engineering of DS/ML/AI-enabled software systems.

The 20th International Conference on Mining Software Repositories will be held on May 15-16, 2023, in Melbourne, Australia.

Evaluation Criteria

We invite both full (maximum 10 pages plus 2 additional pages of references) as well as short (4 pages plus references) papers to the Research Track. Full papers are expected to describe new techniques and/or provide novel research results, should have a high degree of technical rigor, and should be evaluated scientifically. Short papers are expected to discuss controversial issues in the field, or describe interesting or thought-provoking ideas that are not yet fully developed. Submissions will be evaluated according to the following criteria:

  • Soundness: The extent to which the paper’s contributions (be it novel approaches, applications of existing techniques to new problems, empirical studies, or otherwise) address its research questions and are supported by rigorous application of appropriate research methods. It is expected that short papers provide narrower contributions, and therefore more limited evaluations, compared to full papers.
  • Relevance: The extent to which the paper argues or demonstrates that its contributions help fill an important knowledge gap or help solve an important practical problem in the field of software engineering.
  • Novelty: The extent to which the paper’s contributions are sufficiently original with respect to the state of the art or add substantially to the state of the knowledge. Note: This does not in any way discourage well-motivated replication studies.
  • Presentation: The extent to which the paper’s rhetorical or logical argumentation is well structured and clear, the contributions are clearly articulated, the figures and tables are legible, and the use of the English language is adequate. All submissions must adhere to the formatting instructions provided below.
  • Replicability: The extent to which the paper’s claims can be independently verified through available replication packages and/or sufficient information included in the paper to understand how data was obtained, analyzed, and interpreted, or how a proposed technique works. All submissions are expected to adhere to the Open Science policy below.

Junior PC (new for 2023)

Following two successful editions of the MSR Shadow PC in 2021 and 2022 (see also this paper and this presentation for more context), MSR 2023 will integrate the junior reviewers into the main technical track program committee!

The main goal remains unchanged: to train the next generation of MSR (and, more broadly, SE) reviewers and program committee members, in response to a widely-recognized challenge of scaling peer review capacity as the research community and volume of submissions grows over time. As with the previous Shadow PC, the primary audience for the Junior PC is early-career researchers (PhD students, postdocs, new faculty members, and industry practitioners) who are keen to get more involved in the academic peer-review process but have not yet served on a technical research track program committee at big international SE conferences (e.g., ICSE, ESEC/FSE, ASE, MSR, ICSME, SANER).

Prior to the MSR submission deadline, all PC members, including the junior reviewers, will receive guidance on review quality, confidentiality, and ethics standards, how to write good reviews, and how to participate in discussions (see ACM reviewers’ responsibilities). Junior reviewers will then serve alongside regular PC members on the main technical track PC, participating fully in the review process, including author responses and PC discussions to reach consensus. In addition, Junior PC members will receive feedback on how to improve their reviews throughout the process.

All submissions to the MSR research track will be reviewed jointly by both regular and junior PC members, as part of the same process. We expect that each paper will receive three reviews from regular PC members and two additional reviews from Junior PC members. The final decisions will be made by consensus among all reviewers, as always.

Based on our experience with the MSR Shadow PC in 2021 and 2022, we expect that the addition of junior reviewers to each paper will increase the overall quality of reviews the authors receive, since junior reviewers will typically have a deep understanding of recent topics, and can thus provide deep technical feedback on the subject.

A list of Junior PC is available at the Junior PC webpage.

Submission Process

Submissions must conform to the IEEE conference proceedings template, specified in the IEEE Conference Proceedings Formatting Guidelines (title in 24pt font and full text in 10pt type, LaTeX users must use\documentclass[10pt,conference]{IEEEtran} without including the compsoc or compsocconf options).

Submissions to the Research Track can be made via the submission site by the submission deadline. However, we encourage authors to submit at least the paper abstract and author details well in advance of the deadline, to leave enough time to properly enter conflicts of interest for anonymous reviewing. All submissions must adhere to the following requirements:

  • Submissions must not exceed the page limit (10 pages plus 2 additional pages of references for full papers; 4 pages plus 1 additional page of references for short papers). The page limit is strict, and it will not be possible to purchase additional pages at any point in the process (including after acceptance).
  • Submissions must strictly conform to the IEEE Conference Proceedings Formatting Guidelines. Alterations of spacing, font size, and other changes that deviate from the instructions may result in desk rejection without further review.
  • Submissions must not reveal the authors’ identities. The authors must make every effort to honor the double-anonymous review process. In particular,
    • Authors’ names must be omitted from the submission and accompanying artifacts (e.g., replication package).
    • All references to the author’s prior work should be made in the third person.
    • While authors have the right to upload preprints on arXiv or similar sites, they should avoid specifying that the manuscript was submitted to MSR 2023 to reduce the risk of accidental de-anonymization (the reviewers will also be instructed to not search for the paper titles on the Web).
    • During review, authors should not publicly use the submission title on social media or otherwise.

    See also the Q&A page for ICSE 2023 for further advice, guidance, and explanation about the double-anonymous review process.

Submissions should also include a supporting statement on the data availability, per the Open Science policy below.

Any submission that does not comply with these requirements is likely to be desk rejected by the PC Chairs without further review. In addition, by submitting to the MSR Research Track, the authors acknowledge that they are aware of and agree to be bound by the following policies:

  • The ACM Policy and Procedures on Plagiarism and the IEEE Plagiarism FAQ. In particular, papers submitted to MSR 2023 must not have been published elsewhere and must not be under review or submitted for review elsewhere whilst under consideration for MSR 2023. 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 ACM/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 ACM or IEEE, to detect violations of these policies.
  • The authorship policy of the ACM and the authorship policy of the IEEE.

Authors will have a chance to see the reviews and respond to reviewer comments before any decision about the submission is made.

Upon notification of acceptance, all authors of accepted papers will be asked to fill a copyright form and will receive further instructions for preparing the camera-ready version of their papers. At least one author of each paper is expected to register and present the paper at the MSR 2023 conference. All accepted contributions will be published in the electronic proceedings of the conference.

A selection of the best papers will be invited to an Empirical Software Engineering (EMSE) Special Issue. The authors of accepted papers that show outstanding contributions to the FOSS community will have a chance to self-nominate their paper for the MSR FOSS Impact Award.

Open Science Policy

Openness in science is key to fostering progress via transparency and availability of all outputs produced at each investigative step. Transparency and availability of research outputs allow better reproducibility and replicability of empirical studies and empirical evaluations. Open science builds the core for excellence in evidence-based research.

The MSR conference actively supports the adoption of open data and open source principles. Indeed, we consider replicability as an explicit evaluation criterion. We expect all contributing authors to disclose the (anonymized and curated) data to increase reproducibility, replicability, and/or recoverability of the studies, provided that there are no ethical, legal, technical, economic, or sensible barriers preventing the disclosure. Please provide a supporting statement on the data availability in your submitted papers, including an argument for why (some of) the data cannot be made available, if that is the case.

Specifically, we expect all contributing authors to disclose:

  • the source code of relevant software used or proposed in the paper, including that used to retrieve and analyze data.
  • the data used in the paper (e.g., evaluation data, anonymized survey data, etc.)
  • instructions for other researchers describing how to reproduce or replicate the results.

Fostering artifacts as open data and open source should be done as:

  • Archived on preserved digital repositories such as zenodo.org, figshare.com, www.softwareheritage.org, osf.io, or institutional repositories. GitHub, GitLab, and similar services for version control systems do not offer properly archived and preserved data. Personal or institutional websites, consumer cloud storage such as Dropbox, or services such as Academia.edu and Researchgate.net do not provide properly archived and preserved data.
  • Data should be released under a recognized open data license such as the CC0 dedication or the CC-BY 4.0 license when publishing the data.
  • Software should be released under an open source license.
  • Different open licenses, if mandated by institutions or regulations, are also permitted.

We encourage authors to make artifacts available upon submission (either privately or publicly) and upon acceptance (publicly).

We recognize that anonymising artifacts such as source code is more difficult than preserving anonymity in a paper. We ask authors to take a best effort approach to not reveal their identities. We will also ask reviewers to avoid trying to identify authors by looking at commit histories and other such information that is not easily anonymized. Authors wanting to share GitHub repositories may also look into using https://anonymous.4open.science/, which is an open source tool that helps you to quickly double-anonymize your repository.

For additional information on creating open artifacts and open access pre- and post-prints, please see this ICSE 2023 page.

Submission Link

Papers must be submitted through HotCRP: https://msr2023-technical.hotcrp.com

Important Dates

  • Abstract Deadline: January 16, 2023 AoE
  • Paper Deadline: January 19, 2023 AoE
  • Author Response Period: February 22 – 24, 2023 AoE
  • Author Notification: March 7, 2023 AoE
  • Camera Ready Deadline: March 16, 2023 AoE

Accepted Papers and Attendance Expectation

Accepted papers will be permitted an additional page of content to allow authors to incorporate review feedback. Therefore, the page limit for published papers will be 11 pages for full papers (or 5 pages, for short papers), plus 2 pages which may only contain references.

  • The official publication date is the date the proceedings are made available in the ACM or IEEE Digital Libraries. This date may be up to two weeks prior to the first day of the ICSE 2023 conference week. The official publication date affects the deadline for any patent filings related to published work.
  • Purchases of additional pages in the proceedings are not allowed.

After acceptance, the list of paper authors can not be changed under any circumstances and the list of authors on camera-ready papers must be identical to those on submitted papers. After acceptance paper titles can not be changed except by permission of the Program Co-Chairs, and only then when referees recommended a change for clarity or accuracy with paper content.

If a submission is accepted, at least one author of the paper is required to register for MSR 2023 and present the paper. [We will add more info on this as soon as the MSR 2023 format is finalized.]

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