Call for Papers

We invite submissions of technical research papers describing original and unpublished results on software engineering for self-adaptive and self-managing systems, across the broad spectrum of topics of interest listed below. SEAMS 2025 will use two submission rounds for the Research Track, with deadlines in October 2024 and December 2024 – with the possibility of submitting a revised version from the first round to the second as detailed below. Accepted papers will be published in the IEEE and ACM digital libraries. In addition, authors of distinguished papers will be invited to submit revised and extended versions of their work to a dedicated Special Issue of ACM Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems (TAAS).

Background

Today we are building an exciting future in which autonomous vehicles navigate complex environments, smart cities employ advanced technologies to solve public problems and achieve a higher quality of life, and service robots support social care workers or perform tasks that are too dangerous for humans. These software-intensive systems must continuously preserve and optimize their operation despite uncertain changes in their operating environment, resource variability, evolving user needs, attacks and faults. This requires the systems to adapt and manage themselves autonomously, although, in certain situations, human intervention may be beneficial to improve these systems’ operation. Adaptation also pervades less traditional application domains, such as engineering AI-based systems, human-centered design and development decisions, and the design of human-machine interactions.

SEAMS is a CORE-A ranked conference that applies software engineering methods, techniques, processes, and tools to support the construction of self-adaptive and autonomous systems that provide self-* properties like self-configuration, self-healing, self-optimization, and self-protection. SEAMS aims to bring together researchers and practitioners from academia, industry, and government to investigate, discuss, examine, and advance the fundamental principles, the state-of-the-art, and the solutions addressing critical challenges of engineering self-adaptive and self-managing systems.

Topics of Interest

We welcome research contributions to all topics related to engineering self-adaptive and self-managing systems, including:

• Foundational concepts
• Self-* properties
• Uncertainty
• Runtime models and variability
• Mixed-initiative and human-in-the-loop/human-on-the-loop
• Ethical challenges
• Adaptation vs evolution
• Engineering strategies
• AI and machine learning
• Automatic synthesis techniques
• Control theory
• Search-based techniques
• Model checking
• Simulation and digital twins
• Human-centered software development
• Engineering activities
• Domain/environment analysis
• Requirements elicitation
• Security and privacy
• Architecture and design
• Testing and assurances
• Automated maintenance
• Systematic reuse
• Processes and methodologies
• Self-adaptation for software engineering
• Languages
• Formal notations for self-* properties
• Domain-specific languages
• Programming language support

Application areas and domains include but are not limited to Internet of Things, cyber-physical systems, cloud/fog/edge/mobile computing, bioengineering, robotics, smart environments, smart user interfaces, web/service-based applications, and automotive.

Types of Papers

We solicit two types of papers:

• Research papers 10 pages of content + 2 pages of references: papers offering novel and mature research contributions and experiences gained from applying or evaluating research results in practice.

• Short papers 6 pages of content + 1 page of references: papers presenting ongoing research or new research ideas without a complete evaluation.

We plan to complement the SEAMS 2025 program of research and short paper presentations with a community debate. In contrast to past SEAMS editions, which called for positions on a given topic/statement, we now call for proposals for the debate.

Community debate proposals 1-page proposal, possibly with a supporting video: proposals suggesting a topic of the debate, and the chair(s) who will be in charge of organizing and moderating the debate at SEAMS 2025 if the proposal is accepted. The chairs of accepted proposals will also be responsible for inviting participants to their debate. Community debate proposals should be single-anonymous, justify the relevance of the topic and adequateness of the chairs, and suggest a tentative list of participants in the debate. Accepted proposals will not be included in the SEAMS 2025 proceedings.

For additional information on how to submit papers to SEAMS 2025, please see the Submission section. Besides research papers, the SEAMS organizers encourage the submission of artifacts. Artifacts can be associated with research papers, or they can be standalone contributions. For both options, artifacts should be submitted to the artifact track.

Review Criteria Each paper submitted to the Research Track will be reviewed by at least three PC members. The evaluation will be based on the following criteria:

• Novelty and Originality
• Relevance and Impact
• Soundness and Verifiability
• Presentation and Readability

Community debate proposals will be reviewed by the General Chair and Program Chairs of SEAMS 2025 with the support of the SEAMS Steering Committee. The evaluation will be based on the following criteria:

• Novelty and Originality
• Relevance and Impact

SUBMISSION LINK: Abstracts and papers must be submitted via HotCRP: TBD

Submission and Important Dates

SEAMS 2025 will use two submission rounds for the Research Track, with firm deadlines in October 2024 and December 2024, and with the possibility of submitting a revised version from the first round to the second as detailed below.

First Submission Round

• Abstract deadline: Tue 01 October 2024
• Paper submission due: Tue 08 October 2024
• Notification of decision (Accept / Revision / Reject) to authors: Mon 11 November 2024
  • Submissions with Accept decisions: Final paper files (camera-ready copy) due: Tue 28 January 2025
  • Submissions with Revision decisions: Submit a revised version along with a response letter to the reviews by Fri 13 December 2024 (see Second submission round).
  • Submissions with Reject decisions: Final decision. Rejected papers from the first round cannot be re-submitted to the second round.

Second Submission Round

• Abstract deadline for new submissions: Fri 06 December 2024
• Paper, new and revised 1st papers submission due: Fri 13 December 2024
• Notification of decision (Accept / Reject): Tue 14 January 2025
• Final paper for new and revised submissions (camera-ready copy) due: Tue 28 January 2025

Author Responses

Authors of papers that receive “Revision” decisions in the first round will have the opportunity to submit a revised version of their papers to the second round. The authors are required to provide a response letter that (1) explains how the comments have been tackled, (2) provides answers to the questions posed by reviewers.

Paper Submission

• Submissions to SEAMS 2025 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 must strictly conform to the IEEE conference proceedings formatting instructions specified above. Alterations of spacing, font size, and other changes that deviate from the instructions may result in desk rejection without further review.
• The SEAMS 2025 Research Track will use a lightweight double-anonymous review process. No submission may reveal its authors’ identities. In particular:
  • Authors’ names must be omitted from the submission.
  • All references to the author’s prior work should be in the third person.
  • While authors have the right to upload preprints on ArXiV or similar sites, they must avoid specifying that the manuscript was submitted to SEAMS 2025.
  • During review, authors should not publicly use the submission title. They should thus use a different paper title for any pre-print in ArXiV or similar websites.
  • Additional material published online should be anonymized and should not provide references to the paper’s authors.
  • All communication with the program committee must go through the program committee chairs. Do not contact individual program committee members regarding your submission.

• All submissions must not exceed the specified page limits. Accepted full research papers will be allowed one extra page for the main text of the camera-ready version. The purchase of additional pages in the proceedings is not allowed.

• By submitting to SEAMS, authors acknowledge that they are aware of and agree to be bound by the ACM Policy and Procedures on Plagiarism and the IEEE Plagiarism FAQ. In particular, papers submitted to SEAMS 2025 must not have been published elsewhere and must not be under review or submitted for review elsewhere whilst under consideration for SEAMS 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. 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.
• If the research involves human participants/subjects, the authors must adhere to the ACM Publications Policy on Research Involving Human Participants and Subjects. Upon submitting, authors will declare their compliance with such a policy. Alleged violations of this policy or any ACM Publications Policy will be investigated by ACM and may result in a full retraction of your paper, in addition to other potential penalties, as per ACM Publications Policy.
• Please ensure that you and your co-authors obtain an ORCID ID, so you can complete the publishing process for your accepted paper. ACM and IEEE have been involved in ORCID and may collect ORCID IDs from all published authors. We are committed to improve author discoverability, ensure proper attribution and contribute to ongoing community efforts around name normalization; your ORCID ID will help in these efforts.
• By submitting to the ICSE Research Track, authors acknowledge that they conform to the authorship policy of the IEEE, the submission policy of the IEEE, and the authorship policy of the ACM (and associated FAQ. This includes the following points related to the use of Generative AI:
  • “Generative AI tools and technologies, such as ChatGPT, may not be listed as authors of an ACM published Work. The use of generative AI tools and technologies to create content is permitted but must be fully disclosed in the Work. For example, the authors could include the following statement in the Acknowledgements section of the Work: ChatGPT was utilized to generate sections of this Work, including text, tables, graphs, code, data, citations, etc.). If you are uncertain ­about the need to disclose the use of a particular tool, err on the side of caution, and include a disclosure in the acknowledgements section of the Work.” - ACM
  • “The use of artificial intelligence (AI)–generated text in an article shall be disclosed in the acknowledgements section of any paper submitted to an IEEE Conference or Periodical. The sections of the paper that use AI-generated text shall have a citation to the AI system used to generate the text.” - IEEE
  • “If you are using generative AI software tools to edit and improve the quality of your existing text in much the same way you would use a typing assistant like Grammarly to improve spelling, grammar, punctuation, clarity, engagement or to use a basic word processing system to correct spelling or grammar, it is not necessary to disclose such usage of these tools in your Work.” - ACM

Submissions to SEAMS 2025 that meet the above requirements can be made via the submission site by the submission deadline. Any submission that does not comply with these requirements may be desk rejected without further review. We encourage the authors to upload their paper info early (and can submit the PDF later) to properly enter conflicts for double-anonymous reviewing. It is the sole responsibility of the authors to ensure that the formatting guidelines, double anonymous guidelines, and any other submission guidelines are met at the time of paper submission.

Notification and Publication

Accepted papers will appear in the SEAMS 2025 proceedings that will be published in the IEEE and ACM digital libraries. The official publication date is the date the proceedings are made available in the ACM Digital Library. This date may be up to two weeks prior to the first day of ICSE 2025. The official publication date affects the deadline for any patent filings related to published work. Authors of selected Research papers will be invited to submit revised and extended versions of their work to a dedicated Special Issue of ACM Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems (TAAS).