The FSE 2019 Industrial Track provides a venue for outstanding applied research in software engineering. Industrial track submissions are expected to have a strong focus on real-world applicability of software engineering techniques, tools, methodologies, processes, and practices. At the same time, the work should demonstrate some type of innovation in its technology or approach.

The industrial track is soliciting submissions that cover all aspects of the software engineering life cycle. Submissions should clearly identify the innovative aspects of the approach, the industrial context in which it was applied, and the outcomes of its application (ideally supported by data), as well as what the FSE audience is expected to learn.

Submissions are solicited from all areas of industry and for any software engineering techniques, tools, methodologies, processes, and practices applicable at any point in the software lifecycle.  Most successful papers in the past have included authors from industry, although this is not a strict requirement.

What makes for a good industry track paper?

Good industry track papers might fall in the following categories:

• You articulate a new research challenge that you think should be studied.
• You have a tech transfer story to share. This type of paper describes taking a research method and applying it in practice. It describes why the method was chosen, what the problem was, and how it was solved.
• You have an experience report of a case study that brings out lessons that are worth sharing with others. This type of paper often describes an evolution/maintenance project. There does not have to be new invention in the paper. Hint: if you are a practitioner, most likely this is your category!
• You have conducted a research study in an industry setting.

Here are examples of papers from the previous year: https://2018.fseconference.org/track/fse-2018-Industry

Evaluation Criteria

Key reviewing criteria are listed below. Note that not all criteria are appropriate for every submission — e.g., improvement on the state-of-the-practice may be irrelevant for an experience report — and that we will adjust criteria to fit the given type of submission.

• Relevance to industrial track audience – The core concepts of the work either originate in research, either at ESEC/FSE or a related conference, or are novel ESEC/FSE-appropriate topics.
• Improvement on the state-of-the-practice – The amount of improvement that the work achieves above and beyond the state-of-the-practice.
• Impact of tech transfer activity – The scale of the impact (e.g., individual vs team vs several teams) of the tech transfer work (only relevant for tech transfer activities).
• Generality of results – The probability that the work, approach, or lessons learned are applicable to developers outside of the studied group.
• Clarity of lessons learned – The clarity in which the lessons learned are presented and how well they are supported with data and discussion.
• Overall quality of the manuscript – While we intentionally do not limit submissions to certain categories, we do encourage potential authors to view the ESEC/FSE Industrial Track 2018 list of papers for examples of appropriate submissions.

Recommended Team Composition

While teams of all makeups are encouraged to submit to the industrial track, successful teams in the past have followed a pattern. That pattern is to pair experienced practitioners with academics. While it is conjecture as to why this team makeup is so effective, the industrial track’s values of realism AND scientific rigor requires deep expertise in both areas. Simply put; many industry-only papers fail due to poor writing and scientific rigor and many academic-only papers fail due to lack of realism.

How to Submit

Papers must be submitted electronically through the FSE Industry Track submission site.

Submissions will be managed using EasyChair, at the following link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=esecfse2019industry

Format and Submission Procedure

At the time of submission all papers must conform to the ESEC/FSE 2019 Format and Submission Guidelines, and must be between 6 to 10 pages, with an additional 2 pages for references. Submissions should not be double-blinded; do be sure to write the names of the authors in the paper.

Submissions must be in English and in PDF format. Papers must be submitted electronically through the conference submission site. Papers submitted for consideration should not have been published elsewhere and should not be under review or submitted for review elsewhere during the duration of consideration. ACM plagiarism policies and procedures shall be followed for cases of double submission. Submissions that do not comply with the foregoing instructions will be desk rejected without being reviewed.

Each submission will be reviewed by at least two members of the Program Committee. Submissions will be evaluated on the basis of practical relevance, soundness, quality of presentation, and appropriate comparison to related work.

Presentation and Publication

Authors of accepted submissions will be given a time slot to present or demonstrate their work during the conference. Accepted industry track papers will be allocated up to 10 pages (+ 2 for references) in the main conference proceedings.

Note: 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 FSE 2019. The official publication date affects the deadline for any patent filings related to published work.

At least one author of each accepted paper must register and present the paper at FSE 2019 in order for the paper to be published in the proceedings. One-day registrations do NOT satisfy the registration requirement. Please carefully read the complete list of ESEC/FSE 2019 submission policies.

Important Dates

All dates are 23:59:59 AoE (UTC-12h).

• Submission deadline: 26 April 2019
• Notification to authors: 10 June 2019
• Camera ready deadline: 01 July 2019

Conference: 26-30 August 2019

Industry Track Co-Chairs

• Andrew Begel, Microsoft Research, USA
• Michael Felderer, University of Innsbruck, Austria