Does ICSE Accept the Right Contributions?
This addresses a critical issue for the software engineering research community regarding conference selection biases, but it is incremental as it builds on existing discussions without proposing new solutions.
The study investigated whether the ICSE Technical Research track aligns with important contributions for advancing software engineering, finding that about 75% of respondents were dissatisfied with its alignment, citing issues with low-relevance contributions being accepted and high-relevance ones being underrepresented.
Background: There is a constant discussion regarding whether the ICSE Technical Research track is accepting too many contributions of some type and too few of some other type. Questions: Are ICSE and the contributions it is seeing well aligned with what is important for bringing software engineering forward? Method: 26 expert interviews with senior members of the ICSE community, evaluated qualitatively and reported with many quotations. Results: About three quarters of the respondents are not generally happy with ICSE's alignment. Two specific complaints that recur frequently concern a) many low-relevance contributions making it into the program and b) several types of high-relevance contributions hardly seen in the ICSE program.