This guide assists authors with positioning their computer science manuscripts for the IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME). It details the core scope, including software maintenance, evolution, refactoring, and technical debt, and provides best practices for structuring submissions. It emphasizes the need for real repository evidence, actionable engineering insights, and proper differentiation from related venues like SANER or ICSE.
IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME)
Conference positioning
IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME) is a top computer-science conference venue for software maintenance, evolution, comprehension, refactoring, technical debt, and empirical SE. It rewards a maintenance/evolution paper with real repository evidence and actionable engineering insight. Treat this skill as a fit / venue-selection / re-framing tool for conference submission strategy, not as a substitute for the current year's CFP, author kit, ethics policy, or submission portal.
Because CS conferences change deadlines, templates, page limits, review workflow, artifact rules, AI-use policy, and rebuttal formats every cycle, always verify the live official instructions before making a submission-ready recommendation. Start from the official source anchor recorded for this venue in ../../resources/conference-roster.md and ../../resources/official-source-map.md.
When to trigger
The author names ICSME / IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution as the target venue.
A manuscript in software maintenance needs a conference-fit read before being formatted or submitted.
The paper must be re-framed from journal style or arXiv style into a selective CS conference narrative.
The author needs an evidence-gap, anonymity, artifact, rebuttal, or re-routing diagnosis for this venue.
Best submissions make a precise contribution type visible: algorithm, theorem, system, dataset, benchmark, empirical finding, design artifact, tool, or socio-technical analysis.
The paper should explain why the result matters to ICSME's reviewers, not just why it is interesting to the authors' lab or product context.
Position related work against the most recent conference-cycle papers in this venue and its closest siblings; stale comparisons are a common early-review weakness.
If the contribution is interdisciplinary, state which part is CS research and which part is domain evidence.
Venue-specific calibration
Reviewer lens: Treat ICSME as a software maintenance venue whose reviewers expect the scope and evidence to match its own community. Do not submit a generic CS paper until the introduction names the exact subcommunity, contribution type, and proof or empirical standard.
Contribution hook to foreground: the venue-specific contribution bar.
Scope vocabulary to use naturally in the abstract and introduction: software maintenance, evolution, comprehension, refactoring, technical debt, and empirical SE.
Official anchor domain: conf.researchr.org. Quote annual rules only after opening that source and the current-year CFP/author kit.
Close-neighbor routing guardrail
Route to ICSME when the contribution is about software maintenance and evolution over time:
repositories, releases, technical debt, comprehension, refactoring, migration, and
developer-facing maintenance decisions.
Do not collapse ICSME into SANER. SANER is stronger for analysis/reengineering tooling; ISSTA
for testing and analysis of defects; ICSE/FSE/ASE for broader SE or automation claims.
What distinguishes this venue from its closest siblings
What ICSME is. The IEEE conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution — maintenance, comprehension, and evolution of deployed software.
vs SANER. SANER leans analysis/reengineering; ICSME leans maintenance/evolution practice — overlapping siblings, route by community/cycle.
vs ICSE/FSE/MSR. The SE flagships are ICSE/FSE; MSR is repository mining; ICSME is the maintenance-focused venue.
ICSME-specific routing detail
Prefer ICSME when the contribution is software maintenance and evolution: change impact, maintainability, refactoring, modernization, release engineering, technical debt, or maintenance practice.
Route testing and analysis algorithms to ISSTA, reverse-engineering and evolution analysis to SANER, and general SE flagship papers to ICSE/FSE when maintenance is not the central frame.
ICSME evidence should connect empirical results or tools to maintainers' workflows, project history, change costs, and long-term software quality.
Method & evidence bar
Use real programs, benchmarks, proofs, developer studies, or artifacts matched to the contribution type.
For tools, report usability, scalability, false positives/negatives, and reproducible artifact details.
For theory, provide precise definitions and complete proofs; for empirical SE, foreground validity threats.
For ICSME, the evidence must support the venue-specific signature: a maintenance/evolution paper with real repository evidence and actionable engineering insight.
Include limitations, negative results, compute/resource reporting, data provenance, and ethics details when they affect the claim.
Structure & house style
State the software-engineering or language problem in terms of developer, program, proof, or runtime consequence.
Keep examples small but nontrivial, then scale evidence to realistic code or formal benchmarks.
Use the current official template exactly; do not guess page limits, font sizes, supplement rules, anonymity exceptions, or camera-ready requirements from old cycles.
The introduction should answer: problem, why now, what is new, why this venue, and what evidence proves the claim.
Put the strongest result in the main paper, not only in the appendix or supplement; reviewers should not have to reconstruct the contribution.
Re-check the current cycle's CFP, author kit, submission system, abstract/paper deadlines, page limits, supplementary-material rules, anonymity policy, dual-submission policy, ethics policy, AI-use policy, artifact/code/data expectations, rebuttal/author-response format, and camera-ready requirements.
Confirm the review workflow and portal: OpenReview / CMT / HotCRP / PCS / START or society portal, as specified for the current cycle.
Check whether accepted papers require in-person presentation, separate registration, artifact badges, proceedings copyright, or post-acceptance release forms.
If the live official instructions conflict with this skill, the official instructions win.
Pre-submission self-check
One sentence states why this manuscript belongs at ICSME, using the venue's scope rather than generic "top conference" language.
The claim is calibrated to the evidence: no broader than the datasets, proofs, systems, user studies, deployments, or threat model support.
Related work includes the nearest current-cycle software maintenance papers and explains the technical delta.
The paper satisfies the current official template, anonymity, ethics, artifact, and rebuttal requirements.
The main paper is self-contained enough for reviewers to evaluate novelty and correctness without hunting through external links.
Common desk-reject triggers
Toy examples with no evidence on real programs or benchmarks.
Tool paper without artifact clarity or comparison to current systems.
Empirical claims without validity analysis or reproducible data pipeline.
Formatting, anonymity, dual-submission, external-link, or supplement violations under the current-year policy.
A contribution framed for a neighboring field while giving ICSME reviewers too little technical or empirical substance.
Re-routing decision
If the paper misses ICSME's bar, compare against international-conference-on-software-engineering / acm-international-conference-on-the-foundations-of-software-engineering / ieee-acm-international-conference-on-automated-software-engineering / acm-sigplan-conference-on-programming-language-design-and-implementation. Re-route based on contribution type, not prestige: theory to a theory venue, systems to a systems venue, application-heavy work to a domain venue, and early ideas to workshops or shorter tracks when the official CFP supports them.
Output format
[Fit] High / Medium / Low (one-line reason)
[Target] IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME)
[Contribution type] algorithm / theory / system / dataset / benchmark / empirical / design / security / other
[Main evidence gap] <single most important missing proof, experiment, study, artifact, or policy check>
[Official items to re-check] CFP / author kit / deadline / format / anonymity / ethics / AI-use / artifact / rebuttal / camera-ready
[Top rejection risk] <venue-specific risk>
[Re-route suggestion] <better-matched conference or journal if not a fit>
