Call for papers: 30th ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA'21)

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                The 30th Edition of ISSTA

                     Call for Papers

                  12th-16th July 2021

                    Aarhus, Denmark

       https://conf.researchr.org/home/issta-2021

               Co-located with ECOOP 2021

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The ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis

(ISSTA) is the leading research symposium on software testing and analysis,  

bringing together academics, industrial researchers, and practitioners to exchange

new ideas, problems, and experience on how to analyze and test software systems. 

ISSTA 2021 will be held in Aarhus, Denmark, on July 12-16, 2021, co-located with 

ECOOP 2021 [1].

2021 will mark the 30th edition of ISSTA.

Technical Papers

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Authors are invited to submit research papers describing original contributions 

in testing or analysis of computer software. Papers describing original 

theoretical or empirical research, new techniques, methods for emerging systems, 

in-depth case studies, infrastructures of testing and analysis, or tools are 

welcome.

Experience Papers

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Authors are invited to submit experience papers describing a significant 

experience in applying software testing and analysis methods or tools and should 

carefully identify and discuss important lessons learned so that other 

researchers and/or practitioners can benefit from the experience. Of special 

interest are experience papers that report on industrial applications of software 

testing and analysis methods or tools.

Reproducibility Studies

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ISSTA would like to encourage researchers to reproduce results from previous 

papers. A reproducibility study must go beyond simply re-implementing an 

algorithm and/or re-running the artifacts provided by the original paper. It 

should at the very least apply the approach to new, significantly broadened 

inputs. Particularly, reproducibility studies are encouraged to target techniques 

that previously were evaluated only on proprietary subject programs or inputs. A 

reproducibility study should clearly report on results that the authors were able 

to reproduce as well as on aspects of the work that were irreproducible. In the 

latter case, authors are encouraged to make an effort to communicate or 

collaborate with the original paper’s authors to determine the cause for any 

observed discrepancies and, if possible, address them (e.g., through minor 

implementation changes). We explicitly encourage authors to not focus on a single 

paper/artifact only, but instead to perform a comparative experiment of multiple 

related approaches. In particular, reproducibility studies should follow the ACM 

guidelines on reproducibility (different team, different experimental setup): The 

measurement can be obtained with stated precision by a different team, a 

different measuring system, in a different location on multiple trials. For 

computational experiments, this means that an independent group can obtain the 

same result using artifacts which they develop completely independently. This 

means that it is also insufficient to focus on repeatability (i.e., same 

experiment) alone. Reproducibility Studies will be evaluated according to the 

following standards:

• Depth and breadth of experiments

• Clarity of writing

• Appropriateness of conclusions

• Amount of useful, actionable insights

• Availability of artifacts

We expect reproducibility studies to clearly point out the artifacts the study is 

built on, and to submit those artifacts to artifact evaluation (see below). 

Artifacts evaluated positively will be eligible to obtain the highly prestigious 

badges Results Replicated or Results Reproduced.

Submissions Guideline

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Submissions must be original and should not have been published previously or be 

under consideration for publication while being evaluated for this symposium. 

Authors are required to adhere to the ACM Policy and Procedures on Plagiarism and 

the ACM Policy on Prior Publication and Simultaneous Submissions. More details 

are available at the Submission Policies page. Research and Experience Papers as 

well as Reproducibility Studies should be at most 10 pages in length, with at 

most 2 additional pages for references. Experience papers and reproducibility 

studies should clearly specify their category in the paper title upon submission, 

e.g., “XXX (Experience Paper)”. All authors should use the official “ACM Master 

article template”, which can be obtained from the ACM Proceedings Template pages 

[2]. Latex users should use the “sigconf” option, as well as the “review” (to 

produce line numbers for easy reference by the reviewers) and “anonymous” 

(omitting author names) options. To that end, the following latex code can be 

placed at the start of the latex document:

\documentclass[sigconf,review, anonymous]{acmart}

\acmConference[ISSTA 2021]{ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis}{12-16 July, 2021}{ Aarhus, Denmark}

Submit your papers via the HotCRP ISSTA 2021 submission website [3].

Double-blind Reviewing

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ISSTA 2021 will conduct double-blind reviewing. Submissions should not reveal the 

identity of the authors in any way. Authors should leave out author names and 

affiliations from the body of their submission. They should also ensure that any 

citations to related work by themselves are written in third person, that is, 

“the prior work of XYZ” as opposed to “our prior work”.

Double-blind reviewing should not hinder the usual communication of results. But, 

during the review period, please don’t broadcast the work on social media. Also, 

to the extent to which this is possible, please avoid publishing the preprint of your work (e.g., on arXiv or on your website) until it is accepted for 

publication. In exceptional cases this might be required, but then please avoid 

spreading the paper more actively.

Authors with further questions on double-blind reviewing are encouraged to 

contact the Program Chair by email.

Supplementary Material

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Authors are free to provide supplementary material if that material supports the 

claims in the paper. Such material may include proofs, experimental results, 

and/or data sets. This material should be uploaded at the same time as the 

submission. Any supplementary material must also be anonymized. Reviewers are not 

required to examine the supplementary material but may refer to it if they would 

like to find further evidence supporting the claims in the paper.

Reviews and Responses

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Each paper will receive three reviews, followed by an author response. After the 

response, some papers might receive additional reviews where necessary, to which 

authors can respond in a second author-response phase.

Important Dates

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- Paper submission: 29 January 2021 (Fri)

- Author response: 24-27 March 2021 (Wed–Sat)

- Additional response: 08-09 April 2021 (Thu-Fri)

- Author notification: 19 April 2021 (Mon)

More Information

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For additional information, please visit the ISSTA’21 website [4].

[1] https://conf.researchr.org/home/ecoop-2021

[2] https://www.acm.org/publications/proceedings-template

[3] https://issta2021.hotcrp.com/

[4] https://conf.researchr.org/home/issta-2021