Call for papers, Special Issue on Innovative Frontiers in Automated Software Engineering

Automation has long been at the heart of software engineering, revolutionizing how we design, develop, and maintain complex systems. As artificial intelligence and advanced computational techniques continue to evolve, we find ourselves at a pivotal moment, one that demands bold new ideas, visionary thinking, and a reexamination of the fundamental principles shaping automated software engineering. This special issue seeks to go beyond incremental advances, welcoming transformative research that challenges conventional assumptions, explores radical new perspectives, and envisions the future of automation in software engineering. We invite contributions that redefine the role of automation, whether through groundbreaking innovations, thought-provoking reflections on past research, or bold visions that anticipate unforeseen opportunities and challenges.

Aims and Scope

This special issue aims to collect contributions for innovative ideas, visionary perspectives, and critical reflections that can potentially reshape automated software engineering significantly. We seek contributions beyond incremental advances to propose fundamentally new directions or offer insightful analyses of past and current research trajectories.

We invite three types of papers:

  • Innovative, groundbreaking new ideas supported by promising initial results, such as:
    • Exciting new directions in early stages of research, supported by initial evidence.
    • Startling new results that come in conflict with established results or beliefs, supporting a call for fundamentally new research directions.
  • Visions of the future, such as:
    • Bold visions of new directions that may not yet be supported by solid results but rather by a strong and well-motivated scientific intuition. Examples include unusual synergies with other disciplines, or the importance of software engineering in problems whose software engineering aspects have not been studied earlier.
    • Summaries of highly innovative research ideas recently awarded as grants.
  • Reflections on the past, such as:
    • Bold revisits of current research directions that may be somehow misguided.
    • Thoughtful observations coalescing the most important ideas since the inception of the field of software engineering, where they have led us so far, where past ideas have turned out to be right or wrong.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

  • Radical approaches to automating software engineering tasks supported by preliminary evidence
  • Novel applications of automation in software engineering contexts are traditionally considered unsuitable
  • Bold predictions about transformative directions in automated software engineering
  • The untapped potential of automation in emergent software domains and paradigms
  • Novel theoretical frameworks for rethinking fundamental aspects of automated software development
  • Reassessments of foundational assumptions in automated software engineering
  • Examination of ethical implications and unintended consequences in the evolution of automated software engineering
  • Reimagining correctness and verification in an era of AI-generated software
  • Novel approaches to handling uncertainty and ambiguity in automated software engineering
  • Transformative applications of large language models beyond current paradigms
  • Radical new perspectives on software composition and integration
  • Innovative socio-technical approaches that reconsider the relationship between automation and human developers
  • Disruptive ideas for automated testing, verification, and validation that break from established paradigms

Deadline

14 Oct, 2025: Submission deadline; 13 Jan, 2026: Authors notification.

As of Dec 2024, the following two special rules will apply.
(1) Submissions are no longer allowed, generated from Msword (submit pdfs generated from the Springer Latex template files). For authors unfamilar with Latex, we use and recommend the on-line tool http://overleaf.com.
(2) Use of the NASA data sets from the 1990s (PC1, JM1, etc) is no longer acceptable. Please use tools like (e.g.) CommitGuru to mine (e.g.) Github to find data.

How to Submit

Submitted papers should present original, unpublished work, relevant to one of the topics of the Special Issue. All submitted papers will be evaluated on the basis of relevance, significance of contribution, technical quality, scholarship, and quality of presentation, by at least two independent reviewers. It is the policy of the journal that no submission, or substantially overlapping submission, be published or be under review at another journal or conference at any time during the review process.

The call for this special issue is an open call. In addition, the authors with an accepted paper to FSE 2025 - IVR Track (https://conf.researchr.org/track/fse-2025/fse-2025-ideas-visions-and-reflections) are invited to submit extended versions of their work. To comply with the goals of a journal publication, we are asking to revise and substantially extend original FSE 2025 papers. Some possible extensions can include deeper theoretical development, additional empirical validation, exploration of broader implications, or connections to related research areas not covered in the conference paper. Revised papers should explicitly explain how they extend the original FSE 2025 papers.

Editor

Filomena Ferrucci is a Full Professor of Computer Science at the University of Salerno, Italy, since 2011. She received her PhD in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of Naples Federico II in 1995. Her research interests include software engineering (software environments, cost/effort prediction, fault prediction, software metrics, web engineering, search-based software engineering, empirical software engineering, human and social aspects in software engineering), human-computer interaction, software usability, visual languages, and computer science education. She has co-authored over 200 scientific papers published in international journals, book chapters, and conference proceedings. She serves on the editorial board of IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering and was General Co-Chair of EASE 2024, Program Co-Chair of IWSM-MENSURA, and Program Co-Chair of the ICSE 2022 Doctoral Symposium.

Gabriele De Vito has amassed over 30 years of experience in the IT industry, holding various positions ranging from software developer to project manager and Chief Information Officer (CIO). His extensive career includes serving as Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for several prominent Italian IT companies. Since 2021, Gabriele has transitioned into academia and consultancy, working as a high school teacher and professional consultant. His research interests are primarily focused on software engineering, with a particular emphasis on functional size measurement, machine learning, and large language models. Gabriele has contributed significantly to the academic community, serving as the program committee co-chair for the IWSM-Mensura conference in 2023 and as the Industry Co-Chair for the International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering (EASE 2024). In recognition of his work, Gabriele was the recipient of the COSMIC award for the best paper on the COSMIC method in 2019. Through his diverse roles and research contributions, he continues to impact the fields of software engineering and IT management, bridging the gap between industry practices and academic research.

Luigi Libero Lucio Starace received the M.Sc. degree (cum laude) in Computer Science and the Ph.D. degree from Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Italy, in 2018 and 2022, respectively. He is currently an Assistant Professor at Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II. His main research area is Software Engineering, specifically focusing on the design and evaluation of end-to-end testing techniques for web applications, empirical studies, and testing automation approaches. Additionally, he conducts research on the application of AI to software engineering, exploring how machine learning and other AI techniques can enhance software development and quality assurance processes. He is an active contributor to the software engineering community, serving as a reviewer for journals such as ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, Journal of Systems and Software, and Journal of Software: Evolution and Process. He has also served as a program committee member for well-known software engineering conferences, including FSE 2025 (Ideas, Visions and Reflections track), ICST 2025 (Testing Tools and Data Showcase track), ISSTA 2024 (Artifact Evaluation track), and SANER 2024 (Research track).