Call for Papers

Goal and Scope

The 42nd IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME 2026) is the premier forum for researchers and practitioners to present and discuss the most recent innovations, trends, experiences, and challenges in software maintenance and evolution. We invite high-quality submissions describing significant and unpublished results related to, but not limited to, any of the following software maintenance and evolution topics (in alphabetical order):

• Change and defect management
• Code cloning and provenance
• Concept and feature location
• Continuous integration/deployment
• Empirical studies of software maintenance and evolution
• Evolution of non-code artifacts
• Evolution and maintenance of AI-based applications
• Human factors and social aspects of software maintenance and evolution
• Large Language Models for software evolution and maintenance tasks
• Maintenance and evolution of model-based methods
• Maintenance and evolution of mobile apps
• Maintenance and evolution of service-oriented and cloud computing systems
• Maintenance and evolution processes
• Maintenance versus release process
• Mining software repositories
• Productivity of software engineers during maintenance and evolution
• Release engineering
• Reverse engineering and re-engineering
• Run-time evolution and dynamic configuration
• Software and system comprehension
• Software migration and renovation
• Software quality assessment
• Software refactoring and restructuring
• Software testing theory and practice
• Source code analysis and manipulation
• Technical Debt

ICSME welcomes innovative ideas that are timely, well-presented, and evaluated. All submissions must position themselves within the existing literature, describe the relevance of the results to specific software engineering goals, and include a clear motivation and presentation of the work. All submissions must be in English and follow the paper submission guidelines below.

All papers must be full papers.

Evaluation

Submissions that are not in compliance with the required submission format or that are out of the scope of the conference will be desk-rejected without being reviewed. All submissions that meet the submission criteria and fit the scope of the conference will be reviewed by at least three members of the program committee. The importance of contribution, originality, quality of presentation, soundness, evaluation (where applicable), and appropriate comparison to related work will be assessed for all submissions. Where applicable (e.g., empirical studies and other technical contributions with an evaluation), the replicability of the work will be evaluated.

Paper Submission

Please use the following link to submit to the research track: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=icsme2026

Submitted papers must comply with IEEE plagiarism policy and procedures. Papers submitted to ICSME 2026 must not have been published elsewhere and must not be under review or submitted for review elsewhere while under consideration for ICSME 2026. Submitting the same paper to different tracks of ICSME 2026 is also not allowed. ICSME 2026 will use a double-anonymous reviewing process. Submitted papers must adhere to the following rules:

• Author names and affiliations must be omitted. (The track co-chairs will check compliance before reviewing begins.)
• References to the authors’ own related work must be in the third person. (For example, instead of “We build on our previous work…”, use “We build on the work of…”).
• The title of the submission must be different from the authors’ preprints on arXiv or similar sites. Authors must not publicly use the submission title during the review period.

Please see more information regarding the double-anonymous review: https://icsme.github.io/faq_double_blind.html

Papers must strictly adhere to the two-column IEEE conference proceedings format. Please use the templates available here. LaTeX users should use the following configuration: \documentclass[conference]{IEEEtran}. Microsoft Word users should use the US Letter format template. Papers must not exceed 10 pages (including figures and appendices) plus up to 2 pages that contain ONLY references. All submissions must be in PDF and must be submitted online by the deadline via the ICSME 2026 EasyChair link. All authors, reviewers, and organizers are expected to uphold the IEEE Code of Conduct.

Papers that do not comply with the submission guidelines will be desk-rejected and not be sent to the PC for review.

Special Issue

Authors of select papers from the research track will be invited to submit extended versions of their work to a special issue of the Springer International Journal of Empirical Software Engineering (EMSE). Invited papers will be expected to comply with the standard guidelines when publishing an extended version of a paper, including the addition of about 30% new material.

Author Response Period

As in 2025, ICSME 2026 will offer an author response period. During this period, the authors will have the opportunity to inspect the reviews and answer specific questions raised by the program committee. This period is scheduled after all reviews have been completed and discussed, to inform the subsequent decision-making process. Authors will be able to see the full reviews, including the reviewer scores, as part of the author response process.

Early Decisions

As in 2025, ICSME 2026 will make early decisions: If reviewers already decide that a paper can be accepted in its current state without requiring any further input from the authors, the authors will receive an “Accept” decision at the beginning of the author response period and will not be required to submit a response. Conversely, if the paper is perceived to be in a highly deficient state by the reviewers, leading them to conclude that the authors’ response is unlikely to alter their evaluation significantly, the authors will receive a “Reject” decision at the beginning of the author response period and will not be asked to submit a response. All other papers will receive a “Response Recommended” notification at the beginning of the author response period. However, as customary, it is still up to the authors to decide if they want to submit an author response.

This approach ensures that author responses are primarily reserved for cases with some controversy or where the reviewers have specific and pertinent inquiries to be addressed.

Publication and Presentation

Accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings and submitted for inclusion in the IEEE Xplore Digital Library. All authors of all accepted papers will be asked to complete an electronic IEEE Copyright form and will receive further instructions for preparing their camera-ready versions. At least one author of each accepted paper must register for the conference and present the paper at the conference. Failure of at least one author to register by the early registration date will result in the paper being withdrawn from the conference proceedings. Also, IEEE reserves the right to exclude a paper from distribution after the conference (e.g., by not placing it in the IEEE Xplore Digital Library) if the paper is not presented at the conference. Presentation details will follow notifications of acceptance.

Open Science Policy

ICSME encourages open science. Please read the policy available here.

Use of AI and LLMs

Authors should adhere to the guidelines for AI-generated content published by IEEE. IEEE requires that all content (including, but not limited to, figures, text, images, tables, and code) generated by AI be disclosed. The AI system should be identified, and specific sections of the article that utilize AI-generated content should be noted and accompanied by a brief explanation regarding the level of AI system involvement in producing the content. Read more at the link above. The paper chairs will investigate cases brought to their attention.

Important Dates

All submission dates are at 23:59 AoE (Anywhere on Earth)

• Abstract submission: February 27, 2026 (updates of existing submissions allowed until the full paper deadline, but no new submissions)
• Paper submission: March 6, 2026
• Early Decisions notification: May 3, 2026
• Author response period: May 4, 2026 - May 8, 2026
• Final notification: May 29, 2026
• Camera-ready submission: TBD