CESI 2018 - 6th International Workshop on Conducting Empirical Studies in Industry

Workshop Theme and Topics of Interest
Challenges in conducting empirical research in and with industry arise from the complexity of systems, products and services, processes, organizational settings, business contexts, etc., and from the sometimes contradicting goals of empirical researchers (search for truth) and practitioners (search for solutions). Yet, empirical studies in industry are necessary to ensure the relevance and applicability of software engineering research in the real world. Consequently, the goal of CESI is to look beyond research methodologies, focusing on how empirical research results can be obtained and put into action in industrial settings. Building on the results of five previous editions of the CESI at ICSE and utilizing the momentum created in the community, CESI 2018 will push further with a theme investigating the role of generalizability, replications and context-driven empirical research in industry. The workshop will investigate if and how results obtained in specific industry contexts can help advance the industry in general. Also, CESI will investigate the impact of empirical studies conducted in industry, including successes and failures.
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
Impact of empirical research on industrial practice
Issues with sharing and publishing datasets
Balancing researchers’ needs and practitioner’s needs
Impact of industrial settings on design, execution, reporting, interpretation
Threats of empirical research in industry, handling perceptions and bias
Communication of researchers and practitioners
Context-driven research
Replications/families of empirical studies in different industrial settings
Generalization of empirical research in industry conducted in specific contexts
Quantitative and qualitative research in industry
Secondary studies and aggregations of results from individual studies
Understanding failures and successes, lessons learned
Paper categories
Position and vision papers (2 to 4 pages) describe new directions in conducting empirical studies in industry. Convincing arguments supported by clear rationale need to be included.
Technical papers (6 to 8 pages) present empirical studies conducted in industry highlighting concrete results and the way the studies were designed or conducted to overcome industrial challenges, or on empirical methods that produce actionable results. Supplementary material might be made available online. Papers may compare advances made against the state-of-the-art.
Experience reports (up to 8 pages) describe experience in conducting studies in industry and lessons learned that would be useful to add to the body of knowledge on conducting empirical studies in industry.
Fast abstracts and practitioner messages (up to 2 pages) are particularly intended for practitioners who are invited to submit their views on conducting empirical studies in industry.
Education and training papers (up to 8 pages) report experiences, approaches and tools for teaching industry-driven empirical research, or experiences in utilizing empirical findings to train software engineers in academic courses (e.g., lesson plans, assignments).
Artifact papers (up to 2 pages) report artifacts for empirical research that could contribute to building a repository/corpus for industry, education and research. Papers must include a link to the actual artifacts.
Papers must describe original work not submitted or presented at other forums. Accepted papers will be published in electronic ICSE proceedings. The official publication date of the workshop proceedings is the date the ICSE proceedings are made available in the ACM Digital Library. This date may be up to two weeks prior to the first day of ICSE 2018. The official publication date affects the deadline for any patent filings related to published work.
The submission Web page for CESI 2018 is https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=cesi2018.