Journal of Systems and Software

For JSS's full CfP including information on Special Issues, Industry, Trends, and Journal First tracks please continue to read for further details.

The Journal of Systems and Software publishes papers covering all aspects of software engineering. All articles should provide evidence to support their claims, e.g. through empirical studies, simulation, formal proofs or other types of validation. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

Methods and tools for software requirements, design, architecture, verification and validation, testing, maintenance and evolution

Agile, model-driven, service-oriented, open source and global software development

Approaches for cloud/fog/edge computing and virtualized systems

Human factors and management concerns of software development

Artificial Intelligence, data analytics and big data applied in software engineering

Metrics and evaluation of software development resources

DevOps, continuous integration, build and test automation

Business and economic aspects of software development processes

Software Engineering education

Ethical/societal aspects of Software Engineering

Software Engineering for AI systems

The journal welcomes reports of practical experience for all of these topics, as well as replication studies and studies with negative results. The journal appreciates the submission of systematic literature reviews, mapping studies and meta-analyses. However, these should report interesting and important results, rather than merely providing statistics on publication year, venue etc.

JSS supports Open Science and reproducible research. Therefore, authors are encouraged to make Open Science material available at the time of submission and after acceptance of their manuscript, e.g., by submitting artifacts related to a study to an archived open repository (such as arXiv.org, zenodo.org, Mendeley, etc.). Also, authors are encouraged to explicitly reference Open Science material in their manuscript (e.g., via a DOI from the open repository). If authors are not able to disclose any material (for example, industrial data subject to non-disclosure agreements), we encourage authors to explicitly acknowledge this by including a short statement in their manuscript. Depending on the type of research presented in a manuscript, Open Science material could include study protocols, (anonymized) raw or analyzed data, data analysis scripts, source code, customized tools and infrastructures, experimental material, codebooks, etc. If authors agree to participate in the JSS Open Science Initiative, after the acceptance of a manuscript, they will be invited to submit a link to Open Science material for review by the JSS Open Science Board. After a successful review (which does not impact the acceptance of the manuscript) considering availability and usability of the material, the publisher will add a statement to the final version of the manuscript acknowledging that the Open Science package was validated by the JSS Open Science Board.

In addition to regular papers, JSS features two special tracks (In Practice, New Ideas and Trends Papers), as well as special issues.

In Practice is exclusively focused on work that increases knowledge transfer from industry to research. It accepts: (1) Applied Research Reports where we invite submissions that report results (positive or negative) concerning the experience of applying/evaluating systems and software technologies (methods, techniques and tools) in real industrial settings. These comprise empirical studies conducted in industry (e.g., action research, case studies) or experience reports that may help understanding situations in which technologies really work and their impact. Submissions should include information on the industrial setting, provide motivation, explain the events leading to the outcomes, including the challenges faced, summarize the outcomes, and conclude with lessons learned, take-away messages, and practical advice based on the described experience. Contributing authors from industry are encouraged but not mandatory. (2) Practitioner Insights where we invite experience reports showing what actually happens in practical settings, illustrating the challenges (and pain) that practitioners face, and presenting lessons learned. Problem descriptions with significant details on the context, underlying causes and symptoms, and technical and organizational impact are also welcome. Practitioner insights papers may also comprise invited opinionated views on the evolution of chosen topic areas in practice. In contrast to applied research reports, practitioner insights are limited to four pages and the first author must be from industry. Finally, submissions to this track should be within scope of the journal's above topics of interest and they will be evaluated through industry-appropriate criteria for their merit in reporting useful industrial experience rather than in terms of academic novelty of research results.

New Ideas and Trends Papers
New ideas, especially those related to new research trends, emerge quickly. To accommodate timely dissemination thereof, JSS introduces the New Ideas and Trends Paper (NITP). NITPs should focus on the systems/software engineering aspects of new emerging areas, including: the internet of things, big data, cloud computing, software ecosystems, cyber-physical systems, green/sustainable systems, continuous software engineering, crowdsourcing, and the like. We distinguish two types of NITPs:

A short paper that discusses a single contribution to a specific new trend or a new idea.

A long paper that provides a survey of a specific trend, as well as a (possibly speculative) outline of a solution.

NITPs are not required to be fully validated, but preliminary results that endorse the merit of the proposed ideas are welcomed.

We anticipate revisiting specific new trends periodically, for instance through reflection or progress reports.
New Ideas and Trend Papers warrant speedy publication.

Special Issue proposals
To submit a proposal for a special issue please submit your proposal here to Special Issues Editors Prof. Raffaela Mirandola and Prof. Laurence Duchien. Please visit the special issue guidelines page first to review the proposal guidelines and to download the proposal template required when submitting a proposal.

Journal First Initiative
Authors of JSS accepted papers have the opportunity to present their work in those conferences that offer a Journal First track. Using this track, researchers may take the best from two worlds: ensuring high quality in the JSS publication (thorough, multi-phase review process of a long manuscript), while getting feedback from a community of experts and fostering possible collaborations during a scientific event.

Details may vary from conference to conference, but generally speaking, JSS papers to be presented in a Journal First track must report completely new research results or present novel contributions that significantly extend previous work. The ultimate decision to include a paper in the conference program is up to the conference chairs, not JSS. A JSS paper may be presented only once through a Journal First track.

As of today, the list of conferences with which JSS is collaborating, or has collaborated, through a Journal First track, is: ASE, ICSME, SANER, RE, ESEM, PROFES, and APSEC.