News from the SC

Sep 15, 2025: ICSE Research Track will Move to Single Cycle

By Arie van Deursen and Margaret-Anne Storey

For the ICSE Research Track, the ICSE Steering Committee has decided to replace the two-cycle submission process by a single cycle.

This means that from ICSE 2027 onwards, the spring submission deadline for research papers will be dropped, leaving only the summer deadline. In particular, there will be no submission possibility for ICSE research papers in the spring of 2026.

In 2024, 2025, and 2026, the ICSE Research Track had two cycles. Cycle 1 commonly had a deadline in March, and cycle 2 a deadline in July. The submission months of these cycles were aligned with the ASE and FSE conferences (with ICSE dubbed “SE3”), to provide deadlines spread over the year for major software engineering conferences.

After three years of two cycles a process was initiated to evaluate the two cycle system. This included a (Mentimeter-based) session with the community during the Town Hall at ICSE 2025 in Ottawa, as well as multiple discussions in the ICSE Steering Committee (before and after the Town Hall). From this, the following key issues emerged:

• Among the three main software engineering conferences, ICSE is the only one with two cycles.
• The duration from cycle 1 submission (March) to conference presentation (April the year after) is 13 months, which is long in a rapidly evolving field (for presenters and audience at the conference).
• Cycle 1 will take away submissions and reviewer availability from other SE venues with deadlines in the same period (such as ASE)
• Despite the long duration, there is substantial interest from authors to submit (654 submissions for Cycle 1 for ICSE 2026, up from 504 for ICSE 2025).
• The full submission process with two cycles may appear complex to authors
• For reviewers, the long duration of the reviewing process, especially when involved in both cycles, is demanding.

The discussion of these issues did not lead to a clear consensus on whether to maintain the two cycles. The overall sentiment was well described by one of the participants in the Town Hall: “I like it as an author but not as a reviewer. So very split”.

To reach a decision, an online vote was organized among the steering committee. With a small majority, the outcome of the vote was to move to a single cycle from ICSE 2027 onwards.

We thank everyone who contributed to the discussions. Besides the two cycles, many ideas on making ICSE and its paper reviewing process better have been brought up. These will be further elaborated within the steering committee for use in future ICSE (or SE3) conferences.

Sep 1, 2025: Steering Committee Welcomes Six new Members

By Arie van Deursen and Margaret-Anne Storey

It is with great pleasure that we welcome six new members to the ICSE Steering Committee.

ICSE 2027 SEIP chairs:

• Helena Holmström-Olsson, Malmö University, homepage
• Antonio Filieri, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Imperial College London, homepage

ICSE 2028 PC chairs:

• Yuanfang Cai, Drexel University, homepage
• Lars Grunske, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, homepage

ICSE 2028 SEIP chairs:

• Qinghua Lu, CSIRO, homepage
• Jan Bosch, Chalmers University of Technology, homepage

We are grateful that they will lead the Research Track of 2028, and the Software Engineering in Practice tracks of 2027 and 2028. They will serve on the Steering Committee until 2030 and 2031, respectively, and thus will help shape the future of the ICSE conference series. We look forward to working with them!