Visit the journal's proposal guidelines to submit a proposal for a special issue (original contributions on a topic within the scope of the journal) or a special section with extended papers from a conference of workshop within the scope of the journal.

Information and Software Technology is the international archival journal focusing on research and experience that contributes to the improvement of software development practices. The journal's scope includes methods and techniques to better engineer software and manage its development. Articles submitted for review should have a clear component of software engineering or address ways to improve the engineering and management of software development. Areas covered by the journal include: 

• Software management, quality and metrics,
• Software processes,
• Software architecture, modelling, specification, design and programming
• Functional and non-functional software requirements
• Software testing and verification & validation
• Empirical studies of all aspects of engineering and managing software development Short Communications is a new section dedicated to short papers addressing new ideas, controversial opinions, "Negative" results and much more. Read the Guide for authors for more information.

The journal encourages and welcomes submissions of systematic literature studies (reviews and maps) within the scope of the journal. Information and Software Technology is the premiere outlet for systematic literature studies in software engineering. Guidelines for conducting systematic reviews are provided here.

Special Issue on Generative AI in Software Engineering
Submission Date: 2024-09-01

Generative AI has become a major theme of great interest to both academic researchers as well as professionals in the software industry. Generative AI refers to a category of tools and algorithms that can create new output based on an extensive set of inputs (‘training data’). Current Generative AI tools that are highly relevant to software engineering include GitHub Co-Pilot and ChatGPT, as they can generate source code given a prompt, which serves as a specification. This appears to be a natural fit for Software Engineering, given the strong focus on requirements within the field in general which are frequently expressed in natural language. Clearly, Generative AI tools can be used in all phases of the software development lifecycle (whichever process is followed), including code generation, testing, and debugging. The opportunities—and challenges—appear to be endless. While many studies of Generative AI have started to appear, we are only scratching the surface of the impact of this new type of technology.

Guest editors:

Dr. Viktoria Stray, Ph.D.
University of Oslo, Norway

Dr. Geir K Hanssen,Ph.D.
SINTEF Digital, Norway

Professor Darja Šmite, Ph.D.
Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden

Dr. Astri Barbala, Ph.D.
SINTEF Digital, Norway

Dr. Klaas-Jan Stol, Ph.D.
University College Cork, Ireland

Special issue information:

The special issue seeks to present a collection of papers that present different aspects of and perspectives on Generative AI in a software engineering context, and as such to represent a snapshot of research as a collection of curated papers that can provide a useful entry point for both researchers entering the field, software practitioners, and potentially software managers.

The focus of the special issue is on a wide range of questions on how Generative AI can be used in Software Engineering, but also on the challenges and consequences of adopting this technology in SE. As such the special issue seeks to provide a holistic overview of Generative AI in Software Engineering. The following are illustrative questions, but this list is by no means exhaustive:

    In which ways can Generative AI be used effectively to improve software engineering practice? Which prerequisites and limitations must be considered?
    In which ways are Generative AI technologies disruptive, and what is their impact?
    How can Generative AI technologies be adopted by small and medium-sized enterprises that do not have the resources usually available in large corporations?
    What are the risks of adopting Generative AI for software development?
    What is the impact of adopting Generative AI on developers’ sense of achievement, motivation, and other human aspects of developers?
    What are the legal concerns regarding the use of Generative AI in the software industry?
    What is the impact of Generative AI on Software Engineering training and education?
    Is there a “dark side” of adopting Generative AI in SE practice?

Manuscript submission information:

Submission Deadline: 1 September 2024

Special Issue on Agile and Lean: How far did we come and what’s next?
Submission Date: 2024-10-11

Guest editors:
Eduardo Guerra, Free University of Bolzen-Bolzano, Italy
Darja Smite, Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden
Xiaofeng Wang, Free University of Bolzen-Bolzano, Italy

Special issue information:

As the XP conference series is celebrating 25 years, the agile manifesto is approaching the quarter of the century mark soon, and the concept of lean production has bypassed the 35 years barrier, it’s time to reflect on the progress in the field and envision what future research and practice is needed in the agile and lean community. In the past years, we have evidenced the rise of agile methods. The field has evolved from the niche of small teams to any size enterprise, with the effort of commercial frameworks and certification programs. As such, from a special type of environment, agile software development has become widespread and commonplace. Just a context, some might say. Some might even say the field is experiencing a crisis, lacking new ideas and progress. Yet, lean-agile thinking is much broader than the agile manifesto, a particular method or framework, and far more diverse than just the field of software engineering. This is why the special issue that would collect reflections and guidance for future research and practice is so timely.

The special issue calls for submissions addressing topics across the full spectrum of agile and lean software development, broadly on agile, and on specific issues of concern to researchers or practitioners (or both). Despite the broad interest in topics, we specifically solicit papers focusing on evaluating the trends and progress in the field. All studies shall have a section dedicated to the retrospective reflection on the changes in the research on the selected topic and a vision for the future of the research and practice of agile and lean software development.

Papers should focus on the following themes:

Empirical studies and evaluations of the progress in the field
Foundations and conceptual studies
Evaluation-based research agendas
Evolution of agile practices and agile culture

In the context of these themes, the topics of interest include:

Agile leadership and culture
Business agility and Startups
Engineering (software design, architecture, DevOps, automation)
Data-driven agility and transformations
Agile product design and requirements