Editorial: Toward the Future with Eight Issues Per Year
Mauro Pezzè · ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology · 2024
Toward the Future with Eight Issues Per YearI am pleased to make several announcements with this issue of ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM), including the publication of eight issues per year, the implementation of the human-centric software engineering continuous special section, the forthcoming 2030 Roadmap for software engineering special issue, and the introduction of a "new frontiers" track.The landscape of software engineering is dramatically changing: New technologies challenge software engineering with new problems and solutions, and software engineering grows and diversifies.The research on applications of artificial intelligence (AI) to software engineering is a hot topic.The articles in the TOSEM continuous special section on AI and software engineering now represent almost one-fifth of the accepted articles, while they were a tiny fraction only 5 years ago.Original submissions to ACM TOSEM more than tripled in the past 5 years, with a relevant geographic shift from a dominant role of Europe and North America, with 84% of accepted articles 5 years ago, to a balanced distribution and the excellent presence of Asia and Australia, with 50% of accepted articles from the Asia-Pacific region in the past 12 months.ACM TOSEM has addressed the new challenges with new initiatives and a timely evolution.We introduced the fast track, continuous special sections, RCR reports, and registered articles.The fast-impact track offers a timebound review turnaround time, with over 50% of the overall submissions reviewed within 60 days and 80% reviewed within 90 days.The continuous special sections on AI and software engineering and on security and software engineering offer teams of expert editors to thoroughly review articles in fast-growing areas of software engineering.The fast track and the continuous special sections host articles that present completely new research results, and they now represent 60% of articles published in TOSEM.The RCR report offers a stable forum to share artifacts, tools, and data in the long term.The registered reports provide early feedback on new ideas that require expensive experimental validation and motivate investing in long-term expensive experiments.In 2024 we will move on with eight issues per year, a new human-centric software engineering continuous special section, a new technical communication track, and a 2030 Roadmap for a software engineering special issue.ACM TOSEM has published four issues per year in the first 30 years of its existence (from 1992 to 2022), it has published six issues in 2023, and it will regularly publish eight issues per year starting in 2024.The publication of eight issues per year will dramatically reduce the time to publication, thus giving the early visibility that high-quality articles deserve in a fast-changing landscape.The new continuous special section on human-centric software engineering offers an expert board to review contributions in the extremely relevant and fast-emerging field of human factors