IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering ISSRE on October 20-23, 2026 in Limassol, Cyprus

Research Track Paper Categories

The research track at ISSRE 2026 invites high-quality submissions of technical research

papers that describe original, unpublished results exploring new scientific ideas,

contribute new evidence to established research directions, or reflect on practical 

experience. Specifically, ISSRE solicits submissions in three categories:

• Research (RES) papers

• Practical experience reports (PER)

• Tools and artefacts (TAR) papers

Papers will be assessed with criteria appropriate to each category. All the papers of the

three categories are regular and full papers, and will be published in the same ISSRE 

proceedings.

RES Papers

RES papers (12 pages, including references) should describe a novel contribution to the

reliability of software systems. Novelty should be argued via concrete evidence and 

appropriate positioning within the state of the art. RES papers are also expected to

explain the validation process and its limitations clearly.

PER Papers

PER papers (12 pages, including references) should provide an in-depth exposition of

practical experiences ideally performed by a collaboration of researchers and industry 

practitioners. The key contribution of these papers should be lessons learned from 

applying established research tools and methods to ISSRE topics, or new knowledge 

acquired through empirical studies conducted using various research methodologies. 

Negative results are welcome, e.g., discussing where or why current research cannot be 

applied in an industrially relevant context.

TAR Papers

TAR papers (6 – 10 pages, including references) should describe a new tool or artefact. 

Tool-focused TAR papers must present either a new tool or a novel and substantial 

extension of an existing tool. They should include a description of (i) the theoretical 

foundations, (ii) the design and implementation aspects, and (iii) experiments with

realistic case studies. Making the tool publicly available is strongly encouraged.

Artefact-focused TAR papers should cover (i) a working copy of the software and (ii) 

experimental data sets. Dataset papers should introduce a new dataset that supports 

experimentation, benchmarking, evaluation, or training in AI-driven software engineering. 

Submissions should describe: (i) dataset motivation and scope, (ii) data collection and 

processing methodology, (iii) dataset structure and statistics, and (iv) potential use cases. 

Benchmark papers should present a new benchmark suite for evaluating tools, LLMs, or 

algorithms. Submissions should include: (i) benchmark design principles, (ii) task 

definitions and evaluation metrics, (iii) baseline results, and (iv) reproducibility package.

The ISSRE conference encourages authors of all three categories of research track papers

to follow the principles of transparency, reproducibility, and replicability. Authors are 

encouraged to disclose data to increase reproducibility and replicability. Should the paper 

be accepted, the authors will have the opportunity (and are encouraged to) submit

artifacts to the Artifact Evaluation (AE) track, to enhance the reproducibility and quality of

the research. By submitting your artifacts, you not only contribute to the progress of our 

field but also stand a chance to earn badges that will be displayed on your papers in the 

conference proceedings, showcasing the credibility and rigor of your work.

Industry Track Paper Categories

The ISSRE Industry Track gathers industry representatives as well as researchers from, 

within or in collaboration with industry to discuss software reliability, quality assurance as

well as experiences and lessons learned. This year we will bring experiences from self-

made tools, usage of AI, generative AI and machine learning in relation to software 

reliability.

Industry track papers are expected to be of interest to software development

professionals, as well as to anyone researching or working in the area of software 

reliability, software quality, and process improvement groups, with concrete relevance to 

industrial problems and practical applications.

We invite three kinds of submissions to the Industry Track:

• Enlightening Talk or Tool Demo: 1-2 page abstract (OR a Power Point presentation OR a 

video for a tool demo).

• Short paper: 4-pages (including references).

• Full paper: 6-pages (including references).

All the submissions will be reviewed by members of the Industry Track Program 

Committee. Accepted papers (with an abstract) will be included in the ISSRE Supplemental

Proceedings and submitted for publication to IEEE Xplore.

Fast Abstracts and Project Highlights Track

A Fast Abstract (FA) or Project Highlights (PH) paper is a two-page, lightly reviewed 

technical article. The FA/PH track at ISSRE 2026 aims to bring together researchers and

practitioners working in Software Reliability Engineering (SRE) to:

• Introduce early original ideas.

• Discuss relevant work-in-progress and ongoing experiences.

• Challenge the SRE status quo on key topics.

• Present critical analyses of prior work.

• Share lessons learned from real-world SRE applications.

• Propose new problems from industrial or academic experience.

• Describe approaches to problems of significance that may not yet have complete results.

In addition to traditional Fast Abstracts, the track welcomes Project Highlights (PH) papers.

PH papers are expected to disseminate results, visions, methodologies, tools, and ongoing

activities from national and international research projects (e.g., European, or multi-

institutional initiatives).

Project Highlights may include, but are not limited to:

• Overviews of funded research projects and their objectives.

• Project methodologies, architectures, and experimental frameworks.

• Early or intermediate results, including lessons learned and preliminary insights.

• Datasets, benchmarks, tools, platforms, and other project outcomes released or in 

progress.

• Collaboration experiences, challenges, and emerging research directions from national

or international projects.

Project Highlights that can stimulate discussion and collaboration within the ISSRE 

community are welcome. Ongoing projects and projects completed not earlier than 

October 2025 are eligible.

Replications and Negative Results Track 

The Replications and Negative Results (RENE) Track has been introduced in the software

engineering community for a while and received overwhelmingly positive feedback. This

year, we establish this track at ISSRE and invite researchers to (1) replicate results from 

previous papers and (2) publish studies with important and relevant negative or null

results (results that fail to show an effect, yet demonstrate the research paths that did not

pay off).

We also encourage the publication of the negative results or replicable aspects of 

previously published work. For example, authors of a published paper reporting a working

solution for a given problem can document in a “negative results paper” other (failed) 

attempts they made before defining the working solution they published.

• Replication studies. The papers in this category must go beyond simply re-implementing

an algorithm and/or re-running the artifacts provided by the original paper. Such 

submissions should at least apply the approach to new data sets (open-source or 

proprietary). A replication study should clearly report on results that the authors were able

to replicate, as well as on the aspects of the work that were not replicable. 

• Negative results papers. We seek papers that report on negative results. We seek

negative results for all types of program comprehension research in any empirical area 

(qualitative, quantitative, case study, experiment, etc.). For example, did your controlled 

experiment not show an improvement over the baseline? Even if negative, results obtained

are still valuable when they are either not obvious or disprove widely accepted wisdom.

Best Paper Awards

Research Track

ISSRE is pleased to announce the IEEE Best Research Paper Award, awarded every year to

the best paper in the Research Track.

Industry Track

The Industry Program Chair will select three candidates among top-ranked papers 

presenting and motivating novel and disruptive ideas that address problems relevant for

industry. Selection will be based on the reviewers’ feedback, novelty and potential impact

of the results. The final selection of the best paper will be done by the audience attending 

the presentation of the candidate papers. Eligible papers must be (1) full papers accepted 

to the industry track, and (2) co-authored by at least one author whose primary affiliation 

is in Industry.

Special Journal Issue

Authors of accepted papers will be invited to submit an extended version of their work to

a special issue of the Empirical Software Engineering (EMSE) journal (under negotiation as

in previous editions of the conference). The Call for Papers will be available soon.

Workshop Proposals

ISSRE strives to be the conference that appeals to both researchers and practitioners. To

that end, we invite proposals for workshops to co-locate with the Symposium and provide

additional opportunities for collaborating and exchanging information. The workshops

aim at discussing research developments and challenges at an early stage. ISSRE welcomes

workshops that explore new ways to provide and assess software reliability, safety, and 

security. We also seek workshops that deal with the provision of reliable, safe, and secure

software and systems in fast-growing, transformative application domains. Appropriately

defined workshop proposals have the following characteristics:

• They offer researchers a forum to exchange and discuss scientific and engineering ideas

at an early stage before maturation that would warrant conference or journal publication.

• They attract practitioners and researchers to working sessions to discuss and make 

progress toward solutions to current and future problems in engineering high assurance

software and systems.

• They focus on collaborative discussions and information sharing between researchers 

and industry practitioners.

Workshops affiliated with ISSRE in previous years with good organization and numbers of

participants are pre-approved. Their organizers do not need to submit a new workshop 

proposal. Their organizers are kindly asked to inform the workshop chairs about returning

the workshop to ISSRE in 2026.

Submission Guidelines and Instructions

Research Track

https://cyprusconferences.org/issre2026/cfp-research/

Industry Track

https://cyprusconferences.org/issre2026/industry-track/

Fast Abstracts and Project Highlights Track

https://cyprusconferences.org/issre2026/fast-abstract-track/ 

Replications and Negative Results Track

https://cyprusconferences.org/issre2026/cfp-rene-track/

Workshop Proposals

https://cyprusconferences.org/issre2026/call-for-workshop-proposals/

Name: SEIT Lab, Department of Computer Science, University of Cyprus
Website: https://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/seit/
Address: Nicosia