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


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.



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) experience reports, showing what actually happens in practice (contrasted to theory), illustrating the challenges (and pain) that practitioners face, detailing how research results fair in realistic settings, and presenting lessons learned; (2) problem descriptions with significant details on the context, underlying causes and explicit symptoms of the problem, the technical and organizational impact of the problem, as well as relevant research questions for researchers to investigate, and finally (3) tool-focused papers discussing the usability, scalability, engineering, and other challenges faced when implementing a research concept. Submissions to this track should include at least one co-author from industry and be within scope of the journal's above topics of interest. In addition, submissions will be evaluated through industry-appropriate criteria for their merit in reporting useful industrial experience; not 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 Issues proposals
To submit a proposal for a special issue, please contact the Special Issues Editor Prof. W.K. Chan

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.