# Ieee International Conference On Software Maintenance And Evolut > Use when targeting IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME) or deciding whether a computer-science manuscript fits this venue. Encodes conference fit, framing, evidence bar, submission-cycle checks, rebuttal posture, and desk-reject risks for software maintenance. - Skill: `thedixitjain/ieee-international-conference-on-software-maintenance-and-ev` (Agent Skill) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds add thedixitjain/ieee-international-conference-on-software-maintenance-and-ev` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/thedixitjain/ieee-international-conference-on-software-maintenance-and-ev/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Research & Search - Author: thedixitjain (https://skillmd.com/u/thedixitjain) - Updated: 2026-09-09 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/thedixitjain/ieee-international-conference-on-software-maintenance-and-ev --- # IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME) ## Conference positioning IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME) is a top computer-science conference venue for software maintenance, evolution, comprehension, refactoring, technical debt, and empirical SE. It rewards a maintenance/evolution paper with real repository evidence and actionable engineering insight. Treat this skill as a **fit / venue-selection / re-framing** tool for conference submission strategy, not as a substitute for the current year's CFP, author kit, ethics policy, or submission portal. Because CS conferences change deadlines, templates, page limits, review workflow, artifact rules, AI-use policy, and rebuttal formats every cycle, always verify the live official instructions before making a submission-ready recommendation. Start from the official source anchor recorded for this venue in `../../resources/conference-roster.md` and `../../resources/official-source-map.md`. ## When to trigger - The author names ICSME / IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution as the target venue. - A manuscript in software maintenance needs a conference-fit read before being formatted or submitted. - The paper must be re-framed from journal style or arXiv style into a selective CS conference narrative. - The author needs an evidence-gap, anonymity, artifact, rebuttal, or re-routing diagnosis for this venue. ## Scope & topic fit - Core fit: software maintenance, evolution, comprehension, refactoring, technical debt, and empirical SE. - Best submissions make a precise contribution type visible: algorithm, theorem, system, dataset, benchmark, empirical finding, design artifact, tool, or socio-technical analysis. - The paper should explain why the result matters to ICSME's reviewers, not just why it is interesting to the authors' lab or product context. - Position related work against the most recent conference-cycle papers in this venue and its closest siblings; stale comparisons are a common early-review weakness. - If the contribution is interdisciplinary, state which part is CS research and which part is domain evidence. ## Venue-specific calibration - Reviewer lens: Treat ICSME as a software maintenance venue whose reviewers expect the scope and evidence to match its own community. Do not submit a generic CS paper until the introduction names the exact subcommunity, contribution type, and proof or empirical standard. - Contribution hook to foreground: the venue-specific contribution bar. - Scope vocabulary to use naturally in the abstract and introduction: software maintenance, evolution, comprehension, refactoring, technical debt, and empirical SE. - Distinctive fingerprint for reviewer calibration: software, maintenance, evolution, comprehension, refactoring, technical, debt, empirical, venue-specific, contribution, conf, researchr. - Official anchor domain: conf.researchr.org. Quote annual rules only after opening that source and the current-year CFP/author kit. ## Close-neighbor routing guardrail - Route to ICSME when the contribution is about software maintenance and evolution over time: repositories, releases, technical debt, comprehension, refactoring, migration, and developer-facing maintenance decisions. - Do not collapse ICSME into SANER. SANER is stronger for analysis/reengineering tooling; ISSTA for testing and analysis of defects; ICSE/FSE/ASE for broader SE or automation claims. ## What distinguishes this venue from its closest siblings - **What ICSME is.** The IEEE conference on **Software Maintenance and Evolution** — maintenance, comprehension, and evolution of deployed software. - **vs SANER.** SANER leans **analysis/reengineering**; ICSME leans **maintenance/evolution practice** — overlapping siblings, route by community/cycle. - **vs ICSE/FSE/MSR.** The SE flagships are ICSE/FSE; MSR is repository mining; ICSME is the maintenance-focused venue. ## ICSME-specific routing detail - Prefer ICSME when the contribution is software maintenance and evolution: change impact, maintainability, refactoring, modernization, release engineering, technical debt, or maintenance practice. - Route testing and analysis algorithms to ISSTA, reverse-engineering and evolution analysis to SANER, and general SE flagship papers to ICSE/FSE when maintenance is not the central frame. - ICSME evidence should connect empirical results or tools to maintainers' workflows, project history, change costs, and long-term software quality. ## Method & evidence bar - Use real programs, benchmarks, proofs, developer studies, or artifacts matched to the contribution type. - For tools, report usability, scalability, false positives/negatives, and reproducible artifact details. - For theory, provide precise definitions and complete proofs; for empirical SE, foreground validity threats. - For ICSME, the evidence must support the venue-specific signature: a maintenance/evolution paper with real repository evidence and actionable engineering insight. - Include limitations, negative results, compute/resource reporting, data provenance, and ethics details when they affect the claim. ## Structure & house style - State the software-engineering or language problem in terms of developer, program, proof, or runtime consequence. - Keep examples small but nontrivial, then scale evidence to realistic code or formal benchmarks. - Use the current official template exactly; do not guess page limits, font sizes, supplement rules, anonymity exceptions, or camera-ready requirements from old cycles. - The introduction should answer: problem, why now, what is new, why this venue, and what evidence proves the claim. - Put the strongest result in the main paper, not only in the appendix or supplement; reviewers should not have to reconstruct the contribution. ## Official-cycle checklist - Open the live official venue page: https://conf.researchr.org/series/icsme - Re-check the current cycle's CFP, author kit, submission system, abstract/paper deadlines, page limits, supplementary-material rules, anonymity policy, dual-submission policy, ethics policy, AI-use policy, artifact/code/data expectations, rebuttal/author-response format, and camera-ready requirements. - Confirm the review workflow and portal: OpenReview / CMT / HotCRP / PCS / START or society portal, as specified for the current cycle. - Check whether accepted papers require in-person presentation, separate registration, artifact badges, proceedings copyright, or post-acceptance release forms. - If the live official instructions conflict with this skill, the official instructions win. ## Pre-submission self-check - [ ] One sentence states why this manuscript belongs at ICSME, using the venue's scope rather than generic "top conference" language. - [ ] The claim is calibrated to the evidence: no broader than the datasets, proofs, systems, user studies, deployments, or threat model support. - [ ] Related work includes the nearest current-cycle software maintenance papers and explains the technical delta. - [ ] The paper satisfies the current official template, anonymity, ethics, artifact, and rebuttal requirements. - [ ] The main paper is self-contained enough for reviewers to evaluate novelty and correctness without hunting through external links. ## Common desk-reject triggers - Toy examples with no evidence on real programs or benchmarks. - Tool paper without artifact clarity or comparison to current systems. - Empirical claims without validity analysis or reproducible data pipeline. - Formatting, anonymity, dual-submission, external-link, or supplement violations under the current-year policy. - A contribution framed for a neighboring field while giving ICSME reviewers too little technical or empirical substance. ## Re-routing decision If the paper misses ICSME's bar, compare against `international-conference-on-software-engineering` / `acm-international-conference-on-the-foundations-of-software-engineering` / `ieee-acm-international-conference-on-automated-software-engineering` / `acm-sigplan-conference-on-programming-language-design-and-implementation`. Re-route based on contribution type, not prestige: theory to a theory venue, systems to a systems venue, application-heavy work to a domain venue, and early ideas to workshops or shorter tracks when the official CFP supports them. ## Output format ```text [Fit] High / Medium / Low (one-line reason) [Target] IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME) [Contribution type] algorithm / theory / system / dataset / benchmark / empirical / design / security / other [Main evidence gap] [Official items to re-check] CFP / author kit / deadline / format / anonymity / ethics / AI-use / artifact / rebuttal / camera-ready [Top rejection risk] [Re-route suggestion] ``` --- **Source:** [`brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills`](https://github.com/brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills) → `Computer-Science-Conference-Skills/skills/ieee-international-conference-on-software-maintenance-and-evolution/SKILL.md`