The aim of SER&IP - 8th International Workshop on Software Engineering Research and Industrial Practice 2021 is to bring together researchers and practitioners to discuss the current state of Software Engineering (SE) research and Industrial Practice (IP), and advance collaboration to reduce the gap between research and practice. Successful collaborations between software engineering academia and software industry are known to be challenging for a number of reasons. Researchers can be unaware of real problems and constraints in practice, whereas practitioners may find themselves unable to adopt existing useful research. Researchers believe that practitioners are looking for quick fixes instead of using systematic methods. Practitioners often feel that researchers work on dated or futuristic theoretical challenges which are divorced from today’s industrial practice. Researchers expect good work to take a few years to generate good publications which may affect a specific domain in an incremental manner. Practitioners expect a quick solution which must pay off in the short term. Researchers are more interested in proposing new techniques and tools. Practitioners would appreciate systematic evaluation and comparison of existing techniques and tools in real-world settings. Researchers and practitioners need to overlap research and practice to build trust in their partnership. This workshop is a platform to discuss and address such challenges.
More information is available here https://dumari.github.io/serip2021/

Submission Guidelines
SER&IP 2021 is soliciting regular and short papers as well as talk proposals. Regular papers should not exceed 8 pages, short papers should not exceed 4 pages and talk proposals should not exceed two-page extended abstract and 15-minute presentation/video. Papers and abstract should conform to the ICSE submission format and guidelines. Please submit the papers in PDF format on EasyChair https://easychair.org/account/signin_timeout?l=6MoNi1bFTRTAZXliKLO4Wt#
Papers and talk proposals should be original and unpublished material describing innovative and mature research results, experience reports, case studies, challenges, problems and solutions, ongoing work, new ideas, new results and future trends. All submissions will be reviewed by three program committee members. The program committee will review all submissions for relevance, potential to trigger discussions at the workshop, quality of presentation, and novelty.The accepted workshop papers, both regular and short, and two page extended abstracts will be published in the ICSE workshop proceedings in the IEEE Digital Library. Authors of accepted papers and talks are required to register and present the paper at the workshop in order for the paper and or extended abstract to be included in the proceedings. The official publication date of the workshop proceedings is the date the proceedings are made available in the IEEE Digital Library. This date may be up to two weeks prior to the first day of ICSE 2021. The official publication date affects the deadline for any patent filings related to published work.

List of Topics
Special theme of SER&IP 2021 aims to explore the effect of COVID-19 on the SE community and specifically on industry-academia research collaborations.
- How have the existing collaboration practices changed during the pandemic?
- What are the lessons learned in this process which may be helpful for others in keeping existing and establishing new collaborations?
- What challenges and benefits have SE researchers and practitioners experienced as a consequence of changed working practices during the pandemic?
- How has their productivity been affected?
- What remote and global development and collaboration practices are effective?

In addition to the topics of the special theme, researchers and practitioners are invited to submit papers and talk proposals addressing other topics relevant for industry-academia collaborations, including but not limited to:
- Role of Artificial Intelligence for research collaborations in SE
- Business models and/or collaboration mechanisms between researchers and practitioners
- The role and practice of open source in industry academia collaboration
- Challenges, issues, bottlenecks and gaps in adoption of research
- Existing research and systematic methods which are beneficial but ignored by the industry
- Examples of what industry wants from research and what research wants from industry
- How each side can participate in the issues, needs, and demands of the other
- National and cultural differences in collaborations
- Practical challenges that have potential for research
- Technology transfer stories
- Success (and less successful) stories and best practices from SE research-practice partnerships.

Important Dates
Paper and talk proposal submission: January 19, 2021
Notification to authors: February 22, 2021
Camera-ready papers: March 12, 2021

Organizing Committee
Dusica Marijan, Simula Research Laboratory, Norway
Chetan Bansal, Microsoft Research, USA
Tamara Lopez, the Open University, UK

Questions
All questions about submissions should be emailed to the organizers.