21st IEEE International Conference on Software Architecture (ICSA 2024)
https://conf.researchr.org/track/icsa-2024/icsa-2024-papers


# AIMS AND SCOPE
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The IEEE International Conference on Software Architecture (ICSA) is the premier gathering of practitioners and researchers interested in software architecture, component-based software engineering, and quality aspects of complex software systems. The 21st IEEE International Conference on Software Architecture (ICSA 2024) continues the tradition of a working conference, where practitioners and researchers meet and where software architects can explain the challenges they face and try to influence the future of the field. Interactive working sessions will be the place where researchers meet practitioners to identify opportunities to create the future.

Recent advances in capabilities and availability of generative artificial intelligence (AI) now allow users to generate text, source code, graphics, videos, and 3D models based on natural language descriptions. Software architects are already starting to use these tools to rationalize design decisions, to explore technology options, to synthesize source code based on patterns, and to generate architecture diagrams. The theme of ICSA 2024 is thus “Software Architecture in the Age of Generative AI”. The conference welcomes contributions exploring the potentials and risks of this new technology for software architecture. We are particularly interested in soliciting papers describing novel tools, techniques, and methods to support software architects using generative AI. We are also looking for software and system architecture case studies that successfully or unsuccessfully applied this new technology.

Besides the main theme, we call on both researchers and practitioners for contributions that advance our understanding of architectures in real-world software, facilitate empirical research by making architectural artifacts and tools publicly available, and promote replicability of results through common datasets and benchmarks. We welcome original papers that explore and explain the role of architecture in current systems and future systems. This conference looks at what can be learned from our software architecture history, experience, studies, and best practices.


# IMPORTANT DATES
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Abstracts due: November 24th, 2023, AoE (Anywhere on Earth)
Full papers due: December 1st, 2023, AoE (Anywhere on Earth)
Notification of acceptance: February 4th, 2024
Camera-ready due: February 18th, 2024


# TOPICS
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Topics of interest for the conference include (but are not limited to) the following:
- Requirements & Architecture
- Stakeholder management and collaborating with other domains
- Stakeholder management and collaborating with other domains
- Linking architecture to requirements and/or implementation
- Methods to address the intertwining of specification and design
- Sustainability, ethics, business, financial, and managerial aspects of software architecture
- Architecture Design
- Model-driven architecture
- Component-based software engineering
- Architecture frameworks and architecture description languages
- Reusable architectural solutions & architecture knowledge management
- Cloud-native Computing & Architecture
- Microservices & containerization
- Serverless platforms & novel forms of virtualization (WASM, MicroVMs, etc.)
- Event-driven architectures
- Observability & Distributed Tracing
- Architecture Evaluation
- Evaluating quality aspects (e.g., security, performance, reliability, evolvability)
- AI/ML techniques for architecture
- Architecture conformance checking
- Lightweight evaluation methods
- Architecture & Life-cycle
- Automatic extraction and generation of software architecture descriptions
- Architecture & continuous integration/delivery, and DevOps
- Refactoring and evolving architecture design decisions and solutions
- Agile architecting, continuous architecting, and other approaches to architecting
- Architecture & Architects
- Roles and responsibilities for software architects
- Training, soft skills, coaching, mentoring, education, and certification
- Architecture for equality, diversity and inclusion
- State-of-the-art and state-of-practice in software architecture
- Architecture for specific types of systems, such as: Edge / Fog / Internet of Things (IoT) systems / IoB systems
- AI / ML systems & systems using blockchains
- Cyber-physical systems
- Self-adaptive & autonomous systems
- Architecture & Generative AI:
- Design assistance & identification of architectural patterns
- Decision making support, comparing technologies, evaluating trade-offs
- Generating source code to facilitate implementing architecture designs
- Reviewing designs, identifying inconsistencies, and suggesting improvements


# OPEN SSCIENCE PRINCIPLES
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The ICSA conference encourages authors of research papers to follow the principles of transparency, reproducibility, and replicability. In particular, the conference supports the adoption of open data and open source principles and encourages authors to disclose data in order to increase reproducibility and replicability. For more background information, please refer to the Artefact Evaluation Track (AET).
Authors have an additional choice to make, in that they can either:

opt to make data and/or code available; in this case, if accepted, their paper will be automatically submitted to AET for check of criteria, and whether badges can be assigned to the paper; or
opt not to make their research artifacts and datasets accessible to the program committee; in that case, authors are asked to comment in their submitted paper on why this is not possible, practical, or desirable. This statement should be included at the end of the introduction section and may be deleted in the final version of the paper if accepted. Possible reasons may involve privacy restrictions and/or non-disclosure agreements.
Sharing of research artifacts is desired but not mandatory for submission or acceptance. The program committee members, however, may use this information to inform their decision.


# SUBMISSION
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We solicit the submission of technical research papers that describe original and significant results of theoretical, empirical, conceptual, or experimental work in software architecture. The submissions will be evaluated based on novelty, soundness, significance/relevance, open science principles (as outlined above), and presentation quality, in that order.
All submissions must conform to the IEEE paper formatting and submission instructions and must not exceed 10 pages for the main text, inclusive of all figures, tables, appendices, etc. Two additional pages containing only references are permitted. The submissions must conform to the author instructions as well as to the IEEE Guidelines for Artificial Intelligence (AI)-Generated Text https://journals.ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org/become-an-ieee-journal-author/publishing-ethics/guidelines-and-policies/submission-and-peer-review-policies/#maincontent

Please note that ICSA 2024 will pursue a double-blind review process for technical research papers only, therefore all technical research paper submissions have to fulfill the double-blind reviewing requirements. Submissions that disregard these review requirements will be desk-rejected without review. For artifacts that will be published following the open science principles (see above), we ask that authors undertake reasonable, possibly non-exhaustive steps to not disclose their identity, e.g., by anonymizing author names, handles, affiliations, and URLs. Leakage of information in additional artifacts will not lead to desk rejection. Reviewers will be asked to treat artifacts and papers as confidential.

All papers are to be submitted electronically via the EasyChair submission system by the submission deadline, and must not have been published before or be submitted for review elsewhere while under consideration at ICSA. All submissions will be checked with an anti-plagiarism tool.

https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=icsa2024


# PUBLICATION
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All accepted technical research papers will be published in the ICSA 2024 main proceedings, and appear in IEEE Xplore Digital Library.

The authors of submissions that are rejected as technical research papers – but for which reviews show a strong potential for positively influencing the state of the art or state of practice in software architecture, or strong potential to stimulate discussion – will be invited to submit a short paper (up to 8 pages including references) or a poster (poster presented at the conference + an optional two-page summary) describing their research. Short papers and two-page summaries will be published in the ICSA 2024 companion proceedings.

Note that at least one author of an accepted contribution is required to register and present the work at the conference. An in-person presentation is required.


# PC CHAIRS
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Romina Spalazzese, Malmö University, Sweden
Heiko Koziolek, ABB Research, Germany


# TRACKS
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This CFP refers to the Research Track of ICSA. For the remaining tracks, please check the specific calls on the website:

- Journal First: https://conf.researchr.org/track/icsa-2024/icsa-2024-journal-first
- Software Architecture in Practice: https://conf.researchr.org/track/icsa-2024/icsa-2024-software-architecture-in-practice-track
- Early Career Track: https://conf.researchr.org/track/icsa-2024/icsa-2024-early-career-track
- New and Emerging Ideas: https://conf.researchr.org/track/icsa-2024/icsa-2024-new-and-emerging-ideas
- Postrers: https://conf.researchr.org/track/icsa-2024/icsa-2024-poster-track
- Tools and Artifacts: https://conf.researchr.org/track/icsa-2024/icsa-2024-tools-and-artifacts
- Workshops: https://conf.researchr.org/track/icsa-2024/icsa-2024-workshops
- Tutorials: https://conf.researchr.org/track/icsa-2024/icsa-2024-tutorials-tech-briefings